Ragnar stepped into the village as the late-afternoon sun bled a deep, bruised orange across the shattered rooftops. Thin tendrils of smoke still rose from blackened timbers like the last breaths of dying fires.
The air hung heavy with the acrid stink of scorched thatch, charred wood, and something fouler—burnt flesh that clung to the back of the throat. Where the monsters had rampaged, the earth bore cubic scars: deep, unnatural trenches that had swallowed fences, livestock pens, and half a dozen homes whole.
Children darted between the ruins on quick, nervous feet, wide-eyed, clutching broken wooden toys or scraps of singed cloth as though those fragments could anchor them to a world that no longer existed. Elders sat slumped against soot-streaked walls, faces ashen, eyes hollow with the kind of exhaustion that settles into bone.
His stomach twisted hard. *Not again. Not like this. Not when I was almost too late.*
