Elias stood amidst the field’s ruin, breath jagged as battle’s heat drained away. The ground y torn, maes strewn in shards—sparks dead, husks silent in the dust. Yet no joy stirred his chest. Workers shuffled off, faces hollow, steps a mournful tread—victory theirs, but its taste bitter as gall.

  He wiped his brow, hand unsteady, eyes sweeping the cost. The fallen sprawled—men too slow, too worn—blood seeping dark, a stain no rain could se. Elias lingered on one, his father’s ghost cursed the steel beside him, now still, his hammer cold. What had they gained, with so much spent?

  The factory’s hum pulsed faint, a beast lig its wounds—broken now, but not dead. Elias felt its breath, a promise of iron reborn, sharper, crueler. Their strike had rent a wound, yet the war loomed unbroken—they’d face it again, with fewer hands, heavier hearts. His father’s curse rang in his ears, a ghost e he’d shared. Somewhere, beyond the smoke, a voice whispered—another field, aand—faint, fleeting.

  Thomas approached, brow streaked with blood, eyes dim with the toll. “What now?” he asked, voice a rasp, heavy with the field’s weight.

  Elias met his gaze, words stuck like thorns. What now? The ground was theirs, yet each step sank deeper in loss—lives gone, wills cracked. He clutched the chisel, its edge dulled by steel—a tool of fight, not craft, bearing scars of their stand. Victory was no ; it was a shroud over their hope.

  The air hung thick, smoke curling like a specter. Elias turo the horizon, the factory’s shell a foe unbowed—yet whispers drifted, faint as wind, of others who’d rise. He felt Thomas’s presence, a tether in the wreot of triumph, but of shared ruin, a bond sealed by the blood at their feet. They’d won a breath, but the cost gnawed—nothing ended here, only lingered, waiting to cim more.