Beneath the dim sky cloaked in twilight haze, the forest lay in eerie silence, its calm shattered by the ruins of a shattered carriage. Broken wheels, splintered wood, and pools of dried blood painted a grim picture—one that could have easily been mistaken for the aftermath of a demonic beast attack.
In the center of that scorched and shattered clearing, amid the broken wreckage of what had once been a carriage, a lone figure knelt upon the charred earth.
Her slender form trembled like a dying flame in the wind.
Ash clung to her torn robes, and her long black hair, once neatly tied, now hung messily around her face, dirtied by soot and blood. Her delicate frame looked pitiful, almost ghostly, amidst the wreckage. Yet, in the silence of the burnt-out forest, it was her quiet sobs that pierced the air with the sharpest sorrow.
