Dawn did not bring relief.
It revealed what the night had done.
A pale, lifeless light bled across the horizon—thin, colorless, like something drained of warmth before it was allowed to exist. Under it, Greenwood Valley lay exposed.
Not as a home.
Not as a manor.
But as aftermath.
—
The screams had ended.
That was the first change.
No more pleading. No more choking cries clawing against death. The air had gone quiet—too quiet.
In their place lingered something worse.
A smell.
Thick.
Clinging.
Blood, no longer fresh but turning heavy and metallic. Burned flesh, bitter and greasy. Wine spilled and soured, mixing with it all into something almost sweet—almost nauseating.
It coated the throat.
It refused to leave.
—
Bodies covered everything.
They lay twisted across the square, piled along corridors, collapsed in doorways where escape had failed. Nobles in silk, servants in rags—indistinguishable now except by the scraps still clinging to them.
Death had stripped them of hierarchy.
Only fear remained.
It lingered in their faces—eyes stretched wide, mouths frozen mid-scream, as though the last moment had refused to end even after life had.
—
The Boar-folk were the last to stop.
Reluctantly.
Barton's legion lingered among the ruins, weighed down not by exhaustion, but by abundance. Sacks bulged over their shoulders, grain spilling from seams, clinging to blood-soaked fur and mud-caked limbs.
They laughed.
They belched.
They counted.
Like carrion beasts satisfied after tearing open something far too large for themselves, they sprawled across the square, surrounded by what they had taken.
Victory had a smell.
And they wore it.
—
It should have ended there.
It almost did.
Then—
He returned.
—
Colin stood atop the bell tower.
The highest point still left standing.
Smoke curled around him like something alive, rising from the fires below, wrapping the world in a dim, choking haze. From that height, everything was visible.
Everything he had made.
And yet—
He did not look at the dead.
Not for long.
They were already finished.
Irrelevant.
His gaze moved past them.
To what remained.
—
The buildings.
Still standing.
Strong.
Intact.
Shelter.
The wells—deep, clear, untouched.
Water that could give life again.
And beyond—
The fields.
An endless expanse of gold, swaying gently beneath the morning light, untouched by the night's violence. Calm. Beautiful.
Alive.
—
To others, it would have been salvation.
To him—
It was unfinished work.
—
These walls could house survivors.
Those wells could sustain them.
Those fields—
Could feed them.
Could let them recover.
Could let them forget.
—
Unacceptable.
—
He raised his hand.
Slowly.
Casually.
As if deciding something trivial.
Then he spoke.
And the valley received its final sentence.
"Burn everything."
No hesitation.
No weight.
"Fill the wells."
A pause.
Then—
"Harvest the fields."
—
The words spread.
And confusion followed.
"Harvest…?"
A young Wolf-folk stared blankly at the dagger in his hand, then at the sea of wheat beyond. Fire made sense. Destruction made sense.
This—
Did not.
—
The answer came as a kick.
Hard.
"Move!" his captain snarled. "Claws, teeth, blades—use anything! Not a single grain is to remain!"
Understanding was not required.
Obedience was.
—
The fields were swallowed.
—
They did not harvest.
They stripped.
Tore.
Ripped.
Clawed.
What farmers nurtured for months was reduced in moments to raw material. Stalks were dragged down, shredded, trampled into mud or stuffed into sacks with frantic greed.
The rhythm was wrong.
Violent.
Chaotic.
It was not gathering life.
It was dismantling it.
The golden waves collapsed, section by section, like something being skinned alive.
—
"Faster! Leave nothing!"
Hask's roar spread through the chaos, igniting urgency.
This was not greed.
This was denial.
Denial of the enemy's future.
—
Elsewhere—
Another kind of destruction unfolded.
—
"Fill them!"
Barton's voice was hoarse, raw with something darker than hunger.
He dragged a corpse—heavy, bloated—and hurled it into the well.
It struck deep.
A dull, distant splash.
Then another.
And another.
Bodies followed.
Twisted.
Broken.
Unrecognizable.
Thrown like refuse into what had once been clean, life-giving water.
Others joined.
Laughing.
Working.
Adding filth—waste, rot, anything foul enough to ensure nothing living could ever drink there again.
The wells did not resist.
They swallowed everything.
And in doing so—
They died.
—
The fires rose higher.
Buildings cracked and screamed as flames consumed them from within. Roofs collapsed, beams split, and the sky darkened with smoke thick enough to blot out the weak morning light.
Heat rolled outward in waves.
Relentless.
Unforgiving.
—
Fire on one side.
Ruin on the other.
And between them—
The stripping of the fields.
—
Colin did not move.
He stood at the center of it all, untouched.
Watching.
—
In his eyes, the scene below was not chaos.
It was completion.
A system carried out to its final step.
No shelter.
No water.
No food.
No recovery.
—
Nothing left.
—
The corner of his mouth lifted.
Slightly.
Cold.
Satisfied.
—
Greenwood Valley was gone.
Not merely defeated.
Erased.
What remained would not sustain life.
It would reject it.
—
And in time, when others spoke of this place, they would not remember its beauty.
Only its absence.
Only what it became.
—
A land stripped bare.
A wound that would not heal.
A silence that lingered long after the fire had died.
—
And the name tied to it—
Would not be spoken lightly.
Not with reverence.
Not with anger.
But with something quieter.
Something heavier.
—
Fear.