Chapter 3
The world fractured at the seams.
The battlefield peeled apart, dissolving into ribbons of black ink that rose like smoke, devouring sky, earth, and flame alike. The girl's eyes were the last to fade—two reflections trembling before they vanished into the dark.
Then there was nothing.
Weightless. Bodiless. Thought without form. The void pulsed softly, like a heart buried miles beneath silence.
He wanted to move. To scream. But there was no mouth, no breath, no self to carry sound.
This has to be some kind of fucking joke.
The thought surfaced faintly—an echo from another life, already slipping away.
The ink rippled. Colors bled into the dark—white into gray, gray into steel.
And the world took shape again.
---
Armor clung to him—heavy, familiar, alive. It pressed into bone as if it had grown from him. When he breathed, the plates shifted like a single creature inhaling.
He lifted his head. The sky hung still. Above, a moon—full, swollen, colorless—watched in silence.
"How disgusting," he muttered. The voice didn't sound like his own.
Below, the camp sprawled beneath a shroud of fog. Torches guttered, their flames drowning in ash. Men moved between tents like shadows pretending to be human. Every sound—the clatter of armor, the muttered curses, the brittle crackle of dying fire—felt stretched thin, as though filtered through glass.
They shouldn't have been here. Men of their rank didn't walk night rounds. That was for the newbloods, the untested.
But too many had died in the last invasion.
The memory arrived uninvited—sharp, complete—belonging to someone else.
"These animals fought hard," he murmured, adjusting his gauntlet. "We'll give them that.", Carter thought
He said it with respect.
He thought it with disgust.
A quiet wind rolled through the valley. Banners shuddered—black suns encircled in gold, flickering under pale light.
The sword at his side thrummed faintly, responding to the air. When he touched the hilt, it pulsed—warm, rhythmic, like a heartbeat out of sync with his own.
He frowned. "Deplorable."
The word felt wrong. But it fit.
The armor settled heavier against him. His shadow stretched beside him—too long, too still.
And somewhere behind his eyes, something watched. Not with malice. Not even intent.
Just waiting—for him to forget what it meant to be human.
---
The night before battle stretched like a wound that refused to close.
The camp barely breathed. Tents sagged under their own weight, soaked with dew and fear. The fires had burned down to embers, coughing sparks that died before they could rise.
Men huddled close to warmth that no longer comforted. The air stank of oil, rust, and the sour rot of unwashed armor. Some soldiers whispered prayers that broke before leaving their lips. Others sat blank-eyed, staring at their hands as if unsure whether they still belonged to them.
Every sound was too sharp, too real. A cough, a clink of chain, the soft crack of wood splitting in the fire—all of it felt like blasphemy against the silence.
Beyond the walls, the fog waited. It never moved, yet it crept closer all the same. Even the wind dared not cross it.
Sleep was a luxury. And war had no place for luxuries.
He tried to rest, leaning against his shield, but the armor bit into his back and the world refused to darken. Each time his eyes closed, he saw faces—their eyes wide, their mouths still moving after the sound had gone.
The girl's face lingered most.
When dawn finally came, it wasn't light that arrived. It was a gray pallor that washed color from the world. The sun rose like a corpse pretending to live.
Then came the horn.
A single note, long and hollow, cutting through fog and bone alike.
Men stirred. Armor clattered. The sound was too deliberate to be chaos, too frightened to be order.
Archers climbed what was left of the village walls—splintered and blackened. Footmen gathered in crooked lines, shifting to hide the tremor in their legs.
And the knight readied himself.
The armor was heavier now, though he hadn't moved. Beneath the steel, sweat chilled against his skin. His breath rasped inside the helm, each exhale a ghost.
He glanced around. Their faces were hidden behind metal, but fear seeps through armor all the same.
It lived in the shallow breaths fogging their visors.
In the fingers that tightened too early around hilts.
In the eyes that refused to meet the mist.
No one wanted to fight. Not even him.
But fear had long since stopped being a choice. It had become rhythm—march, breathe, fight, die—repeated until the mind forgot it was afraid.
Still, something deep inside whispered: this battle will not be survived.
And yet, he raised his sword with the rest.
Because that was what the living did before the world claimed them.
They formed a line. Not tight. Not disciplined. Just human—barely.
He barked for order, voice flat with exhaustion. There were no speeches, no brave declarations.
This was war—raw, mechanical, and joyless. A ritual of survival dressed in metal.
Then the mist stirred.
Shapes shifted within it—shadows trying to remember how to be flesh.
They bent wrong. Limbs folded backward as if bones were rumors. Faces stretched, split, and collapsed into new horrors. Every heartbeat remade them. One moment serpents, the next towers of flesh.
One slithered forward, dissolving before bones jutted out like spears. Another loomed tall as a tree, its head sagging into its chest under its own weight.
They weren't alive. They weren't dead.
They were wrongness given motion.
My grip tightened on the sword. It pulsed—alive. Each beat echoed through my bones: faster, sharper, stronger.
Like a buff in a game—except there were no menus. No respawns. Only death.
The creatures crawled closer.
Knights swept the perimeter. Their movements were too neat to be calm, too rehearsed to be courage. Not discipline—desperation.
They called the abominations targets, as if names could chain fear.
"This line won't hold," someone whispered.
"Shut it," hissed another, spear trembling. "Speak fear, give it shape."
A third laughed—cracked halfway through, turned to a sob.
Then the horn blew again.
Not a command. A scream cast in brass.
The world froze. The torches stilled. Even the wind dared not move.
Then the mist struck.
The world tore open.
I ran. Sword in hand. The earth convulsed beneath my boots. Armor shrieked. Breath burned like acid.
Strike. Block. Dodge. Strike again.
Each swing cracked the air. The blade wailed as it met flesh that refused to die. Black ichor hissed where it landed, burning through ground and steel alike.
One creature slithered through smoke, reforming mid-lunge. Another towered, its weight bending the soil. Dozens of eyes burned like sick suns.
Steel shattered. Shields splintered. The line fell apart.
A boy beside me—barely grown—stumbled, blade shaking. His visor caught the reflection of his own terror.
"Help—" he began, before a claw split him in two. Red mist where a face had been.
Another knight turned and fled. Three steps, then silence. The fog took him whole.
Screams. Smoke. The iron stench of blood and burning flesh. Terror became the only air left to breathe.
Still, I fought. The sword burned in my grip, whispering rhythm and rage in the same breath.
Then came the pain.
White-hot. A tearing flash. My left arm gone before I knew it. Blood poured, slicking my grip. I staggered but refused to fall.
"Retreat!" someone screamed—a voice, or maybe memory.
We stumbled back through mud and corpses, the camp looming like a mirage. Torn tents. Dying fires. Men crawling, dragging themselves through blood.
And there—by the last fire—sat the slave girl. Chains bit into her wrists, her face hollow in the glow. Her eyes found mine.
No pleading. No fear. Just stillness.
A mirror of everything I'd lost.
I faltered.
Battlefields devour children. Survivors return in chains.
This was the world we fought to keep.
A world that demanded blood from the weak so the strong could pretend it was worth saving.
The sword slipped from my hand. Its pulse stilled as mine faltered.
Mud swallowed my knees, my chest, my breath.
Her gaze didn't waver. Mine dimmed.
And for a moment, clarity pierced the fog:
A world built on the sacrifice of innocent children didn't need to exist.
But as soon as that thought emerged—something else crushed it. Cold. Mechanical. Inhuman.
No… they weren't children.
Not even people.
All of this was because of them.
Pitiful. Worthless. As…tarians.
If only they weren't born, they wouldn't suffer.
The words weren't mine. But they spoke through me all the same.
The fire dimmed. My vision collapsed inward.
And then—nothing.
No pain.
No self.
Only the sound of the armor settling, like a coffin sealing shut.