—
"We… we're not getting out," Lin heard his wife's whisper.
He smiled bitterly and scanned the surrounding.
Ten meters ahead, a line of towering "undead soldiers" stood in a loose arc, armor cracked and dull, their silhouettes half-swallowed by mist.
They didn't advance. They didn't need to.
They blocked every way out, like hunters in no hurry to draw the net tight.
Behind them came faint sobs, a stuttering sniffle now and then.
The sound of those who'd been captured.
The undead warriors seemed content to watch, as if waiting for the next "scene" to play out.
Blood still seeped from Lin's wound; his chest felt as if a stone had settled there, heavy and unmoving.
He knew they were caught in the jaws of beasts that had not yet decided to finish the kill.
Lin lifted his gaze to the Iron Cavalry General, steady and unflinching, curious to see what game the man intended to play next.
His wife helped him sit up a bit.
Lin bared his teeth, a shape that might've been a smile, or pain.
His voice was thin but carried clean across the fog.
"You're nothing but monsters. Whatever tricks you play… it won't hide what you are. Born to make slaves of others."
The Iron Cavalry General turned his head.
Those pale, ashen eyes slid toward him, amused.
"Join us," he said, as if offering an old, tired bargain. "Then you may enslave the rabble yourself."
Lin drew a strained breath.
"Too bad you're mistaken. All we ever wanted was to live in peace."
"Childish."
The general shook his head.
"Without us, you were slaves to the king all the same. I killed him for you. Shouldn't you be grateful?"
"You're the same rot!"
Lin's wife finally snapped, shouting the words.
"You're worse. When does this damned world ever end?"
The Iron Cavalry General didn't argue.
It was as if, all at once, they no longer interested him at all.
A cluster of undead soldiers dragged forward two charred remains.
Lin recognized them as warriors once, men burned black, hardly bodies anymore. They were long past death, only dying again now in smaller pieces.
The General walked to one of them.
He crouched beside the ruin, brushing away dry grass and bits of stone from the scorched armor. His hands moved carefully, almost tender, as if he were cleaning a piece of fine porcelain.
The elite soldiers stood around him in silence. Their heads dipped slightly. Their eyes held a dull shine, something close to devotion.
Then the General turned back to the two charred forms at their feet.
One of them was the man burned to a crisp by the black-oil flames, the only one Lin had thought they had managed to bring down tonight.
His wife tightened her grip on Lin's sleeve.
"What are they… doing?"
The Iron Cavalry General crouched beside the body.
With an impossible gentleness, he touched the blackened skull—like a man stroking a sick horse, or a child he refused to let go.
"Don't look," Lin whispered to his wife, though his voice was thin as drifting snow.
He couldn't look away himself.
The general slid his hand into the corpse's burnt abdomen.
A dull crack sounded—like dry earth being split open.
The charred body began to tremble.
At first faintly, like a small animal freezing in the cold.
Then harder, the sound rising like old boards snapping:
Crack… crk—crack.
Lin and his wife turned despite themselves.
The corpse straightened inch by inch,
its movement stiff, terribly steady.
Its curled form stretched, as if something inside were pushing it open.
Bones and tendons shifted with tight, rapid clicks.
The blackened shell split.
Not blood—
but pale fibers spilled out,
twisting, knotting, pulling tight,
like dead vines forced back into life.
A thin smoke drifted from the open chest.
It smelled of over-roasted potato skin,
and the bitterness of scorched wood.
Then—
the white smoke drew back in.
Not drifting away, but returning to the thing's body,
like a deep, deliberate breath.
The air turned colder.
Not wind, but a skin-tight chill that settled on them.
Lin felt his own breath thicken in his throat.
Then,
The thing stood.
Like shedding a husk.
Its head hung crooked on its shoulder, tilted at an impossible angle.
A sharp crack came from inside its bones. The sound of ice breaking.
The head slowly righted itself.
Its eye sockets were empty.
Empty as caves.
Yet it stared at Lin.
The burnt shell slid off with a brittle sound, like bark falling in winter.
Pieces rolled to Lin's feet, still faintly warm.
The warrior inside revealed itself: Half-melted armor, the edges warped like welded metal.
Skin turned stone-gray. Dry, tight, as if the fire had reforged it.
Bronze armguards blackened like relics dug from the earth.
From its hollow eyes burst a harsh white glow.
Deeper than before.
More violent.
It was as if some wild force had rushed into the creature's body all at once.
Lin's wife's pupils shrank.
"That— that's not the same thing anymore!"
Lin's mind went blank, a hollow thud ringing through him.
It felt like something had struck him from behind.
This wasn't a wounded monster rising again.
This was something that had died once, and come back stronger.
It let out a low growl.
Not of pain.
Not of anger.
More like a sleeper stretching after a long, heavy rest. The sound of something enjoying its return to freedom.
Fire…
Fire was not its weakness.
Fire was only the trigger that let it shed its skin.
The other undead warriors closed in.
They formed a half-circle, like soldiers gathering to witness a brother's rebirth.
The white glow in their eyes brightened, almost congratulatory.
Lin's throat tightened.
His breath felt tossed into cold wind.
He let out a laugh with a piece of cold iron in it.
"Great… we helped it evolve."
His fingers dug into the dirt.
The earth was cold.
His heart colder still.
"I did underestimate you monsters… but—" He tried to look at his wife one more time.
But his head felt packed with wet sand.
The world began to tilt backward.
His wife tightened her grip on his hand, her own trembling.
"I hope… Wei got away…"
Lin tried to lift his eyes to her again, but all he saw was the world sliding off its balance, softening at the edges.
And then—
The Iron Cavalry General's hand drove into his abdomen.
As easily as sinking an arm into a sack of wet grain.
Clean.
Soundless.
A short, sharp tear of air.
His wife's scream was caught by the wind and carried off.