Chapter 6
The lock snapped like a brittle bone.
Varka and the giant stepped into the open night. Ash drifted through the air like slow snow, and the mist hung thick and close, dulling every edge of sound. The world breathed shallowly, as though afraid to be heard.
For a moment, Carter waited for what should've followed—the clang of armor, the bark of orders, the rising panic of discovery.
But nothing came.
No guards. No movement. Not even the low groan of the caravan beasts that had once filled the night.
He held his breath, chest aching, mind catching on the silence like splinters.
No way… they didn't just walk out this easy. That's not how this works.
Varka didn't think—he moved. Low, deliberate, shoulders shifting with the quiet precision of a man who'd killed his hesitation long ago. The giant followed, his steps sinking softly into the mud.
Still no alarm.
Still no sound.
Only the hush—thick, absolute.
"Was this part of the plan?" the giant muttered, voice barely above a growl. "Why is it so damn quiet?"
Varka didn't answer. He didn't need to. The quiet was the answer.
They slipped through the mist toward the wagons, ghosting between shadows. Carter saw through Varka's eyes now—the haze clinging to everything, soft and suffocating. The line of carriages stretched on, a procession of cages and iron, twelve or more. Some were cracked and old; others were carved with dark veins of metal that caught the faintest glint of gold. They looked wrong here—too fine, too deliberate among the filth.
Between them, the beasts stood frozen: tall, scaled creatures balanced on thick hind legs, their hides mottled like stone, their narrow heads tilted as if listening for something they couldn't name. Their breath steamed faintly in the cold, but none of them stirred.
What the hell are those? Carter thought. Dinosaurs? No… too lean. Too still.
Varka didn't even look at them. They were part of his world—ordinary.
The deeper they went, the heavier the air became. The silence thickened until it wasn't silence anymore but pressure—something alive that pressed down on the lungs, slow and patient.
Carter's thoughts stuttered. Half a minute. That's all it took. Half a damn minute and everything's gone? Did we cause this? Did someone else? Maybe it's—
Varka stopped.
The stillness shifted. The air tightened.
He looked across the wagons—mud prints, scattered straps, overturned buckets, signs of movement everywhere. But no bodies. No blood. No heat.
"Not rescuers," he murmured. "They'd have left fire. Noise. Struggle."
He gestured for the giant to move forward. Then he turned toward the rear.
Carter followed in silence, breath shallow, every sound magnified—the wet squelch of mud, the faint creak of leather, the pulse behind his teeth.
At the end of the line stood the last carriage. It leaned crookedly, one wheel sunken deep into the mire. The back was draped in heavy canvas, soaked dark, stiff from the damp.
Varka approached.
That was when the smell reached them.
Even through another man's body, Carter reeled. It was rot, yes—but older than rot, something that spoke of endings that shouldn't exist. Burnt air. Old blood. A metallic sting that settled at the base of the tongue.
The kind of smell that crawled up memory and made the body remember fear it had never lived.
Varka raised a hand. The shadows along his arm thickened, coalescing into a single blade of black silence. He gripped the edge of the canvas and pulled.
The flap fell aside.
The night itself seemed to recoil.
Carter didn't need to see detail to understand. The space inside the wagon was wrong—a geometry of stillness that only death could create. The air was too heavy, the shapes too still, too deliberate. Something had taken life apart here with purpose.
Varka's expression didn't change, but his eyes narrowed. "Not panic," he said softly. "Execution."
Execution? Are you kidding me? Who the hell does this to slaves?
Varka's thoughts cut through, cold and clear.
Something was here. Among them. Hiding in plain sight. It began before the halt. Every death timed, clean. Enough to finish before we broke free.
The words hit like cold water.
He's saying… one of the slaves did this?
"Not human," Varka thought. "No fear. No sound. Not even the scent of it. Whatever it was—it moved cleaner than knives."
The shadows around him rippled, reacting to what he didn't show.
Then came the sound.
A sharp whistle tore through the mist—so thin and cutting it might have been thought itself made audible.
Varka froze. He knew it.
Snezna's signal.
The silence broke.
He ran.
The ground shuddered under his stride. The air seemed to tear open as he passed, a blur of motion darker than the dark itself. Branches snapped like whispers, the world dragging to keep up.
Carter could barely hold on. He's—he's faster than—holy hell, how's he even—
The metallic scent grew stronger. The mist turned red at its edges.
Then he saw it.
The front of the caravan.
Bodies. Dozens.
Not slavers.
Men in black. Faces covered. Assassins by training and posture—their weapons gleamed faintly in the pallid light: short blades, curved hooks, compact crossbows made for killing quietly.
They hadn't died quietly.
Some lay slumped against trees, heads turned too far. Others hung suspended, their silhouettes caught mid-fall, motion frozen by death. The ground drank deeply, yet even here, the quiet remained absolute.
It hadn't been a fight. It had been erasure.
Snezna stood in the center, crouched low, his white hair streaked with soot and blood. His eyes darted across the treeline, sharp but uncertain.
"They were part of the plan," he said, voice tight. "Now they're corpses. Something reached them first."
Varka said nothing at first, just toed one of the bodies over. A pale face stared back—empty, lips blue. An amulet glimmered faintly against his chest.
"They were here for us," Varka murmured. "And something else found them first."
Snezna's jaw clenched. "We shouldn't linger. Whatever did this—it isn't finished."
He tossed Varka a small leather pouch. "Your things. Found near the supplies."
Varka caught it, loosened the string, drew out a ring.
The moment it touched his finger, the world shifted.
Sound returned—not loud, but layered: the creak of wagon wood, the faint sigh of mist rolling over stone, the whisper of something unseen beneath the soil.
The world remembered him.
Before he could speak, a high-pitched shriek split the air. Too fast, too thin, almost beyond sound.
Instinct moved him.
He twisted aside.
The impact hit a moment later—an invisible hammer that sent him crashing through mud and root. Carter felt the echo, pain without flesh.
Varka rose from the dirt, steady, expression unreadable.
Then—
Metal against stone.
A dragging sound, distant yet intimate, like steel scraping through a dream.
Something stood where he had been.
Once, it might have been a soldier. Its armor bore the Imperial crest, now warped and dark, metal slick with an oily sheen that refused reflection. The body beneath was misshapen, angles where there should've been joints, light leaking faintly from cracks in its skin.
The air around it wavered, as if reality strained to keep it visible.
Its head snapped to the side with a brittle crack.
Varka's voice was low. "So this is where the Empire's dead soldiers ended up."
He drew a shadow into his hand, a dagger without light. "Explode."
He threw. Black fire swallowed the mist—then died.
The creature stepped forward, untouched. Its glasslike armor caught the faint shimmer of the moon and split it into colors that didn't belong to this world.
It tilted its head, studying him. Curious.
Carter could feel it noticing him, too. Not just seeing—but recognizing.
It sees me. It actually sees me.
Not human, Varka thought. Not alive. Not supposed to move.
He readied another strike—then looked toward Snezna.
A mistake.
Three more figures had emerged from the haze, circling the man with the white hair. Silent. Hollow. Their movements eerily measured.
And behind Varka—motion.
Shapes stepping out from the treeline, slow and synchronized.
One. Two. Four. Seven. Twelve.
Each a mockery of the Imperial form—half flesh, half translucent light, armor splitting at impossible angles, yet still standing.
A semicircle of the dead.
Snezna raised his blades, jaw tight. Varka's shadows flared around him, coiling like serpents eager to strike.
Carter couldn't breathe. The silence pulsed like a heartbeat that wasn't theirs.
Whatever had killed the guards… whatever had killed the assassins… was still here.
And it was calling its soldiers back.
The first corpse moved—slowly. A shudder. A sound like dry glass cracking. Then another. Then another.
One by one, the bodies of the fallen rose from the earth, joints creaking in unison, faces lifting toward the moonlight.
Their eyes burned faint gold through the mist.
And for the first time that night, the silence broke—
not with sound,
but with breath.
The dead exhaled.
And began to march.
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