Chapter 52: Ashes and Echoes
The war drums had fallen silent.
Smoke clung to the air like mourning veils, heavy and choking, refusing to lift even as dawn’s first light bled weakly through the canopy. Nazaria — once the beating heart of Sylveraine, a forest that sang with the hymns of wind and leaf — now groaned under the weight of ruin. The living walls were blackened and charred, ancient trees reduced to twisted husks, their sap still steaming where voidfire had kissed them.
Bodies lay scattered across the blood-soaked soil — Nightwalker and ally alike — their final expressions frozen somewhere between fury and fear. Healers in silver robes moved among the fallen, whispering spells of mercy over the dying, while pyre-smoke already rose where the dead were being laid to rest. Cries of
