Darkness erupted from the cracks on the ground.
The courtyard was dead.
Smoke coiled from shattered towers, drifting like black veils across the air, each thread of ash moving as if guided by mourning hands.
The ground bore the scars of Lan's fury—stones split and blackened, walls reduced to fractured heaps, and the faint smell of blood clinging stubbornly to the air.
Even the light of the rising sun seemed reluctant to pierce the ruin. What little broke through came thin and pale, as though daylight feared trespassing upon this place.
Lan stood at the center of it, Devil's Lie heavy in his grip, the rusted blade dragging rivulets of Aldric's lifeblood down its grooves.
The Solaris king had been broken—nearly slain by his hand—yet there was no triumph in the silence that followed. In the arrival of the man who had come.
Karahad stepped forward.
