The dead soldiers didn’t charge with a battle cry. They advanced in sickening, timed together silence, their boots skimming the surface of the grey ash without disturbing a single flake.
Lord Ren was the first to meet them.
The Emperor didn’t shout. He lowered his balance point, took two measured strides into the depression of the trench. Then he brought his blackened iron broadsword down in a headsman’s slanted arc across the neck of the lead guardsman.
The strike was textbook. Cold forged iron bit through lacquered steel gorget and cut spine with a dull, wet crack. The soldier’s head flew backward into the mist, and his torso pitched forward into the dirt.
For half a second, gravity held.
Then the bronze tuning fork in Inquisitor Vaelen’s grip gave a high, piercing shudder.
A rippling ring of violet static washed over the fallen corpse. The cut head stopped two feet above the ground, reversed its flight path through the air. Then it slammed back onto the bloody stump of the neck. The cut muscles knitted together in a blur of rewinding red ribbons. The cut steel collar fused without a seam. And the soldier rose back to his feet mid-motion, his axe-spear already thrusting toward Lord Ren’s throat.
