Chapter 100 - Chapter 100: A Bloody Victory

The snow descended upon Northveil with a deceptive, slow grace, but its flakes were no longer the pristine, crystalline white of the northern wilderness. The ash from the catastrophic explosion of the enemy Dreadnought and the thick, greasy soot from the burning tenements had desecrated the very atmosphere, painting the twilight in a haunting, monochromatic gray. It was a somber, suffocating dusk that should have been beautiful, but instead felt like a funeral shroud draped over a dying city. Along the jagged shoreline, the rhythmic roar of the tide was punctuated by the violent, high-pitched hissing of superheated metal cooling as it touched the freezing seawater. The air was a nauseating cocktail of scents: the metallic tang of spilled blood, the acrid bite of machine oil, and the sharp, ozone-heavy residue of spent mana-lasers.