Champion of a Lost Cause

The fields before Galtic Castle churn with ash and panic. Rebel lines collapse beneath the pursuit, while imperial horns blare from the shattered battlements.

Eve of the Willow, her red robes torn and wizard hat blackened with ash, drags two wounded survivors toward the ruins and waves the fleeing back.

A cluster of wounded rebels stumbles from a ditch, their dust-caked faces turned toward Effruin. Behind them, mounted soldiers crest the ridge in ordered pursuit.

The riders lower their spears as they descend. Eve sees Effruin through the smoke, recognition tightening her exhausted expression, and reaches toward another fallen survivor.

Effruin turns from the castle and points one-handed toward the dark margin of Weirwood Forest, where blood-red leaves shiver beyond the smoke.

Effruin cuts across the protest with a hard gesture, then strides toward a shallow drainage cut leading away from the ridge. The survivors follow.

Eve abandons the castle approach and helps guide the weakest rebel into the ditch. Ash settles over her torn red robes as the cavalry thunder past their former path.

The scattered rebels vanish beneath Weirwood's stone-hard branches, swallowed by red leaves and shadow. Behind them, imperial horns call fruitlessly across the empty field.

Effruin leads the survivors beneath the blood-red canopy, choosing narrow ground between stone-hard trunks where smoke thins and the cavalry horns fade behind them.

The wounded rebels support one another through the roots. Those who can walk carry the injured, while Eve presses cloth against wounds and keeps the column moving.

Effruin brings them into a deeper hollow, enclosed by leaning trunks and fern-choked stones. The forest's dimness closes around the exhausted band.

Behind them, distant horns lose themselves among the trees. Ahead lies only red foliage, damp earth, and the survivors breathing in guarded silence.