Afternoon settled over the Sylven Forest like a heavy veil.
The air was thick with the smell of iron and damp earth. Leaves were torn, branches snapped, and the ground itself looked wounded. Blood soaked into the soil in dark uneven patches. Men stood bent over, hands on their knees, breathing hard, chests rising and falling like bellows pushed to their limits.
Maddock stood at the center of it all, his blade angled downward, crimson dripping from its edge and vanishing into the dirt. Around him, bullet shells lay scattered like fallen seeds, catching fragments of sunlight through the canopy.
Several men sat or lay against trees, faces pale, limbs wrapped hastily with cloth and gauze. Groans were swallowed by the forest almost instantly, as if even pain was not allowed to linger here.
