Chapter 224: Asking for help
...Ah! Damn... it’s a nightmare...
And in that instant, he wished he had never laid eyes on it.
The scene before him was the kind that sank deep into the soul, an imprint that no time or distance could erase. The streets that had once been filled with dwarves busy in their daily lives were now nothing more than a charred graveyard.
Stone buildings lay collapsed in heaps of blackened rubble, their jagged edges still glowing faintly from the lingering heat of the blasts. Fires crackled and burned without restraint, their orange light casting long, warped shadows that danced across the devastation.
Bodies lay strewn through the wreckage. Some were crushed beneath the weight of fallen walls, others torn apart by the sheer force of the explosions. The sharp stench of blood mixed with thick, acrid smoke, filling the air so heavily that it felt like it clung to his lungs with every breath.
And among them... were children. Small hands frozen mid-reach, faces locked in smiles and laughter that would never return.
It was a massacre. One done with purpose. Deliberate. Merciless.
Ash felt a weight tighten inside his chest, a mix of cold, controlled rage and the bitter metallic taste of helplessness. He forced himself to turn away from the lifeless faces, shifting his gaze toward a faint flicker of movement in the distance...
What he saw behind the destruction made his stomach churn.
From as far as his eyes could see, the entire edge of the explosion site was lined with dwarves. They stood still, watching him, the burning houses and scattered corpses with hollow, lifeless eyes.
And it was not a few dozen of them... it was far, far more.
With no visible end, dwarves stretched across every direction.