The silence after the battle felt heavier than the clash of steel.
Ash drifted through the cavern like forgotten snow, settling in small drifts around shattered shields and broken spears. Each breath tasted of soot and spent magic. Draven inhaled sharply, his lungs flaring with the harsh tang, and exhaled slowly as if releasing a tether to the violence moments before.
Orc bodies lay in grotesque stillness, scorched and scattered across the chamber floor. Limbs jutting at odd angles, faces frozen mid-roar. Their ramshackle nests—crude piles of hides and bones—collapsed inward: half from the ferocity of Draven's final strike, half from the impossible force of the mana surge that had rippled through the rock itself.
