CHASE
Thick black smoke choked the morning sky above the eastern boundary. The acrid stench of burning hair and charred meat settled over the ruined fields like a physical weight.
My boots sank into the muddy, churned earth as I watched the Vanguard engineering crews bulldoze hundreds of slaughtered Feral Wolves into deep, industrial burn pits.
We had to incinerate the corpses to prevent the spread of whatever disease drove them mad. Sorrow hung over the surviving soldiers.
They worked in grim silence, their uniforms torn and stained with dark blood.
Terrifying whispers circulated through the ranks faster than I could suppress them. Border scouts returning from the deep ridges reported thousands more infected beasts massing within the neutral mountain ranges.
The sheer scale of
