Frustration

The main port of the Iron Islands—once a noisy, chaotic harbor packed with people struggling to survive—had now fallen entirely into deathly silence and ruin. Only the crackle of burning flames, the scattered screams in the distance, and the savage howls of victorious Sauron soldiers broke the suffocating stillness.

The air was thick with the pungent stench of blood, char, and briny seawater. The ground was covered in congealed dark-red blood and corpses strewn every which way, broken and incomplete.

Gron, Corps Commander of the Hound Corps, stood silently like a black iron tower atop the shattered piling of a slightly raised pier at the edge of the harbor.

His heavy Iron-reinforced Leather Armor was covered in sword cuts and dried bloodstains, and the ferocious wolf-head pauldrons looked even more vicious under the flickering firelight.

He gripped a bloodstained two-handed Battle Axe in both hands, its blade buried deep in the wooden planks beneath his feet. His cold gaze pierced the gradually thinning morning mist, fixed hard on the empty southern sea horizon now faintly paling like a fish's belly.

There was no longer any sign of the Carnford Fleet there. Even the black dots of countless small boats clinging around the warships like mayflies had completely vanished where sea met sky.

Only a few floating splinters of wood, ragged scraps of canvas, and corpses occasionally rising and falling with the waves remained, proving that last night's bitterly brutal great escape had not been an illusion.

A messenger hurried over, dropped to one knee behind Gron, and spoke in a voice weary yet unable to hide its excitement. "Report, Corps Commander! The harbor area has been completely cleared! All enemies resisting from their cornered lairs have been wiped out! Our army is currently sweeping the remnants in the Shantytown Area