The Shroud of War

The shroud of war has come,
And the land is covered by a darkened veil.
The cries of mankind herald woe and fear,
For the coming of the end at last is here.
Hear the pleas of a thousand men, silenced to a whisper.
Hear the cry of the scavenging crow who sits upon Death's mark.
And see a land burnt and bled, now silenced, colourless and dim.
The sun rises above the horizon and the view becomes all too clear;
For the morning heralds no end to the nightmare,
Rather it lightens the sight in rays of gold upon black and red.
The power that man wields is now in plain sight,
In the form of a thousand corpses of lost hope.
Some may call them heroes; others would call them fools,
But it mattered not how they would be remembered,
For the path that had led them to this road told of only one belief;
That war, in all its glory, is the battle of heroes.