Chapter Four
I didn't wake that night. Sleep didn't let me.
I was him again—the knight.
The armor pressed into my shoulders like a second spine, heavy enough to crush a man, but it moved with me as though it had always belonged there. The chains at my belt rattled with each step, a constant reminder that silence was impossible here. The air was thick—smoke, wet earth, and something sharp beneath it all. Screams.
Not human screams.
The sound was wrong—drawn out, warped, guttural. It was the noise of flesh bending in ways it shouldn't, of throats not built for voices.
The camp stretched in a hollow sprawl of tents and steel. Torches hissed in the wind, casting restless shadows over men who stood too stiffly, too still. Their faces gave them away.
Fear.
It bled out of them, carried on every clenched jaw, every twitching hand wrapped around a blade. Some whispered broken prayers, their words trembling into the smoke. Others stared at the horizon where the dark shifted. None dared name what they saw.
Shapes moved against the night.
They weren't soldiers. They weren't beasts. They weren't anything that belonged to this world.
They bent wrong. Their limbs folded inward, backward, as if bones didn't matter. Faces stretched too thin, then collapsed, then split into more. Their silhouettes changed with each heartbeat—too many arms, no arms, serpents one moment, towers the next. Flesh refused to decide what it was.
One form slithered forward, collapsing into mist before reforming with bones jutting out like broken spears. Another loomed, so tall its head melted back into its chest as if the weight of its own existence crushed it.
They weren't alive. They weren't even dead. They were wrongness, and reality strained just to contain them.
Even when they were still, they moved. Even when I looked away, they crawled at the edges of my vision.
I tightened my grip on the sword.
It pulsed. Alive. Each beat whispered into my bones—faster, sharper, stronger. Promises of strength, like a game buff—but this wasn't a game. No menus. No respawns. Only final death.
And the monsters drew closer.
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The knights swept the perimeter, their movements too neat, too rehearsed. Not discipline. Desperation. They called the abominations "targets," as if a word could strip them of terror. But their eyes betrayed them.
"This line won't hold," one muttered, voice cracking.
"Shut your mouth," another hissed, spear trembling in his hands. "You speak fear, you give it shape."
A third tried to laugh, but it broke halfway, splintering into silence.
Then the horn blew.
It wasn't a call. It was a scream cast in brass. A blast that split the night in two.
For a heartbeat, everything stopped. The torches froze. The wind died. Even my heart missed its rhythm.
Then the world tore open.
---
The creatures surged.
The knights broke.
I ran, sword in hand, the ground tearing beneath my boots. Armor shrieked, chains clanged. My breath was fire in my lungs. Strike. Block. Dodge. Strike again.
Shockwaves burst with every swing, the blade shrieking as it cleaved through flesh that didn't stay dead. Black ichor sprayed, sizzling against the mud.
One of the things slithered through smoke, reforming mid-lunge. Another towered overhead, each step bending the earth like a drumbeat of doom. Their eyes—dozens of them—burned white-hot, unblinking.
Steel shattered like glass. Shields splintered. The line crumpled.
A boy beside me—barely older than I was—stumbled, sword trembling in his grip. His visor gleamed with wide, desperate eyes.
"Help—!"
His plea ended in a red mist. A claw shredded him open before he could finish the word.
Another knight dropped his weapon and ran. He made it three steps before the darkness itself pulled him under, his scream cut short like a string snapped.
The stench of blood, the chorus of panic—it was everywhere. Their fear seeped into me, poisoned my breath, slowed my strikes.
Still, I fought. Still, the sword burned in my hand.
Until pain found me.
A tearing flash. White-hot.
My left hand—gone. Ripped from me, flung into the dirt. Blood spilled in torrents, coating the hilt, slicking my grip.
I staggered, but I did not fall.
---
"Retreat!"
The command ripped through the chaos.
The survivors stumbled back toward the encampment, dragging broken shields, bleeding into the dirt. I followed, half-blind, my body burning with every step.
The camp loomed. Torn tents. Fires guttering low. Men collapsing in heaps.
And there—by the fire.
The slave girl.
She knelt, chains biting into her wrists, the flames casting hollows across her too-young face. Her eyes were empty, a void where childhood should have been.
She looked at me.
Not pleading. Not begging. Not crying.
Just watching.
And I faltered.
The battlefield devoured children. And the survivors came home to chains.
This was the world we fought to preserve. 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 died as mine faltered. I dropped to my knees, mud swallowing me whole.
Her gaze didn't waver. Mine dimmed.
And in that last moment, I understood.
A world that demanded the sacrifice of its children—
did not deserve to exist.
The fire flickered.
And I was gone.
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