Dawn crept over the battlefield, its light revealing the ruin left behind.
Where once a proud Oizenian war camp had stood—rows of tents, cookfires, supply wagons, banners swaying in the wind—there was now nothing but carnage.
The wooden walls of the encampment were empty ,taken over by men who had no need for battering rams. Inside, the ground was soaked in blood, a dark, congealed sea where the bodies of the fallen lay strewn without order or mercy.
Some had died on their feet, weapons still clutched in stiff hands, eyes wide with the shock of sudden death. Others lay in twisted heaps, trampled by fleeing comrades or crushed under the weight of their own collapsed tents.
Armor gleamed dully in the early light, blood and dirt smearing the once-pristine steel. Shields were discarded like forgotten toys. The banners of the Oizenian prince, once carried high and proud into battle, were now torn and trampled, half-buried in the mud beneath the boots of victors.
