Smoke filled the ebony night sky, the stars blinking dully, trying to find their way through the thick air. ~~Awkward. Try: Smoke filled the night sky; the stars blinked dully, trying to find their way through the thick air. ~~You change subjects when you write about the stars. This could be two separate sentences, but here is one place you can correctly use a semi-colon to join two independent but linked sentences.

"Surrender the fort, Galihod. This is your last chance." Said the man... & "Never. No country deserves you as their tyrant." He snarled... are both incorrect. Interestingly, you get the more complex dialogue tag sentence here completely right: "Just tell me," sputtered Galihod as blood leaked from his mouth, "where the Shadow stone is and I'll give it up…you can have the fortress."

Your using elevated diction but it slips in places. Try to use more consistent language and if you have to lower the level of diction to a place your more comfortable writing. Also just as a tip instead of starting out with a description of carnage start with how pristine the night sky is before leading into the smoke to begin your bit on the destruction. To make a battle significant it has to destroy something beautiful, to destroy something beautiful you have to make something beautiful. Unless your trying to make a point be careful with loaded words, the connotative meaning can undermine alot of what your saying at times. Overall it's not bad, little polishing and it could be a great story.

As always I hope you take the advice and I appreciate reviews of my own work as well.