I like what you’ve got going, and great job adhering to the theme, but the lack of a central protagonist does really hurt the potential of this story.
It’s not that I didn’t care about the stakes of the battle, it’s that I could’ve cared more. Showing this from the perspective of say, a soldier on the battlefield or a strategist looking over the fight would’ve made me care that much more about it.
Still, it was a good read, and it did very well with the theme.