Eliza gritted her teeth, tears streaming down her face as she tried to steady her trembling hands. She had wanted to be strong, to rise to the occasion, but this—this was chaos and horror beyond her understanding. The smell was the first thing to overwhelm her: the sickening stench of decay, blood, and smoke filled the air, clawing at her throat and making her gag. Everywhere she looked, bodies littered the streets, their lifeless forms twisted and mangled, some half-eaten by the swarming undead.

The villagers, terrified and desperate, began clustering together near the southern gate. It was their only chance for survival, but the crowd quickly turned hostile, shoving and shouting as they scrambled for safety. Eliza pushed forward, clutching her bow tightly, but when she reached the entrance, the heavy wooden doors slammed shut in her face.

“No! Please, let us in!” she screamed, pounding on the door. Beside her stood a young woman, a strange yet beautiful creature with shimmering blue scales marred by dirt and blood. She had a fish-like tail that ended in legs, her form both ethereal and alien. The woman clutched her screaming child, begging for mercy.

“Open the door! My daughter is out here! Please!” the woman cried, but the villagers on the other side refused.

“You’ll let the undead in! We can’t risk it!” came the panicked reply.

The door latch clicked into place, and the mother’s cries turned to wails of despair. Eliza turned to her, her heart breaking as the woman held her child close, tears streaming down her face. The safety did not last though sadly.

The undead had broken in from above, through the rooftops and weakened walls.

“No,” Eliza whispered, her voice trembling. Her knees felt weak as the sound of desperate cries turned to guttural screams of agony. The mother’s face went pale, her child sobbing into her chest. It was only now Eliza noticed the mother was bleeding this entire time, badly wounded. Her last act was trying to get her child to safety.

Eliza grabbed the woman’s arm. “We have to run!” she shouted, pulling her away from the door just as the first undead broke through the barricade. They stumbled down a narrow street, weaving through debris and scattered bodies.

The child screamed for her mother, but Eliza pulled her away, clutching her tightly as the strange woman was overwhelmed by undead in the chaos. “No! Mom!” the child wailed, her small fists pounding against Eliza’s chest.

“I’m sorry!” Eliza cried, her voice breaking as she ran, the child’s sobs echoing in her ears. Her legs burned, her lungs ached, and her mind was a whirlwind of fear and despair. She turned a corner and came face-to-face with a dead end.

She spun around, her heart sinking as she saw the undead shambling toward her. One of them was different—bulky, its rotting flesh pulsating with dark energy. Its face… its face reminded her of her ex. She froze, bile rising in her throat as the memories flooded back.

“G… g… get behind me,” she stammered, her voice trembling. She raised her bow, but her hands felt weak, her resolve crumbling. The weapon felt impossibly heavy, as if her own fear was weighing her down.

The undead advanced, their soulless eyes fixed on her. Eliza’s breath came in short gasps, her body shaking. She felt helpless, trapped.

Tenebrae on the other hand had other was having fun even if not much.

Tenebrae moved forward with deliberate calm, the dark aura surrounding him crackling faintly with restrained power. His glowing green eyes fixed on the necromancer, Master Urg, who stood at the center of his cultists like a conductor orchestrating the chaos. The undead swarmed the battlefield, their lifeless forms stumbling and lurching as they sought out any remaining survivors. At a center point the center of the undead horde he simply stops moving and remains there as they swarm him from all sides.

“Pathetic,” Urg sneered, watching as undead soldiers swarmed the armored knight. “I expected more from you. It’s strange how the undead ignored you at first—your armor must be blessed, or perhaps enchanted. For a moment, I thought you were one of us… but no matter. You’ll make a fine addition to my army.”

Tenebrae remained silent, his glowing green eyes fixed on the necromancer. The undead pressed against him, their claws scraping against his armor, but he didn’t falter. He was over taken and consumed a pile of coprses on top of him.

Turning to his fellow cultist in a victorious shout.

“Soon, we will march on Newbark, then Ember, then Dawk City,” Urg declared, his voice rising triumphantly. “We will regroup with the northern sect before we take the capital. Long live Queen Lilith!”

The name echoed in Tenebrae’s mind like a thunderclap. His eyes narrowed, his grip tightening on his sword as a wave of rage coursed through him. “Lilith!” he roared, his voice shaking the battlefield.

The necromancers and cultists froze, turning their attention to the pile of undead that surrounded him. The horde began to shift and writhe, unnatural sounds emanating from the center.

“So that’s why you seem stronger than the others,” Tenebrae said, his voice cold and sharp. He pushed the undead off him with a pulse of dark energy, standing tall as they recoiled. “It’s obvious now—you’re not some low-tier necromancer. You’ve spent decades—no, centuries—on this path of cheating death, haven’t you?”

Urg hesitated, his confidence faltering for the first time. “I have practiced necromancy for over a century and a quarter,” he replied, his voice tinged with pride.

Tenebrae’s lip curled into a sneer. “You shouldn’t waste your voice monologuing your boring accomplishments to me. You’d do better to use it begging your queen to join this battle. Better yet, don’t beg. I want you to scream for her.”

The necromancer’s eyes widened in shock as Tenebrae’s armor began to fall away, piece by piece, revealing the glowing green aura that pulsed from his body.

“You’re… a necromancer,” Urg stammered. “I knew it. I knew there was something—”

“I told you to be silent!” Tenebrae bellowed, waving his skeletal hand. Runes glowed in the air, forming a sigil that shimmered with power. “Your mouth is loud, like a flute. So now, I seal you—render you mute!”

Urg gasped as his voice vanished, his mouth moving soundlessly. His cultists recoiled in terror, their confidence crumbling.

Tenebrae’s voice grew louder, his tone commanding. “I don’t need your story—I already know it. You were humans who forsook your gods, seeking immortality. You dreamed of becoming liches, gods of death. But to be a god, you must force kings to submit to you. To be a king, you must force your kingdom to acknowledge you. And your so-called queen…” He gestured toward the glowing glyphs forming above them. “She has abandoned you.”

The sigils in the sky pulsed with an unnatural rhythm, their glow intensifying until they burned like emerald suns against the blackened night. The ground trembled violently, cracks snaking through the cobblestones as if the earth itself were trying to flee. A deafening roar of energy filled the air, a sound so primal it clawed at the edges of sanity. Then it came—a thing born from nightmares, dragged screaming into existence.

The creature tore its way into reality with a grotesque, slithering motion. It was a mountainous amalgamation of corpses, an abomination pieced together from the remains of the dead. Limbs jutted out at impossible angles, fingers clawing blindly, and torsos twisted grotesquely as they merged into the writhing mass. Its skin, if it could be called that, was a patchwork of decayed flesh, bone, and sinew, pulsing as if alive. Faces—hundreds of them—were embedded in its surface, their mouths frozen in eternal screams, their hollow eyes leaking black putrid blood.

The necromancers screamed, their bravado shattering like glass as the beast turned its eyeless gaze upon them. It moved with unnatural fluidity for something so massive, its tendrils of flesh lashing out to snatch the nearest cultist. The man barely had time to cry out before he was pulled into the writhing maw at its center—a gaping hole lined with jagged shards of bone and teeth made from shattered skulls. The crunch of his body being consumed echoed through the night, each sound more horrifying than the last.

Another cultist tried to run, but the abomination was relentless. Its tendrils extended with a speed that defied logic, wrapping around her waist and dragging her screaming into its mass. As it fed, the creature grew, its pulsating flesh swelling grotesquely, absorbing the corpses scattered across the battlefield. Each body it consumed added to its twisted form, its shape becoming more monstrous, more horrifying with every passing second.

Eliza clutched her bow tightly, her breathing ragged as she tried to comprehend what she was seeing. Her legs felt weak, her heart pounding so hard it drowned out the screams. And then it hit her—a surge of energy, like a jolt of lightning through her veins.