The capital gates slowly opened at sunset for the surviving members of the raid team.
Merchants were packing their stalls for the evening while the battered column shuffled through the arch. Festival lanterns swung above the avenue, lit early for a holy week nobody had energy to celebrate.
The knights kept their heads down and showed no interest in the familiar streets around them.
Exhaustion bent every surviving soldier's posture while their eyes stayed fixed on the stones. They had entered expecting a mutated zone that trained formations could handle, then watched a single punch erase a full knight.
Nobody had expected a Mutated 7-Shard Anomaly capable of vaporizing a grown man with one blow.
They never said goodbye, simply breaking away from the main column and heading straight for the barracks beds. The survivors wanted darkness, silence, and nothing else from the capital tonight.
Hajin watched them leave while testing the stiffness across his sore shoulders.
