Dust And Iron

The Georgia heat clings like a second skin as Army medic Marcus Holloway prepares for yet another deployment—his fifth tour in a war that has already taken too much. From the red clay of Fort Benning to the dust-choked valleys of the Hindu Kush, Marcus is sent deep into Afghanistan's most volatile region, where every mission blurs the line between duty and survival. In the chaos of modern warfare, Marcus has one purpose—to keep his brothers alive. But as the years stretch on and the body count rises, the cost of that mission begins to erode everything he thought he understood about loyalty, faith, and home. The faces of the wounded never fade. The ones he couldn't save never stop following him. When a sudden ambush tears through his platoon, Marcus must confront not only the enemy in front of him, but the one that's been growing inside his own mind. Caught between military orders and the morality of saving lives in a place built to take them, he finds himself questioning the very meaning of sacrifice. Every life he saves comes with another scar—and every scar brings him closer to a breaking point that no field manual ever prepared him for. Dust and Iron pulls readers into the unforgiving heat of the battlefield and the quiet moments that follow it—the sterile smell of blood and dust, the whispered promises made to the dying, and the endless weight of memory carried home. It's a story of brotherhood and moral endurance, written with unflinching realism and the emotional depth of a soldier who has seen too much and can never truly leave. Raw, gripping, and unapologetically human, Dust and Iron marks the beginning of The Shadow of Hindu Kush series—a haunting exploration of the unseen scars of modern warfare and the fragile line between hero and survivor.