Confronting the Past

The stench of pulverized stone and something acrid, like burnt metal, filled Borgen’s nostrils. It was a smell he knew intimately, a scent that clung to the very air of battlefields, a morbid perfume of death and ruin. But this time, it was tinged with a new horror, a sharp, metallic tang that snagged at the back of his throat. He knelt, his massive frame a dark silhouette against the broken walls of what had once been a small, forgotten watchtower, the very place Captain Valerius had directed them to secure. The ambush had been swift, brutal, and utterly devastating.

The Crimson Blades, usually a well-oiled machine of war, had been caught off guard. Arrows had rained down from unseen perches, followed by a wave of attackers whose armor gleamed with an unnatural sheen, unlike anything Borgen had ever seen. It was dark, almost obsidian, and seemed to absorb the dim light of the late afternoon sun. Their movements were precise, their attacks economical, and their weapons… their weapons were not the crude blades and axes of common brigands. They were slender, wickedly sharp, and pulsed with a faint, internal luminescence.

He pushed himself up, his joints protesting with a low creak, and scanned the carnage. The bodies of his comrades lay scattered amongst the rubble, some twisted in unnatural poses, others eerily pristine save for the fatal wounds. But it was the attackers he focused on. They were gone, vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving behind only the dying groans of the wounded and the chilling silence that followed.