They settled onto a low stone bench at the training yard's edge, the cold granite seeping through their clothes, but neither noticed. Apollo began to speak, and as the minutes bled into an hour, the air between them grew thick and toxic with the weight of his words.
His voice didn't just carry information; it carried the trauma of every atrocity. He spoke of the plaza fight against Tremor the way the ground had buckled like breaking bone as the earth itself turned hostile.
He described the wet, sickening sound of Calivara and Eryndra's bodies being crushed under magical pressure and the spray of arterial blood across the cobblestones that had stained his own boots.
He recounted the aerial nightmare of Ignivara's dragon form, from the searing heat that melted armor to flesh to the screams of soldiers being incinerated mid-air before Rex's group had descended like vengeful gods to claim the kill.
