It happened in the Cursed Lands of Mousillon, the lost dukedom where the dead do not rest and the fog tastes of bile. Sir Balduin, in his confused search for redemption, had insisted on taking a shortcut through the swamps of Grismerie, ignoring the warnings of the local peasants. "The Lady protects the righteous!" he had shouted, draining the last wineskin. But in Mousillon, the Lady almost never looks.
The fog descended suddenly, dense and yellowish, suffocating all sound. Balduin's horse grew nervous, kicking at the black mud that seemed to pulse beneath its hooves. Then, the silence was broken by the wet sound of tearing flesh.
It was not bandits. It was Crypt Ghouls. Humanoid creatures, pale and hunched, with sore-covered backs and claws as long as daggers, emerging hissing from the brackish water. Sir Balduin, caught by surprise and with reflexes numbed by alcohol, tried to draw his sword. He was slow. Too slow. A Ghoul leaped from the rump of his horse, sinking its teeth into the destrier's neck. The beast fell, pinning the knight's leg in the mud.
Geneviève, who was riding a nag a little way behind, was thrown to the ground. She rolled in the mud, losing her breath. When she looked up, she saw horror. A larger shadow rose behind the Ghouls. A Wight, an ancient skeletal warrior wrapped in rusted chainmail, advanced with a bastard sword encrusted with black magic. Balduin, trapped under the dying horse, screamed as the Ghouls began to tear off the plates of his armor to reach the flesh. He did not scream prayers. He screamed in terror, a pitiful, animal sound that erased every trace of his nobility. The Wight raised its blade and, with a dry, emotionless blow, brought silence down upon Sir Balduin.
Geneviève was alone. Kneeling in the slime, with her heart beating like a caged bird. Instinct—that of the peasant who survived Bord de l'Eau—screamed at her: Run. Flee into the woods. Let them eat the corpse and save yourself.
But then she looked at Balduin's sword. It had fallen into the mud, a few yards from her. The blade reflected the sickly light of the moon. That sword was a symbol. It was the barrier between humanity and the dark. If she fled now, if she let that monster profane her master's body and walk away unpunished, she would remain a servant forever. She would be nothing but meat waiting to be butchered.
She stood up. Not as Gilles the squire, but as Geneviève the furious. She lunged forward. Her hands, hardened by years of stolen work, closed around the cold hilt of the two-handed sword. It was heavy. Damnably heavy. But for the first time, she was not lifting it in secret in the dark. She was lifting it to kill.
The Wight turned slowly. A flickering light shone in its empty sockets. The Ghouls hissed, smelling fresh meat. Geneviève did not know the litanies in ancient Latin. She did not know how to bless water. She only knew that she hated these monsters more than she loved her own life.
"For the Lady..." she whispered, her voice hoarse and broken. Then she screamed, a cry that had nothing masculine or feminine about it, but only pure human rage. "NOT ONE STEP FURTHER!"
In that moment, the impossible happened. No angels descended from the sky. There was no thunder. But Geneviève felt a sudden, violent heat explode in her chest, right behind the bandages that bound her heart. The fear vanished, burned away by a cold and absolute certainty: I will not die here.
She gripped the hilt. The rust on the blade seemed to vibrate. A weak light, white and cold as the morning star, began to pulse along the edge of the steel. The Wight hesitated. It sensed something that should not have been there: Faith, pure and raw, unfiltered by the rites of priests, but born from the suicidal courage of a girl in the mud.
Geneviève charged. She did not use the elegant technique of duels. She used the dirty move she had practiced a thousand nights against the trees. She threw herself into a slide through the mud, passing under the Wight's high guard. The sword, guided by a force that was not merely muscular, impacted against the monster's skeletal kneecap. There was a flash of white light and the sound of ancient bones exploding like glass. The Wight collapsed. Geneviève rose, using the momentum of the heavy sword to spin around. She brought the blade down on the undead's skull. The steel, blessed by her will, sheared through helm, bone, and black magic. The monster dissolved into dust and empty armor.
The Ghouls, seeing their lord destroyed by that figure glowing with a light that was painful to their eyes accustomed to the dark, fled screeching into the fog.
Silence returned to the swamp. The light on the sword died out. Geneviève stood panting, her hands shaking violently from adrenaline and shock. She looked at the butchered body of Sir Balduin. She looked at herself. Covered in black mud, blood, and undead guts. She had broken the supreme law: a peasant had wielded a knight's weapon and had invoked the power of the Lady. If she returned to civilization, they would burn her as a witch.
She approached the corpse of her master. With slow, almost ritualistic gestures, she unclasped the helm from Balduin's body. It was dented, it smelled of old wine and sweat, but it was steel. She took off her wool cap. She ran a hand over her shaved head. She put on the helm. The visor snapped down, shutting out the world, shutting out Geneviève. From those metal slits, now only the grey and ruthless eyes of Sir Gilles looked out.
She took Balduin's cloak and covered the house heraldry with mud, making it unrecognizable. She mounted the nag, holding the heavy sword resting on her shoulder with a terrifying naturalness. She did not turn back. She rode north, toward the border, toward the war. Geneviève had died in the swamp. Gilles was born, baptized in the blood of a monster, the only Knight worthy of that name in a hundred miles.