The sharp spearhead swung forward, finding itself locked deep into the throat of the last Razaasia soldier. As the sun now began its westbound journey, casting long, bruised shadows across the valley, the man fell to the ground with a soft, final thud.
The roar of the cavalry had faded into a heavy, suffocating silence. The only sound left was the occasional rattle of a loose stone sliding down the heap of rubble—the mountain's final, exhausted sigh over the graves it had been forced to create.
By this time, the dust in the air slowly subsided, and the full, agonizing scale of the damage was finally visible. The side of the towering Whitefang Peak was gone—shorn away as if by a titan's blade. The falling debris didn't just block the narrow pass; it had erased it, sealing the history of the Magoli beneath millions of tons of jagged limestone.
But the sight of the mountain being knocked down was not as shocking or terrifying as the silence that followed. As the light of the setting sun bathed the ruins in a deceptive, golden glow, the true cruelty of the invaders was revealed.
Protruding from the edges of the shale were the hands of the villagers. They hadn't been killed in flight; their wrists were still bound in tight, cruel knots of coarse hemp. They had been gathered like livestock and left to wait for the earth to swallow them. The sight of those bound hands, frozen in a final, reaching plea beneath the suffocating weight of the rubble, was a horror that no Magoli heart could easily carry.
Chinua drove her spear deep into the earth, the steel humming with the vibration of the strike. She didn't look at the horizon; she looked at the rubble.
"Khunbish, Khenbish, Azad—take two hundred men. Create a path through this throat of stone," Chinua commanded, her voice sounding like grinding gravel. "The rest... start digging. Bring our people out."
She stepped forward, her boots crunching on shale, and reached for a heavy, jagged slab of limestone.
"Chinua, stop." Azad moved to intercept her, his hand outspread. "This is work for the laborers and the broken-backed. You are the flame of Hmagol. You don't have to do this."
He didn't understand. He saw a Queen; Khunbish saw a woman trying not to scream. Khunbish stepped in, his eyes meeting Chinua's for a fraction of a second—he saw the way she refused to look at the bound hand just three feet away.
"Let her be," Khunbish said, his voice a low anchor. He heaved a stone and held it out to her. "We need every set of shoulders if we're to break through before the cold sets in."
"But—" Azad looked at her fine silk tunic, now smeared with the grey soot of the mountain.
"Khunbish is right," Chinua said. She took the stone, the sharp edges biting into her palms. She welcomed the pain. It was a distraction. If she stopped to mourn—if she looked at the faces—the Black Wolf would tear its way out of her chest, and she wouldn't be able to stop until every Razaasia village was as silent as this one.
The work began in a rhythmic, haunting silence. The only sound was the clack-thud of stones being passed from hand to hand. The Magoli soldiers watched their General in a daze; seeing her royal silks stained with the "grey poison" of the limestone and the dark streaks of dried blood made them work twice as hard. They weren't just clearing a path; they were helping their leader hold back her own ghost.
For three agonizing hours, the only sound in the pass was the scraping of stone and the heavy breathing of men. By the time the sun began to set over the jagged rim of the canyon, they had cleared a path wide enough for a carriage.
But as the dust settled and the soldiers stepped through the new opening, the "victory" of their labor turned to ash.
On this side of the collapse, the debris was different. It wasn't just silt and shale; it was a graveyard of massive boulders and jagged rock fragments scattered like dice thrown by a cruel god. The air here was stagnant, thick with the heavy, cloying taste of iron that coated the back of the throat. The silence was gone, replaced by the low, rhythmic buzzing of flies that had already found the feast.
"Azad..." a bandit whispered, his voice cracking like dry wood. "These... these are our brothers."
The bodies of the Ninety-Four were everywhere, broken among the stones. Azad scanned the carnage, his heart thundering against his ribs, until his eyes caught a familiar pattern on a torn tunic. He scrambled over a slab of limestone, his breath hitching. It was Buqa, lying still among the ruins of the pass he had sworn to hold.
Azad turned to find Chinua, Khunbish, and Khenbish standing at the mouth of the clearing. They were statues, their faces pale in the late afternoon sunlight. Chinua didn't speak. She didn't move. Her eyes were locked on something further down the path.
Azad followed her gaze, and the world seemed to tilt.
At the feet of the mangled, headless torso lay the severed head of Dolgoon, his features frozen in a mask of wide-eyed shock—a permanent witness to the sting of betrayal.
Just beyond the head to the right, sitting with a deceptive peace against the jagged mountain wall, was Behrouz. The Chief's chin was tucked to his chest, his long, silvered beard fluttering in the mountain breeze as if he were merely caught in a midday nap. Even in the stillness of death, he remained a guardian, seated between two small, silent children, his cold shadow still acting as their final shield against the world
"Father!" Azad's scream ripped through the canyon, a raw, jagged sound that made the birds take flight from the distant trees.
He threw himself forward, his knees hitting the rocky earth with a sickening thud. He gathered himself in front of the old man, his lips trembling, his hands hovering as if he were afraid the Chief would shatter if touched.
"Ah!—Father!"
Tears carved clean streaks through the grey soot on Azad's cheeks. He looked down at his father's hand—the hand that had led the Salran Hill bandits for decades—and saw the small, crushed piece of rock candy still gripped in the dry, blood-stained fingers. Even at the very end, the Chief had been thinking of the sweetness he could give to a world that had given him nothing but stone.
Chinua stood at the edge of the open path, her gaze fixed on the distant, jagged horizon where the border of Payapasa lay. She shed no tears. The fire of the "Black Wolf" was burning too hot inside her for the salt of mourning to survive. Behind her, the air was still thick with the sound of Azad's sobbing, but she didn't turn back. She was no longer a mourner; she was a storm.
As she began her walk back, Zhi reached the mouth of the pass, his eyes widening as he saw the devastation. He opened his mouth to offer help with the digging, but Chinua's voice cut through the air like a blade.
"Take your units and go guard the border," she commanded, her eyes never leaving the southern road. "Haitao will join you before nightfall."
"I understand," Zhi said simply. He looked at the bound hands of the villagers still trapped in the silt and felt the pull to stay, but he knew his General's mind. His job was to ensure that not a single enemy boot touched Hmagol soil again. He turned his horse, his unit following in a silent, disciplined line toward the borderline.
"Khunbish," Chinua said, her voice hollow. "It is time for the cleanup."
"I will arrange it," Khunbish replied, his own face a mask of grim duty.
Chinua didn't wait for the first shovel to hit the dirt. She walked past the dead, a lone warrior draped in the grey dust of her home and vaulted onto the back of her horse. Without a word, she rode toward what was left of the military camp—a ghost returning to a ruin.
As the Magoli soldiers dug, the silence of Pojin was slowly broken. One by one, the hiding villagers began to emerge from the shadows of the cliffs and the cellars. They walked with trembling steps into a village they no longer recognized—a place of ash where memories used to be.
From the north, Jeet and his unit arrived, escorting the terrified families who had sought sanctuary near the columbarium. Jeet's heart pulled him toward his own home, toward the faces of Kaj and his niece and nephew, but the uniform he wore felt heavier than ever.
"Kaj," Jeet said, turning to his wife. "Take the children home. Find all our silver coins. We are going to need every one of them for what comes next."
Just then, a ragged procession reached the village center. Naksh appeared, his face haggard, carrying Maral on his back. Beside him walked Khawn, Hibo, and the Umusa soldiers, followed by the rescued female warriors and other survivors.
Jeet met Naksh's eyes and gave a solitary, respectful nod. "Go take care of sister-in-law," Jeet said. "I will stay and help here."
He watched as his family crossed the bridge toward their home—one of the few still standing—and then he turned to the remaining soldiers. "Search every house. Burnt or whole. I want every enemy soldier found, and every one of our people brought home."
He looked out over the square, where families were weeping—some for joy, many for the empty spaces beside them. It was a bittersweet reunion, held in the shadow of a mountain that had tried to bury them all.
The soldiers and villagers did not sleep. All through the long, frozen night, they worked side-by-side to pull the dead from the stone and ash. Pojin was but a small village in the vast, rugged heart of the Hmagol wasteland, yet when the first grey light of dawn broke over the peaks, the toll was staggering.
Three hundred and forty-two souls—soldiers and villagers alike—were laid out in silent rows.
There was no silk left in Pojin. The fires had consumed the storehouses, leaving no white cloth to shroud the fallen. Instead, the survivors knelt in the dirt, using dampened rags to neatly wipe the blood and grey dust from the faces and hands of their kin. It was a final act of tenderness in a place that had forgotten mercy.
Hye walked through the blackened remains of the military camp, his boots crunching on charred timber. He stopped at the door of Chinua's quarters, leaning against the scorched frame. Inside, he saw her. She looked less like a Wolf and more like a lost child staring into an abyss, unable to find the path back to the world she once knew.
"You know," Hye said, his voice low and steady. "There will be many more days of seeing our brothers and sisters buried in the dirt."
He watched her, his eyes meeting hers across the dim room. "There will be many more deaths if you truly wish to make Hmagol safe. Therefore, do not be discouraged by the weight of today's loss. The final journey of the dead is theirs alone. As for the living, our journey does not end with them. Our journey ends only when a brother wipes our face clean and places those two silver coins in our palms."
Chinua looked up at him, her lips trembling with a sudden, raw hopelessness. "I wonder..." she whispered. "Did I make the right decision? Asking someone's fathers, brothers, sons, and daughters to die for my vision of the future?"
"No one is right or wrong," Hye replied, stepping into the room. "A shared vision is a common understanding between two people—just like you and I. You did not force me to form these plans, Chinua. I did it willingly because I believe in that vision."
As he spoke, the morning sun began to crest the ridge, casting a brilliant, orange halo over the ruined barracks. From the center of the village, a low, melodic chant began to rise. It was the Song for the Fallen, its echoes bouncing off the broken face of Salran Hill.
"Fallen brothers, rise up and march forward,
following the footsteps of our fallen brothers of the past.
As our guardians, light up the darkness in our night,
guiding our living brothers to victory."
"Fallen sisters, spread your wings wide,
soar into the sky, join us, our fallen sisters of the past.
As our shield, protect us through rain and storm,
leading our living sisters to victory."
"O, our fallen fathers, give us your courage,
to chase our enemies from our motherland.
With your blood flowing in our veins, we should never forget
the names of the fallen ones."
The song filled the hollow spaces of the camp, turning the "hollow price" Hye had mourned earlier into a solemn vow of remembrance.