The once-majestic Lionheart castle had been reduced to nothing more than a graveyard of stone and ash.
Piles of rubble stretched as far as the eye could see, the remnants of towering walls now crumbling skeletons barely clinging to form.
Fires burned relentlessly, black smoke rising like pillars into the darkened sky.
The ground, littered with shattered stone and splintered wood, bled red... red with the blood of nobles, soldiers, and servants alike.
It seeped through cracks in the earth as though the land itself mourned the massacre.
Above this ruin, a man floated.
His dark robes billowed ominously in the smoky wind, the jagged hems fluttering like the wings of a crow.
He appeared to be in his late twenties, his face sharp and cruel, twisted with sadistic glee as he gazed upon the destruction he had caused.
His laughter rang through the dead air, a sound so chilling it seemed to echo off the rubble.
