Surrounded by screams and the rising stench of burning flesh, Zhu Deming rode into the heart of the Chixia army. The heat was staggering—dry and suffocating—clinging to his skin beneath layers of armor. His sword was already slick with blood, his breath ragged beneath the metal of his half-mask.
But still, he pushed forward. After all, there was no rest for the weary until the end.
And death, perhaps, was the only peaceful rest left.
Men broke around him like waves against stone, falling to his blade or something far worse. The mist—her mist—moved like a living thing across the field, curling between armor plates, slithering beneath helmets. It did not scream. It did not roar. It simply ended whatever it touched.
He didn't know where she was, not at first.
Only that the fire came from somewhere ahead. And the silence. A terrifying, deliberate silence between bursts of carnage.
