Dawn Over the Ruins

The night wind gradually turned colder, blowing away some of the mist above the valley entrance and revealing a gray-white slit in the sky. After a whole night of slaughter, the scene before him had been reduced to ruins. The muddy ground had been churned into craters, acid and blood mixing into dark channels where bubbles constantly rose, accompanied by a pungent stench of acid and blood. The air was heavy; every breath felt like swallowing flames and rust, searing his chest.

There were too many corpses scattered across the ground to count. Soldier ants' shells had split apart, severed limbs strewn everywhere. Some were half-buried in mud, leaving only sharp claw tips exposed; others had been corroded beyond recognition by acid, their shells and flesh blurred together in twisted, frozen masses. When the wind blew, it carried a rotten, sickly-sweet stench that made his scalp prickle.

The most conspicuous things at the center of the breach were the massive bodies of the squad leader and division commander. They lay sprawled in every direction like toppled stone statues. The cracks at their necks were deep, their edges blackened. The green fluid had stopped gushing long ago, leaving only dark, hardened scabs. The spines on their backs had snapped and scattered across the surrounding mud like short spears driven into the earth. Moonlight reflected off the broken remains with a cold gleam.

The soldier ants had long since retreated. Only a few scattered shadows lingered at the edge of the distant forest, unwilling to come closer. They occasionally let out brief hisses before retreating into the mist again. The division commander's corpse seemed to have become a barrier, filling them with instinctive fear.

Ryan knelt on one knee in the mud, his twin blades planted beside him. Their edges were covered