The forest didn't calm down after the battle.
It lingered in a strange, uneasy stillness—like the moment after thunder, when the sky hasn't decided whether it's finished raging or just pausing. Smoke drifted lazily between shattered trunks, curling upward from scorched earth and half-melted stone. The smell of burned wood, blood, and ozone hung thick in the air.
John hovered above it all, wings beating in slow, measured strokes.
Every flap sent a dull ache through his shoulders. His muscles screamed for rest, but he didn't dare land just yet. Not here. Not when the air itself still felt tense, like something was watching and waiting.
Below him lay devastation.
Trees flattened in wide arcs, snapped like twigs by massive bodies slamming into them. Long trenches carved into the ground where breath attacks had torn through the forest in straight, merciless lines. Craters—some still faintly glowing with residual mana—marked where monsters had collided or fallen from the sky.
