he sky to the east was wrong. Not the orange of fire alone — there was something beneath it, a deep, sick green that pulsed and shifted, as though the air itself had been poisoned. The bombs were still falling — not from above, but from the treeline, launched in high arcs that trailed green phosphorescence before they struck the earth and detonated in flat, spreading blasts that left the ground smoking.
Mana bombs. Crude, but effective — packed aethite and something organic that burned hot enough to melt iron and kept burning through water, mud, and flesh.
Squad 7 assembled at the muster point. Dakshin, Parvat, Lokesh, Munna, Fehru — all present, all armed, all wearing the faces of men who had heard stories about Ridge 47 and hoped the stories were exaggerated.
They were not.
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