The cries of battle receded like the tide, finally fading into the empty wilderness. The deafening clamor that had raged for an entire day seemed still to echo within their eardrums, yet now, between heaven and earth, there remained only an oppressive, heavy silence. Only the wind wailed as it swept across this land that had just been baptized in blood and fire.
A faint haze of gunpowder smoke still drifted over the battlefield, like restless ghosts unwilling to depart, circling low in the air.
After a full day of brutal slaughter and the trampling of countless lives, the snowy plain had become a horrifying canvas of black, white, and red. White ice and snow, black scorched earth and traces of smoke, and vast swathes of shocking dark red—blood that had soaked into the soil and snow.
More than ten thousand Sauron soldiers' corpses lay strewn across the earth in all manner of twisted poses. They had once been living people, each with their own stories and loved ones, but now they had all become cold, silent numbers in a tally.
The warhorses that had lost their masters wandered the corpse-strewn battlefield in confusion, neighing as though calling for riders who would never wake again.
Karl stood silently atop the command platform. The cold wind whipped his deep-blue cloak with a sharp flutter. He lowered the telescope in his hand, his gaze slowly sweeping over the vast and gruesome battlefield as an indescribably complicated feeling rose within him.
Excited? Perhaps, a little. After all, he had defeated the most powerful enemy he had faced since arriving in this era.
From the weak lord who could only look up in awe at the fame of Sauron iron hooves, to gradually earning Harald's notice and regard, to becoming an evenly matched opponent—and