His body remained kneeling for the briefest moment, frozen in that same defeated posture, as though unaware that it had already been severed from life, and then it collapsed forward heavily onto the frozen ground. His head fell and rolled away, tracing a faint line across the frost before coming to a stop, its lifeless eyes staring into nothing.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
It spread across the valley like a weight pressing down on every soldier, every observer, every participant, stealing sound from their throats and leaving only stunned stillness in its wake. What they had just witnessed was not the continuation of a battle, nor was it an act of necessity, it was something far more ruthless, far more deliberate, and far more revealing than anything that had happened before.
