The dawn that broke over the basin was a pale and bloodless thing, light filtering weakly through smoke and the ragged remnants of stormclouds. We had survived the night, though survival felt less like triumph and more like postponement. The fissure was gone, leaving no scar in the earth, no trace of the light or the creatures. Only the bodies remained—the mangled, lifeless forms of men who had trusted me enough to follow me into this wilderness.
I stood among them, my boots heavy with ash and blood. The stench was unbearable, a mix of burned flesh and stone dust. My men moved with the quiet efficiency of despair, binding wounds, stacking corpses, whispering prayers to gods that had long since abandoned the South. They avoided my eyes, though I felt them on me all the same. Watching. Weighing.
