The building surged with natural order.

  No sigils. No crawling whispers. No twisted shadows flickering just out of view. Only dust, stone, and the march ahead.

  The silent oppression too, was no longer there to berate them. Only the fullness of natural stillness accompanied their stride back to camp.

  The atmosphere felt… whole again. Not healed. Just settled.

  As if a misplaced puzzle piece had been put back in place again. Enough, at least, for the soldiers to rediscover their synchronicity.

  Under those strange, half-repaired conditions, they inched ever closer to the exit, where light seeped in from the far-off breach.

  Somewhere in the distance, the far watchtower bell dome was struck by trebuchet fire.

  It gave one final, metallic groan before crashing to the ground, echoing like a whale’s last cry across the ruined stone ocean.

  The footfalls of the soldiers, enduring but swift, rang against the corridor walls as they made their way through shattered crockery and cooking utensils strewn like battlefield refuse.

  As they came closer to open air, the sounds of battle broke through—steel crashing, men screaming, each note forming a grotesque, disfigured face in the fog of slaughter.

  They emerged from the wall’s breach like blood from a wound.

  Jagged shafts of light hit their eyes, seeping into the craggy hole behind them. The building loomed in silence, its secrets folding back into shadow-cursed crevices.

  The air struck their nostrils in dry heat, carrying the dust of war and its fetid scent, corrupting every breath with iron and rot.

  The sounds of battle grew clearer now, ebbing and flowing like a diminishing wave, signaling the nearing conclusion to the butchery.

  Klethiar stood waiting, scanning the perimeter.

  His men, having been deployed as instructed by Alric, had encircled the whole building, ready to strike down any fool who’d dare come out.

  Alric, taking point, advanced with deliberate purpose.

  Klethiar saw him and moved to meet him halfway.

  His gaze flicked to the heart of the formation.

  “What happened sir?” his voice firm, but inquisitive.

  Alric met his gaze evenly.

  “Complications. He was found half-dead, a hex got me, but I managed to dispel it. We stabilized him. We came back. Interrogation comes next. We move out immediately.”

  Klethiar’s jaw clenched tightly at the sound of that despicable word.

  “What type?” Klethiar asked, his voice a patchwork of military discipline, and controlled worry.

  “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

  “Yes, Lord Commander.”

  Alric signaled the men. Two units folded into one, iron forged a thousand times melded together in unison, creating a canopy of steel and skin, made to bear the same burden–a man broken and destroyed.

  Its heart beat faintly, but steadily, assisted by skilful hands.

  The formation began to retrace its steps through the main street.

  With tempered precision, the men marched through ruined debris, scorched stone, and clawing dust.

  Echoes of distant clashes and dying screams reached the retinue, curling around them like grasping fingers of sound, before ultimately fading against the metal sinew’s indifference.

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  The city’s knees had begun to buckle under the weight of relentless carnage.

  No fresh ambushes came, nor did any maddened cry of hatred assault them.

  Only the crackle of burning wood, the groan of crumbling walls, and the incessant cadence of marching boots.

  They passed the bodies they had slain. Some still bled. Others had started to stiffen, arms locked mid-plea, mouth agape, glassy eyes staring oblivion.

  But none of this slowed them. With eyes forward, and unbroken pace, they moved.

  Alric, barely sparing a brief glance at the ruin behind him, kept his attention on the task ahead.

  As the gates came into view, a single thought clawed through the haze of duty.

  Black powder. How did it get here?

  It was too deliberate to be a simple blaze-of-glory rebellion.

  Clearly a conduit for some intricate kind of hex. But why and how, did they manage to procure something so costly, and here of all places?

  Usually rebels barely scrape by, but here I find them drawing fanciful magic circles with the damn thing.

  Unless they were supplied by somebody else with deep enough coffers… and a motive.

  Someone like Serathia, perhaps. Or Drakoryth, if I felt particularly generous in my delusions today.

  But Drakoryth is too dull-witted to pull something this cleanly and efficiently. Especially with the civil war going on right now, they’re too embroiled in their own disputes to consider foreign subterfuge.

  That leaves only Serathia then.

  Crafty bastards. It reeks of their disgusting fox-smelling schemes.

  Feeling a headache creeping in, he banished the thought and focused ahead.

  The great stone archway lay in ruin before him.

  Chipped, charred, and broken open like a torn ribcage.

  Splintered wood jutted like cracked bone, and the once pristine iron bands, curled and warped under the weight of siege fire.

  Still, the iron portcullis stood firm. Bent and bruised, but stalwart and proud, as if daring the world to try again and see how he retaliates.

  The vista beyond was breathtakingly grim.

  The sky sagged beneath a ceiling of grey smoke, the sun peering through it, as though asking for permission to witness man-made disaster.

  The ground, a patchwork of uneven mounds, had turned half to sludge, half to dust, beneath the boots of thousands.

  Swathes of soldiers prowled like hungry beasts in search of prey, stalking the churned fields for any soul unfortunate enough to cross their path.

  Klethiar scanned the landscape, walking beside Alric.

  He caught his commander’s gaze flick toward something for a split second, before snapping back ahead. Instinctively, he tried to follow the gesture, but found nothing there.

  Still, what he thought peculiar, was just a prelude to what was coming.

  Alric’s posture stiffened slightly, not sickness, but something close, resembling a spring wound too tightly to move loosely like usual. His steps became rigid, aggressive even, impatient, like stomping pillars shaking the ground. Still disciplined and measured, although not nearly as refined as typically seen of him.

  What is going on? Klethiar’s mind teetering on the edge of fear.

  He had never seen the commander so out of sorts in the battlefield, as if something had snapped inside his head. As if he was holding back something with all his might.

  Has he been cursed? Did the hex leave some aftereffects? I need to ask.

  Klethiar turned his head to Alric and asked in a low voice, barely enough to let only Alric hear him. “Commander, is everything all right? Do you think you’re suffering any aftereffects from the hex?”

  Alric looked at him plainly, as he always had done, but now something felt different, restrained. “Yes. Look, what do you see?” pointing to the ground just ahead of them.

  Some sort of fabric, half buried in the mud, flapped in the wind. A hand outstretched in plea for no one to answer it.

  “Fabric, sir? Clothes maybe?”

  Then he noticed it. Too big for children to wear, but too small for men to carry.

  A woman’s covering.

  Oh, no.

  “Sir. Don’t be rash in your current evaluation of the situation please. It might be something else entirely. The men could have gone and buried someone for instance.”

  At that moment a tear-stricken shriek tore through the air, halting everyone.

  Klethiar’s face turned pallid, as if a ghost had grabbed his skin and sapped it of blood.

  Alric turned his head towards the sound and began moving like a storm descending upon the earth.

  Every step lashed forward with the weight of impending cataclysm.

  Klethiar stumbled to keep up, stricken with fear. He didn’t know what the future held now for the men responsible for this act of defiance aginst Alric’s judicial merit.

  There, behind an axel-less cart, a circle of loose jackals emblazoned with the lighting-wreathed sun, stood in breathless jubilation, panting heavy, eager sighs. Eyes locked on their newest victim.

  A woman, her face brusied black, lips cracked and swollen, lay on the sludge-ridden ground.

  Her wrists pinned beneath the man’s snake-like vice as he straddled her like a toy in its maw.

  Its companions hovered nearby, waiting for their turn to indulge. Her gaze already fled somewhere far away into memory… into nothingness.

  Klethiar couldn’t even begin to fathom what had led to this. Were they acting under orders? Or had they broken rank, surrendering to unchecked dehumanising, animalistic degeneracy?

  He glanced at the commander, pure reflex, and nearly recoiled.

  The man he once knew was no more. In his place stood a being draped in his flesh, animated by something far older and consuming.

  A vessel hollowed out of reason and filled with hatred so ancient, so absolute, it scorched the very marrow of his soul, leaving nothing behind but a throne of bones and a crown of disaster.

  The light in his eyes dimmed, vanished. As though the hope of life had ceased to be.

  His gaze folded inwards. Spiraled. Collapsed into itself in a carousel of demented wrath.

  For these beasts no excuse would suffice. Only complete annihilation would cleanse this blasphemous perversion of human agency.

  He moved.