In a matter of minutes…
The outer grounds of the ruined castle were no longer a camp.
They were no longer even a battlefield.
They were a graveyard.
Tents stood torn and splattered, their canvas walls painted with violent streaks of crimson.
Blood flowed in grotesque little rivers through the dirt, pooling into dark puddles beneath butchered corpses.
Limbs lay scattered like discarded trash, heads rolled half-buried in mud, and one campfire—still crackling only moments ago—had been drowned out entirely, extinguished by the sheer volume of blood flooding over it.
The night reeked of iron.
And among it all…
Joy and Carmela.
Both women were drenched from head to toe.
Joy's once-white gown now clung to her body in shades of red, every inch stained by the massacre.
Carmela's white hair and face were spattered with streaks of blood that had long dried into her brown skin.
