Chapter 124.
Titus didn't remember turning. One moment he was lunging for the carriage door, the next his body had pivoted entirely on its own, some primal instinct wrenching his head back toward the ruin behind them.
What he saw stole the air from his lungs.
The road — the road he had marched down not five minutes prior, boots crunching over packed dirt beside men he'd trained with for years — no longer existed. In its place sprawled a crater of blood and splintered bone, steam rising off flesh that had been living tissue only moments ago. Horses reduced to red mist. Guards he'd shared meals with, sparred with, buried friends beside, now nothing but wet stains soaking into the earth.
This isn't a battle, he thought, throat tightening around the realization. This is a slaughter. We were slaughtered before we even knew we were at war.
