The sun rose, its pale fingers clawing through the ashen sky, and with it came the morning light.
It spilled across the battlefield like a reluctant witness, its rays sharp and unyielding as they carved through the haze.
The light fell first on the remnants of the old war—shattered blades half-buried in dust, ribcages picked clean by centuries of wind, helmets rusted into grotesque masks.
These were the bones of a forgotten conflict, a graveyard of ambition left to rot. But the sun did not linger on the past. Its glare sharpened, relentless, as it illuminated the aftermath of a newer, crueler war.
Here, the ground was not cracked by time but split by violence.
Craters smoldered, their edges glistening with molten stone. The air stank of ozone and charred flesh, a miasma that clung to the throat.
And there were bodies.
Not the clean skeletons of ancient warriors, but the mangled, oozing carcasses of the Others.
