The dawn after the night of slaughter broke heavy and slow over Outpost Vester.
The sky carried the color of bruised bone—purples fading into sickly gray—as if even a little light hesitated to shine on the carnage littering the ravine. Smoke drifted over the walls, clinging to the air like a memory that refused to fade.
Outside the outpost's battered gate, the last of the bone crawlers writhed and shrieked as Vester's soldiers drove spears through their chitinous frames.
"Push them back!"
"Keep the shields locked!"
"Don't let the burrowers regroup!"
The shouts echoed across the clearing. The battle had gone on for nearly an hour after the first wave collapsed, an exhausting, grim task of clearing stragglers and butchering anything with too many legs or too many teeth.
Now only the remnants of the swarm lingered—crippled crawlers dragging themselves with shattered limbs, burrowers too weak to dive back underground.
