"Enough to carry the memory," Silas replied, his voice barely louder than the whistling wind. "And that is all we have left."
Instantly, the oil sizzled. A faint, ethereal glow emanated from the rust, casting a sickly blue light across Silas’s gaunt face. This was the residual echo of the magic that had ended the war. The world was dead, but the weapons still hungered. Ashes of War [v1.0]
Silas knelt in the black mud, his fingers tracing the rusted edge of an old infantry shield half-buried in the frost. He wiped away a layer of grime to reveal the faded crest of the 4th Legion—a roaring lion, now blind and scarred by pits of corrosion. "Enough to carry the memory," Silas replied, his
Silas did not look up. He knew the heavy, labored breathing of Bram, his squad’s last surviving shield-bearer. "I know," Silas murmured. "I’m just checking for salvage. Every scrap of iron counts if we are going to make it through the Pass." This was the residual echo of the magic
Bram spit a dark glob of phlegm into the snow. "How many left, Captain?"
Silas pulled a heavy leather skin from his belt and uncorked it. Instead of water, it contained a thick, shimmering oil—rendered from the fat of the fallen beasts that now stalked the ruins. He poured a single drop onto the shield's surface.
"We move at moonrise," Silas said, standing up and letting the shield fall back into the mud with a dull thud. "Gather the others. Tell them to wrap their boots in wool. The silent-striders are hunting the perimeter again."