The Silver Moon hung suspended in the void above Aethelburg like a pale judge presiding over carnage. Its cold light filtered through the settling dust, casting the ruins of the Secondary Ring in shades blood and gore.
The air tasted of pulverized marble and something far worse—the coppery tang of spilled blood mingling with the acrid stench of burned flesh.
Silence had descended upon the battlefield like a funeral shroud.
In the deeper shadows near the obsidian gates, where moonlight dared not fully penetrate, something waited with the patient malice of a spider in its web.
Arthur Sterling's body—if one could still call it that. He was sagged against a collapsed pillar like discarded meat left to rot.
