The council chamber reeked of sweat and panic—the kind that didn't come from fear of death, but from the fear of having to admit they were already too late. Nobles shouted over each other, spitting numbers and names like they meant anything. Ten thousand men. Gone. Just ash and armor in a crater the size of a nightmare.
"An air raid?" one scoffed, knuckles white around a wine glass. "No flying creature has that kind of mana density."
"They weren't creatures," another muttered, voice tight. "It was a weapon."
Silence didn't fall—it collapsed. Like a corpse slumping in its chair.
Lara stood by the window, her breath catching as the names echoed again. Not names. Numbers. Numbers. As if the dead had been spreadsheets instead of fathers and brothers and sons.
She closed her eyes. The noise throbbed behind her temples. She tried to remember the last face of the last soldier she blessed on their way out. She couldn't. Her guilt tasted like blood.
