Smoke clung to the pine boughs, acrid and unyielding. The branches sagged under its weight, and the resin hissed where the flare had scorched them. The ground was torn, blackened in a circle of char where Leo's power had burst forth. What had once been flesh and blade was now only ash, scattered fragments of steel, and silence.
For a single heartbeat, no one moved.
The raiders, men who only moments before had howled like wolves, stood frozen. Their eyes were wide, pale, stripped of rage. One let his axe slip from numb fingers. Another stumbled back as though struck by a phantom blow, mumbling prayers to nameless gods.
