Duke Garran Glimor stood at the shattered gates of Phoenix Academy and felt something crack in his chest.
Smoke rose from a dozen different buildings, black columns spiraling into the darkening sky. The buildings were collapsed.
The library was an inferno that sent sparks dancing through the air like dying stars.
And the bodies.
They were everywhere. Students. Faculty. Guards. Some still recognizable, others... not. Scattered across bloodstained stone like discarded dolls, their stories ended in moments of violence that no one would remember.
"Fuck," he breathed, his eyes sweeping across the devastation with growing horror.
Behind him, three companies of guards, nearly two hundred soldiers, stood in formation, waiting for orders.
Combat specialists, healers, search and rescue personnel. The fastest response force the capital could muster.
It wasn't enough.
It would never be enough.
