The air was a forge, hot with ash and the stink of blood, yet colder than steel in its silence. For a moment that could have been a heartbeat or an eternity, the two hosts stared across the Hollow Pass, the carcass of the Wrath-knight lying as grim proof between them. No one moved. No one dared.
The southern host clutched its weapons with the look of drowning men grasping for driftwood. They had seen death today, more than enough to hollow their courage. Yet still they held, trembling but upright, their ranks bowed but not broken. The ground beneath their boots seemed alive with the weight of choice—the kind of weight that crushed or forged. The banners above them, once proud in the sun, now hung heavy with soot and blood, their colors dulled to shadows.
