There was carnage.
Unavoidable, chaotic carnage — not the kind of beating where a body could still be called a body afterward. This was the kind of violence that tore through definition, through dignity, and left only red, steaming ruin.
The wasteland around them didn't stir. The air hung thick, unmoving, yet it pressed on the skin like a weight. It wasn't silence exactly — it was an absence that hummed in the bones.
Above, somewhere beyond the haze and sky's blackened shroud, shapes moved — brown-feathered beasts drifting like carrion birds too patient to land.
Their wings barely shifted, but their eyes tracked Atlas's party. Watching, waiting.
They weren't here to save anyone. They weren't here to stop this. They were here because the smell of blood would one day be theirs to claim.
"Aaaaaa—!"
The scream cracked midway, the fallen's voice splitting into a wet gargle.
