First light of dawn slid across the fields like a knife would, gilding every stalk of wheat in gold. It should have been beautiful. It should have been a morning that promised bread, warmth, and life.
Instead, the air was cold, the horizon thick with smoke before the fires had even begun.
From the hill above Westerloch's rolling farmland, Lan watched his army assemble in silence.
The Mad Vipers and the Ranevian gangs moved with a discipline born of months of drilling under Miller's pitiless orders. They were no longer scattered cutthroats. Rows formed. Spears aligned. Armor glinted faintly under the pale sun.
Venom stood beside him, face shadowed beneath his helm, voice low and sharp.
"Fields first. Stores second. No non civilian survivors in the barns. Garran takes the mage unit."
Lan didn't answer. His eyes were on the wheat. Endless food and gold.
A gust of wind bent the stalks, and in that moment, he imagined them breaking beneath his hand like the necks of men.
