Crystal lay motionless on the ground, her body broken beyond repair. Blood dripped steadily from her wounds, each drop falling onto pristine snow and dying it deep crimson. The stains spread slowly, creating dark halos that grew with each passing second.
Her vision was fading. Everything blurred at the edges, shapes losing definition. Colors bled into one another until the world became nothing but indistinct shadows and light.
Noah stood above her, injured but victorious. His silhouette was the last clear thing she saw, backlit by moonlight and falling snow.
Then her vision went completely black.
She was dead.
Noah looked down at the corpse for a long moment. His face, covered in blood spray from earlier, twisted into something ugly. Something satisfied. He smiled, and it was the expression of a man who'd finally removed a persistent problem.
He bent down slowly, pain shooting through his injured body, and picked up his sword from where it had fallen. The blade was still slick with blood from the battle.
He raised it above his head.
Then he stabbed down into Crystal's already dead body.
Once. Twice. Again and again.
Blood sprayed with each impact, splattering across his face, his robes, the snow around them. He had a crazed look in his eyes now, all pretense of kingly composure gone. He was mutilating a corpse, stabbing with wild abandon, each thrust accompanied by ragged breathing.
The few men who remained standing, those who weren't too injured to move, watched in silence. Some closed their eyes, unable to witness what their king was doing. Others stared with blank expressions, too shocked or too afraid to react. It was a horrific scene, made worse by the gentle snowfall that continued to drift down from the dark sky, landing on the blood-soaked ground like nature's mockery of purity.
Finally, Noah stopped. His arm trembled from exertion and pain. He stood there, panting, covered in blood that steamed in the cold air.
He snapped his fingers at one of the guards standing nearby.
"Get me matches," he ordered, his voice hoarse.
The guard hesitated for only a moment before scrambling to obey. After a tense wait, he returned with a small box of matches, hands shaking as he handed them over.
Noah took the matches and began striking them. One by one, he threw the lit matches onto the bodies scattered across the courtyard. Crystal's corpse. The fallen soldiers. Everything that could burn.
Flames caught quickly despite the snow. The black-green fire from earlier had left some residue, something that made flesh burn faster than it should.
Noah watched Crystal's body ignite with a cruel laugh.
"Burn, Crystal," he said, his voice filled with vicious satisfaction. "Burn."
The night deepened as the fires spread. Noah and his surviving men eventually turned and left the scene, abandoning the ruined mansion and its courtyard of corpses to the flames and falling snow. Their footsteps crunched through fresh powder, growing fainter as they retreated into the forest.
Behind them, the bodies burned.
But something was wrong.
At the exact spot where Crystal's body had been consumed by flames, a small flower appeared. It grew from nothing, pushing up through charred ground and ash. The petals were blood red, almost luminescent in the firelight.
The flames around it glowed brighter for a moment, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Then they disappeared entirely, winking out as if they'd never existed.
____
Sorry the chapter is small I had to make some changes after going over bored with the word count.