Chapter 759 - Ashfall and Echoes (1)

The grove lay in the uncanny hush that follows calamity, a silence so complete it felt borrowed from some older, emptier world. Ash drifted like lazy snow, settling on the battered helms and torn banners of the fallen. Lanterns—blue-glass globes cradling pale spirit-flames—flickered low, their colors fading between frost-white and bruised indigo as the fuel inside guttered. The once-towering heartwood tree was now nothing but a blackened crater, its splintered roots curled outward in frozen agony, sap hardened to amber pearls that glimmered wanly in the failing light.