No warning, no sound, no cry of pain. Just the soft, sickening thuds of lifeless bodies hitting the ground. One moment they were alive, the next, they were not.
———
Master Thadd continued his tale. Taking another puff whenever he stopped briefly. His face looked as if just remembering the memory brought him fear.
———
We, the backup fighting squad, were trained to handle the unimaginable. But what we saw that day was something we couldn't have prepared for in a hundred lifetimes.
The sky... It changed.
What had been a clear, moonlit night turned blood-red in the span of a heartbeat. A scralet moon—vast, ominous, and utterly unnatural—hung low behind the child, turning the entire field into a hellscape, barren and thick with the scent of war— blood, metal, and death.
And then the mask... That plain, black mask that had unnerved me so deeply began to burn.
