The wind was the first thing they noticed.
It no longer reeked of blood or burning mortar oil, but metal and silence, like a whisper through an empty cathedral. Even the birds were gone.
For the first time in four days, no shots rang out. The cannons were still. Soldiers sat in canvas tents, polishing rifles, chewing dry rations in silence, or staring at the plumes of smoke that still curled from the broken horizon.
General Elisabeth had ordered a full 24-hour delay before entering the capital—to let the chemicals settle, and to spare her soldiers the same fate as those inside.
Marko Brandt stood near the edge of the forward camp, coat open, a rifle slung over his shoulder. He squinted through the lingering gray haze that veiled the city's outer edge.
"They really did it," muttered a rifleman next to him. "They flattened a damn capital."
Another soldier adjusted the strap on his gas mask bag. "Looks like the gods dropped a mountain on the place."
Marko didn't laugh.
He watched dust swirl between the craters where once stood statues, arches, mansions. Now there was only jagged stone, red mud, and scorched roots.
When the order came the next morning, the soldiers marched in slow and quiet. No war drums. No banners. Just steel boots in dust, crossing a landscape that looked more like a battlefield on the moon than a city once called Lars.
Whole streets had been vaporized. Buildings were melted down to stumps, their bricks turned to glass-like shards. Rubble shifted underfoot like bones. Corpses rotted in the open sun, flies buzzing lazily above blackened flesh.
"I thought we'd be storming the gates," said one younger soldier, hand on his rifle's grip.
"No gates left," said another.
A third looked around, voice low: "Do you think there's even anyone left to fight?"
Marko finally turned, voice cold. "Stay alert. Just because they're not shooting doesn't mean they're not watching."
In what had once been a public square—now just a field of broken cobble and cratered earth—a soldier stepped over a mangled statue base and paused.
A low cough.
Then again—wet, shallow, human.
He raised his rifle.
There, half-buried in the shade of a collapsed wall, was a young demi-human. His robes were torn and bloodied. His left arm was broken and bent backwards. And yet he lifted his remaining hand weakly.
"I… I was forced," he wheezed, blood on his lips. "I'm not a fighter. They conscripted us. Please—I don't wanna die like this…"
The squad leveled their weapons. One hesitated. "He's no threat."
"Could be faking," another replied.
Marko approached and studied the figure for a long moment. The boy trembled under his stare. He had no weapon. His eyes were wide with terror.
"Cuff him," Marko ordered. "If he resists, shoot him."
Two soldiers moved forward, strapping iron manacles around the demi-human's thin wrists. He collapsed into their arms, sobbing.
"Thank you… thank you…"
Marko didn't reply.
In the Rubble
Half a block west, where the central marketplace had once stood, a collapsed wooden awning still bore signs of fruit stands now crushed into mold and bone.
A beastman—middle-aged, wiry, shirt wrapped around his mouth—clawed at the rubble with bleeding fingers. Nails cracked. Knuckles scraped against sharp stone. But he didn't stop.
His breath came in painful gasps. Dust clung to his sweat-drenched skin. Every pull of the debris left behind red handprints on the pale gray rock.
And then—he froze.
There, under a charred plank, he saw it:
A small hand. Ringed. Bruised. Lifeless.
He pulled harder.
And then he saw the rest.
His daughter, barely six. Her skull crushed. His wife, arms wrapped around a second child, their bones blackened, their mouths open in frozen screams.
The beastman screamed.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I told them not to come back into the city! I told them—!"
He pulled at his own face, clawing tears from his eyes with bloody palms. He sank to his knees, still holding his child's tiny hand.
And then the soldiers appeared behind him.
He turned slowly—face broken, eyes wide.
"Please," he whispered, voice raw. "Just… kill me."
The squad exchanged glances. One rifleman raised his weapon.
Marko arrived moments later, staring at the man.
"Do it," Marko said quietly.
The rifleman stepped forward, drew his sidearm, and aimed it squarely at the beastman's forehead.
"Live in peace."
The shot echoed down the ruins like a final prayer.