Night fell over the Southern Valley, bringing with it an eerie silence.
The war drums that had shaken the earth since dawn finally ceased. Campfires began to ignite on both sides of the valley—hundreds of dancing orange dots in the darkness, marking each army's position. Between them lay a no-man's land strewn with corpses and debris—the grim remnants of the day's slaughter.
Riven Sudrath sat on a folding chair beside his command tank, his right hand gripping a cup of black coffee that had long since gone cold. His eyes were fixed on the campfire before him, but his mind drifted through the figures Thorne had just reported.
"Seven tanks heavily damaged. Two might be beyond field repair. Our infantry lost a hundred and twenty men. Another eighty are wounded." Thorne stood beside him, a crystal tablet in hand. "The enemy lost far more. By our estimates, at least two thousand of their infantry died today."
