Chapter 41 – Growth Amid Chaos
The chaos struck without warning.
One moment, the camp was quiet beneath the moonlight—still, heavy with the stench of horse dung and smoke. The next, it was as if hell itself had descended upon them.
A thunderous crash shattered the night. The outer barriers splintered under the impact of charging cavalry, and a wave of armored riders poured into the camp like a flood.
Screams erupted everywhere. Horses shrieked, tents caught fire, and the crackling of burning canvas mixed with the clash of steel and dying men. Within seconds, the night was ablaze—fire spreading like the wings of some vengeful god.
Two thousand soldiers had been stationed here, but unprepared, they might as well have been lambs before the slaughter.
Charles saw one northern soldier's skull crushed by a flail, his scream abruptly cut off. Another lunged with a spear at a rider's horse, only to take an arrow in the back from a second knight before being decapitated mid-collapse.
Men scrambled into their tents for cover, only to be driven out moments later by the spreading fire—straight into waiting blades. The ground turned slick with blood and ash; bodies were trampled into the mud until they were little more than pulp.
The wind fanned the inferno, turning the tightly packed camp into a blazing deathtrap. In that sea of flame, the attackers looked like demons—faces lit crimson by the fire, laughter echoing over the screams of the dying.
It was a massacre.
Women from the supply corps shrieked as they ran, and the Northmen roared in futile resistance. The Lannister cavalry grew only wilder in response, their laughter ringing out over the carnage.
They were no true knights—just beasts in armor. Their fine horses and gilded armor couldn't hide the savagery in their eyes.
———
When the first screams erupted, Charles was already moving. He slipped back into his tent, grabbed his bow and quiver, and melted into the shadows between burning tents.
A rider spotted him—barely more than a young man in a thin cloak—and grinned with cruel delight. Spurring his horse, he charged forward.
But the "unarmed youth" didn't flee.
Instead, Charles raised his hand. His lips moved, murmuring in a strange, inhuman cadence.
"What the—?" the rider muttered.
Then his horse screamed, reared, and refused to move another inch. Its eyes rolled white, nostrils flaring as it backed away from Charles as though from something unnatural.
Before the rider could recover, he saw something that froze the blood in his veins.
A corpse nearby—a soldier freshly slain—twitched. Then, with a sickening crack, its ribcage split open. A pale skeleton clawed its way free, the dead man's face still hanging from the bone like torn parchment.
In the firelight, it turned toward the knight and grinned.
"B–black sorcery!" the man gasped.
He yanked on the reins, desperate to flee—but his terrified horse stumbled and fell. The man went down hard, his armor clanging against the dirt.
He never got up again.
The undead servant lunged, and the surrounding soldiers—emboldened by the horror—fell upon the dismounted Lannister. His scream ended in a wet crunch.
By the time they looked around, Charles was gone.
———
The camp was a warzone. Even with his necromantic tricks, he wasn't arrogant enough to think he'd survive the melee for long. The skeletons could terrify and distract—but stray blades didn't discriminate between friend or foe.
He needed cover.
Slipping between collapsing tents, Charles ducked behind a burning pavilion, using a large water barrel as makeshift concealment. From that fiery shadow, he drew his bow.
[Your arrow wounds an enemy soldier. Archery Skill +1.]
[Your arrow wounds an enemy soldier. Archery Skill +1.]
[You have slain an enemy soldier. Archery Skill +10. You gain minor proficiency with the flail.]
Each shot felt smoother, more precise.
A few enemies caught sight of him, but most turned pale at the sight of his skeletal minions glaring from the firelight and fled in panic. The few that dared charge forward never made it within striking distance—cut down by arrows or bone claws alike.
It helped that horses loathed his magic.
Charles had learned through practice that his chants—those eerie syllables that dripped like poison—unnerved beasts even more than men. Every Lannister mount that came near balked and reared, throwing its rider before ever reaching him.
Gradually, a small patch of silence formed around him amid the chaos—a no-man's-land of flickering fire and corpses.
But silence attracts attention too.
Not wanting to draw the eye of braver enemies, Charles slipped away again, moving cautiously along the edge of the burning camp.
Everywhere around him was chaos—screams, steel, the thunder of hooves. His heart hammered in his chest. It was his first true battle, and he could feel panic clawing at his ribs.
He remembered Eddard's words:
"Once war begins, I can't even promise my own life."
Now he understood. War was not glory or honor—it was terror and confusion, sudden and merciless.
He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to focus.
Then—
"Help! Somebody, please help me!"
The voice was faint, barely audible over the din. But his sharpened senses caught it.
Turning toward the sound, he saw her—a girl running desperately through the firelight, pursued by two Lannister riders.
It looked like the start of an ugly scene.
Charles scanned the area. No other enemies nearby. Good.
He drew an arrow, aimed, and released.
The first knight dropped instantly, the arrow buried in his throat. His partner reined in sharply, startled—just in time to take a second arrow through the leg.
He fell from his horse, howling.
A third arrow silenced him.
Charles exhaled slowly. His aim had grown sharper, steadier. At this range, the shots landed like lightning.
The girl stumbled toward him, eyes wide with tears, face streaked with soot. She looked pitiful—and oddly familiar.
Then he remembered.
A Frey girl… one of the few who escaped the Twins.
She was the only one among that rat-faced family with any beauty to speak of—a rare rose among weeds. He'd joked once that she was "proof the gods have a sense of irony."
Now was hardly the time for that thought.
"Find somewhere safe to hide!" he barked, nocking another arrow.
The girl froze, trembling. "I—I don't know where—"
"Fifth row to the north, third tent on the right," he said quickly. "Go."
"That's—thank you!"
She ran.
Charles watched her vanish into the shadows, then turned his attention back to the battlefield.
The tent he'd sent her to belonged to the red priestess. He didn't know what Melisandre was truly capable of, but he was willing to bet she could handle herself better than most.
If not—well, he'd already done his good deed for the night.
He had no intention of playing hero.
There were still arrows to fire, corpses to raise—and a battle to survive.
Cautiously weaving through the burning camp, Charles moved like a shadow—strike, relocate, strike again. Every shot was followed by a new burst of glowing text flickering before his eyes.
[You gained life energy.]
[You acquired proficiency with: Flail, Longsword, Chain Mace, Horsemanship, Archery.]
A cool sensation spread through his body, clearing his fatigue, while fragments of new knowledge settled into his mind—combat patterns, balance adjustments, even weapon-handling tricks he'd never studied before.
In a perverse way, this blood-soaked battlefield had become his training ground.
A place of horror… but also opportunity.
This—this was why he'd ignored Eddard Stark's warnings. Why he'd refused to retreat north.
He'd come to grow stronger, and nothing spurred growth faster than a brush with death.
Unfortunately, he hadn't prepared the necessary soul-collecting runes for true harvest. All he could do was rely on his "battlefield leveling" ability to absorb energy from those he slew.
Yet even as he improved, he could feel the limits. His body brimmed with potential, but his actual combat power didn't rise as fast as he hoped. He simply knew more things—more techniques, more motions—but raw knowledge only carried one so far. Once the surrounding enemies' strength plateaued, his learning stalled too.
At least, he mused, these attackers were trained soldiers and not mere peasant conscripts. If they'd been ordinary militia, his progress would've been half as effective.
———
Hiding behind wreckage and using the occasional skeletal minion as distraction, Charles survived. His energy reserves grew steadily, his movements sharper, his stamina never faltering.
But he knew it couldn't last. At this rate, he'd soon have no choice but to retreat.
Then, as his seventh quiver emptied—when the smoke stung his lungs and his arms ached from drawing the bow—he heard it.
The distant, thunderous rhythm of hooves.
Another cavalry charge… but this one was different.
He turned toward the noise—and for the first time that night, his expression changed from grim focus to raw relief.
A great banner rose above the hill, silhouetted by firelight and moonlight alike: a gray direwolf, snapping against the wind.
The Stark sigil.
For the first time in his life, Charles thought he'd never seen anything so beautiful.
Shouts erupted across the camp as survivors spotted it too.
"The Lord's banner!"
"Reinforcements! Reinforcements are here!"
"We're saved!"
The desperate men of the North found new strength in their lungs. Exhausted soldiers straightened, roaring, their morale surging like wildfire.
The Lannister raiders, by contrast, broke into panic. Realizing the tables were about to turn, they scrambled to flee—only to be chased down by those they'd been butchering moments before.
But mounted enemies were hard to stop, and most of the attackers galloped off before the full counterattack could begin.
The arriving Stark cavalry didn't even pause at the camp's edge; they charged straight past, pursuing the retreating red-and-gold host into the darkness.
Soon, the battlefield quieted.
Smoke hung low, fires crackled, and the survivors began regrouping. The stench of blood and scorched flesh filled the air.
A commander—one of the Stark bannermen—strode through the wreckage, barking orders as his men began pulling the wounded from the ashes. His brow furrowed as his gaze swept the camp… then froze.
There, stepping out from behind a charred tent, was Charles—bow in hand, eyes hollow with exhaustion. And beside him, illuminated by the dying firelight, stood a white skeleton sentinel, motionless as a gravestone.
The man's expression shifted from relief to unease in an instant.
Charles noticed, but his thoughts were elsewhere. A frown creased his own face—not from being seen, but from something inside him.
The energy he'd gathered—the countless motes of life he'd taken from his enemies—was no longer still.
It surged through him wildly now, coursing through his veins like molten silver, spiraling faster and faster.
His vision blurred. His heart pounded. It felt as if something within him was on the verge of breaking—or awakening.
And for the first time since the battle began, Charles felt not fear… but anticipation.
Something inside him was changing.