The night air was cold, yet Halvred felt sweat on his palms.
The crater stretched before him like a wound in the earth—hundreds of feet wide, deep enough that its lowest point had swallowed the goblin chieftain's war lodge whole. Charred timbers jutted from the rim like broken ribs, blackened and splintered. The reek of burned flesh clung heavy to the wind, mingling with the iron tang of blood.
The ground for leagues around was torn as if giants had taken hammers to it. Corpses lay scattered in every direction—goblins, hobgoblins, war beasts—all in various states of ruin. Some were cleaved clean in half; others were nothing more than mangled heaps, armor and bone crushed together into unrecognizable lumps.
And there were no survivors. Not one.
Halvred stepped closer to the crater's edge, boots grinding on the scorched earth. The silence pressed on him. No groans. No fires crackling. Only the hollow moan of the night wind through splintered wood.
A captain at his side finally broke the quiet.
"By the gods… I've fought in three wars, my lord. I've never seen… anything like this."
Halvred didn't answer. His eyes tracked across the ruin, trying to piece together the chaos into something that made sense. A massive attack spell? Impossible—nothing in the kingdoms could unleash this much force without leaving traces of mana. And even if it could, who would waste such power on goblins?
"Could Virehall have done it?" another officer asked, voice low.
Halvred shook his head. "No. They're many things, but they don't waste strength without gain. Destroying the main horde only drives them to scatter. There's no victory in that."
The men exchanged uneasy glances.
Halvred's voice dropped to a near growl. "Whatever did this… wasn't human."
He straightened, jaw set. "We move. If this… thing is still in the area, I want to know before it finds the next camp. Double the scouts. Keep the men tight."
---
The flames crackled quietly in the clearing, licking at the skewers of meat suspended over them. The carcass of the seven-foot deer-like beast lay a few paces away, ribs picked clean, its antlers gleaming in the firelight.
Elrick leaned forward, turning his skewer with practiced ease. "We also need to take a bath," he muttered, mostly to himself. "We've smelled like blood and smoke for hours now."
Across from him, Beatriz mirrored his motion exactly—angle of the wrist, timing, even the slow blink when the heat caught her eyes through the slits of her golden mask.
She didn't answer immediately. Only when the fat from her skewer dripped into the fire did she say, flat and absolute, "Bathing is inefficient."
Elrick blinked. "Inefficient?"
"It will not improve combat readiness," she replied without looking up. "A clean corpse fights no better than a filthy one."
He stared at her, halfway between disbelief and a laugh. "You're telling me we just… keep smelling like this?"
She rotated the meat with surgical precision. "If the enemy can detect us by scent, then they will come to us. Saves the trouble of searching."
Elrick pinched the bridge of his nose, grinning despite himself. "That's not—no, Beatriz, that's not how normal people think about hygiene."
She glanced at him for the first time, the firelight reflecting off her mask. "I am not normal people."
Elrick chuckled, shaking his head. "Fine. But at least… I'd say wash your hands before eating, but since we've got no water, I guess that's not happening."
Beatriz inclined her head in acknowledgment, as if he had just issued a formal order.
She brought the skewer close to her face. Elrick, curiosity piqued, leaned slightly to see how she would manage to eat with her mask on. Without warning, the lower half of the golden mask split along a seam and slid smoothly to the side of her head with a faint metallic click.
The firelight revealed a mouth of striking beauty—full lips, pale against the flicker of the flames—until she opened it. Then came the shock: sharp, perfectly white teeth, more like a predator's than a human's. She bit into the meat with an effortless snap, shearing through bone and sinew as if they were nothing.
Elrick stared down at his own skewer, still sawing at a stubborn strip of muscle with his teeth, and muttered, "Yeah… that's fair."