The docks fell silent, a graveyard of smoldering bodies and shattered wood, the air thick with the acrid stench of charred flesh and saltwater. Smoke curled in ghostly tendrils from the ruins, rising into the cold night like the last remnants of a battle that had ended in fire and fury.
At the center of it all stood Ryn.
His silhouette cut a stark figure against the embers, the glow of his lingering flames flickering along his arms, illuminating the jagged remains of what was once Skullrend.
The dock's former tyrant lay in a melted ruin at his feet, twisted metal and scorched bone fused into an unrecognizable mass. His rule had ended, not with a cry of defiance, but with a hiss of evaporating flesh.
And beside him—the spy. Dead. Not by his hand.
