The thick fog began to thin, thread by thread, as if some unseen hand was peeling it back.
Then the ground rumbled. Radeon, Fay, and the bison all shivered at once.
Pressure rolled in like a tide, heavy enough to make lungs feel small.
It pressed from above, from around, even from below.
The dead answered. Corpses jerked and rose in patches, not as men but as puppets.
Flesh golems clawed their way upright, stitched from hundreds of bodies into towering heaps of meat and bone.
They loomed in the thinning fog, and there were more of them than Radeon cared to count.
Their cultivation was clear even at a glance. Nascent Soul at least. Possibly higher.
Skeletons followed, cleaner in their horror. They stood in neat rows, bows and swords and staves held motionless.
Nothing in them shook. Nothing in them feared.
Radeon dismissed his arts and let his disguise settle in place. He returned to the form he had taken from Rai.
