Alpheo could hardly believe what his eyes beheld.
For a brief, flickering moment, he wondered if he were still asleep, dreaming some fevered vision of triumph too fantastical for reality. But no dream had ever smelled so richly of sweat, iron, and oiled wood.
Cart after cart rolled down the patchy green road, their wheels creaking beneath the weight of wealth pulled from the bones of Herculia.
The entire spoils of a broken city were being hauled, piece by piece, across the grass and laid bare before the quartermasters of the White Army. Their ink-stained hands moved quickly, cataloguing the loot with all the cold precision of scribes counting the spoils of gods. Everything was being sorted and tallied: from the tiniest bronze trinkets pried from hearths, to the grandest tapestries torn from palace walls.
