Mist pressed against the skin like damp cloth, heavy enough to dull sound, yet thin enough to leave the world exposed in fragments.

  The air carried a faint odor sour, metallic, faintly rancid not strong, but out of place. He breathed it in once, catalogued it, and set it aside.

  He did not waste time. His eyes closed as he shifted into True Perception. Threads of energy, rhythms of life, flickers of movement that even mist could not mask. The fog itself was lifeless, no aura, no current of mana, confirming his earlier suspicion: not magic.

  What drew his attention were the signatures scattered through the plain. Faint, irregular. They did not move with the coherence of hunters or scouts.

  They dragged, stumbled, circled without purpose. Each pulse was weak, shallow, as if the bodies carrying them had been drained of something vital yet left to stagger on.

  In just seconds, Lucien arrived at the area and reopened his eyes. The shapes came into view through the haze, human forms, wandering the tall grass.

  Their movements lacked intention, no signs of awareness, no recognition of the carriage or anything else. They swayed like broken marionettes, feet sinking into mud yet never adjusting, arms loose, heads lolling.

  He had already sensed them from the carriage, but seeing them confirmed it: these were not soldiers, not hunters, not bandits. These were remnants. People stripped of will, left to move only because something forced them to.

  His expression stayed neutral, the voice low enough that only the mist might hear. “Undead, those misfortunate enough to be marked by the lowest of the dark signs.”

  Lucien remained still, watching, measuring. Their gait was slow, but their numbers were not negligible.

  He followed quietly, his steps cutting no sound into the mud. One wandered close enough for him to study.

  The eyes were open but vacant, pupils clouded. The skin sagged in places, but not from rot but from exhaustion, like flesh stretched thin by something pulling at it from within.

  His conclusion formed without hesitation: These were tools. Someone had stripped them down to shells and left them here, either as guards or To Unleashing an outbreak.

  The husks turned their heads toward him, movements sluggish yet deliberate, as if sensing more than seeing.

  One staggered forward, arms half-raised, mouth open in a voiceless groan. Another followed, and then more, until a small cluster shuffled toward where Lucien stood.

  Lucien did not move. He let them come close, his eyes narrowing, cold as ice. When some of them were ready to strike, He stepped back half a pace, just enough for their strike to cut through empty air.

  His gaze lingered on the undead out of calculation.

  Their clothing doesn’t suit this environment, which suggests they weren’t residents. The structure—what remains of this body—. From what my abilities reveal, this happened fairly recently… perhaps a week or two ago.

  Someone deliberately targeted a group of people—likely a small, active, and prosperous town.

  Some of the garments are new, expensive… consistent with higher social standing. It also indicates they weren’t slaves.

  All of this… to create an army.

  But why choose people like them? Why go through such effort when others resort to simply buying slaves or scavenging graves? I doubt morality is the reason… unless, of course, this was a condition for something else.”

  Lucien turned, letting the husks stumble past him. He had already judged them irrelevant.

  Killing them would tell him nothing he did not already know. The answer he sought lay deeper, in the heart of the mist.

  He moved further in, his steps soundless over damp earth. His True Perception stretched outward, tracing currents of mana through the fog.

  The truth tore through the ordinary scene, revealing what mortal eyes were never meant to see: a spectral host of husks, aimlessly adrift in the gloom.

  Broken creatures shambled among them, an unholy collection of the corrupted, stags with eyes like shattered voids, wolves whose fur clung in ragged tatters, alligators, even a bear whose ribs clawed at its shriveled hide.

  No malice stirred within their hollow forms; they were but puppets, bound to a will that transcended their wretched existence.

  All of these are weak. At best, they could trouble a well-equipped squad of soldiers. They’ve been given the lowest form of a dark sign… and even that, bound by numerous restrictions.

  Why weaken your own forces? Are they all the same, or is there a hierarchy?

  Whatever the case… they are tools. That much is certain.

  The question is—tools for what?

  His senses caught something else. Threads of magic layered across the terrain. Surveillance spells, careful and spread wide.

  Lucien avoided them with clinical precision, circling like a predator. But everywhere he turned, the pattern was the same: more husks, more animals, always circling around the same unseen center.

  He stopped, a moment.

  This mist… it’s not natural. It is created through a ritual or to be more exact it is a by product of the ritual.

  Its purpose is to cloud the senses, twist direction, and strip the living of their bearings… to make escape impossible.

  This place is a sacrificial ground. A pit concealed by fog and is filled by these undead folks.

  The husks aren’t attackers. They act as Waiters, dragging anything still alive To the table. Not to kill. Not to fight. Simply to deliver.

  His lips tightened into the faintest line, then spoken:

  “Meaning, if the mist is a byproduct of the ritual and is connected to each of its elements, ending the ritual would also end the mist. If I want to leave this place quickly, I have to stop the ritual.”

  Without hesitation, he angled his path toward the concentration of signals, the places where the fog grew thickest, and the surveillance web was unavoidable.

  He stepped forward deliberately, letting his presence brush the edges of their watchful threads.

  If there was a mind behind this, they would know he was coming. And that was exactly what Lucien wanted.

  Lucien moved through the mist without hurry, hands brushing the tall grass as if cataloguing texture.

  The fog pressed cold against his face, close enough to smell the faint iron of decay. He closed his eyes for a count and let True Perception do its work.

  Searching for a signature stronger than the rest, for a heartbeat that might betray the ritual’s center. He tasted the pattern and set his direction.

  A strand of grass tightened around his wrist with a quick, unnatural pull. It coiled like a hand, fingers of blade and stem threading between his skin.

  He stopped, felt the grip, and then answered it the way one undoes a knot. Lucien flexed, aura tightening the plant fibers in his palm until the grass became a snapped rod of green iron.

  He pulled, uprooting the clamped stalk clean from its root.

  He held the broken tuft up, studied the cross-section, then said, almost conversational, “Hmm. This is some good grass. It could be of some use.” He tucked the stalk into his sleeve and moved on.

  Once he began, he was a line of motion across the field. His body blurred between stalks, a series of precise accelerations that left the mist to fold back into place. True Perception painted the field in beats.

  There is a thicker lattice of surveillance, beyond that cluster of hollowed animals and men that wandered like instruments playing a script, and in the middle there was a thin node which was serving as a watchtower and a guide in this Vigorous mist.

  Lucien did not stop to fight them. He sidestepped, vaulted, dropped, and moved around their arcs of motion with the care of a dancer on a crowded stage. They lunged and struck at the air. He let them miss.

  He found the first node, A rod half-buried at a shallow rise, a length of carved wood capped with a dull red crystal.

  Lucien crouched and watched the rhythm.

  The crystal sent a radial thread through the fog, a sweep of sight that scanned in slow arcs. He timed it like a metronome.

  Ah, so this is their tool for surveillance… and navigation as well. Crude work. Its range is pitiful. There should be more of them scattered about.

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  He withdrew the grass he had uprooted and poured a sliver of aura into it.

  The delicate fibers hardened, then sang under his touch. With one measured flick, he launched the stalk.

  It sailed, a green spear, and struck the crystal squarely. The red cap cracked with a dry sound.

  The rod splintered, the weave around it bleeding out.

  He moved on without hesitation. Another rod, another pulse, another crystal shattered by the same method.

  Each destroyed node severed a vein of their surveillance, crippling both their eyes and their path

  At one place the guardians were denser, monstrous shapes packed around a stake like a ring of sentries.

  He passed them in a breath. A giant wolf lunged; he slid beneath its sweep. A bear reared; he blurred past its flank and left the animal licking air at his retreat.

  He did not engage. His movements were too fast, too precise for their clumsy coordination. He prioritized the nodes, not trophies.

  Whenever he destroyed a node, it flared just before breaking—releasing a brief trail of mana that pointed somewhere unseen.

  Lucien traced each fading signature, mapping their paths in his mind like lines converging on an unseen heart.

  I hope this is the way to the site of the ritual

  Lucien moved deeper toward the center.

  [1 Day Before the Sinclair's Arrival]

  “Visitors.”

  The voice was faint, feminine. A single word, curling out of the mist.

  Tobias tightened his grip on his axe. “You heard that? What was it?”

  Maeve’s knuckles whitened on her spear. “Pretty sure everyone did.”

  Rowan raised his hand, steady, confident even here. “A civilian. What’s she doing here? …Hey! Where are you? Don’t panic, we’ll come to you.” His eyes scanned the blank, fog-drenched air.

  Tobias and Lena moved forward instinctively, toward the sound.

  “Wait,” Maeve hissed, unease flickering across her face. “I don’t feel good about this. Could be a trap. Monsters mimic voices—we’ve seen it before.”

  Rowan nodded, though his gaze remained sharp. “True. But what if—”

  Lena cut in, her red hair catching what little light bled through the haze. “There could be someone who needs us.”

  Tobias forced a grin, though his eyes were taut. “Don’t worry. If it’s some creepy bastard, I’ll split it in two.”

  They pressed on, and the world closed around them. The mist thickened until their own outlines blurred. Sight dwindled to arm’s reach.

  Rowan’s voice sharpened. “Everyone stay close. Keep talking. If we split, we’re finished. This mist… it isn’t right.”

  Tobias muttered under his breath, unease showing at last. “Is it even mist? It feels so creepy.”

  Lena cupped her hands around her mouth. “Girl! Say something again—where are you?”

  Maeve flinched, the hairs on her arms rising. “The mana’s getting stronger the closer we get… I don’t understand. Why does this mist feel so suffocating?.” She tied a cloth over her mouth, wincing.

  Then it came again. “Visitors.”

  They turned. A small black silhouette formed through the fog. A girl.

  “Gods,” Lena whispered, and before the others could stop her, she rushed forward, boots splashing in the damp soil. “Oh no—what is a child doing here?”

  Tobias cursed, following close. “Must be that cartel bastard’s doing. When I find him—”

  Lena reached the girl first. She knelt, arms wrapping around the tiny frame. The child trembled, body shaking against hers. Lena smiled with relief, whispering, “You’re safe. Don’t worry. Tell us where your mother is.”

  Her fingers brushed something wet. Sticky. Warm.

  She pulled back her hand. It gleamed crimson.

  Blood.

  Her breath caught, then broke into a scream. “Gods—Maeve! She’s bleeding! She needs help!”

  Maeve’s eyes widened. Something felt wrong. ‘Lena! Step back—now!

  She lunged forward, shouting, “Lena! Leave her! Now!”

  Lena’s head snapped up, confusion in her eyes. The child’s mouth had opened wide, teeth jagged, lips blackened. It lunged for her throat.

  With a cry, Lena shoved it back, holding it at arm’s length. For the first time she saw it clearly.

  Its body was shriveled, skin mottled gray and torn, veins bulging dark beneath parchment-thin flesh. Eyes clouded, jaw twitching with unnatural hunger.

  An undead.

  Tobias yanked Lena back, axe rising instinctively. His voice cracked with disbelief. “Gods… what happened to her?”

  Maeve’s voice was low, shaking, caught between disgust and pity. “I’ve never seen one in the flesh… but from the books I’ve read—this is an undead.”

  Rowan’s face hardened, scanning the shifting mist.

  Shapes emerged. Dozens. Human forms staggering, eyes hollow, flesh sloughing. Men, women, even children. Once normal people—now a husk, turned into these abominations.

  Maeve’s breath hitched, horror sinking into her bones. “They were… civilians.”

  “Move,” Rowan ordered. His voice was iron, though his grip had tightened on his blade. “Now.”

  They turned back, steps quickening, then breaking into a run. The undead followed—arms clawing, mouths gaping.

  The group struck them aside with practiced ease, spear haft cracking skulls, axe sweeping bodies away, sword cutting through with bright arcs.

  But no matter how many they pushed back, more came. From the streets. From the fog.

  Each face that lunged at them bore human features—farmers, merchants, mothers. The recognition twisted the group’s hearts. Their blows were swift, their defense precise, but there was no victory in it.

  They did not fight with triumph. They fought with revulsion, with pity, with the unshakable chill that something sacred had been defiled.

  At last, they broke into a less-crowded stretch, where the mist thinned enough to let them gather. Their chests heaved, weapons slick, eyes wide and shaken.

  For a moment, silence pressed on them, broken only by the sound of the horde still moving in the distance.

  And in that silence, every one of them realized: this was no simple mission. They had stepped into something fouler than they were prepared to face

  Lena doubled over, tears hot at the rim of her eyes, her face going pale as she swallowed back bile. She forced out words between heaves.

  “ What was that? Why would anyone do such a cruel thing to the living? She was only a child. All these people… desecrated.”

  Maeve’s hand tightened on her spear, voice low but steady.

  “ Calm down, Lena. You are our blade. We cannot let emotion break us now. Keep your edge ready. We must find the lunatic who did this.”

  Tobias stared at the path ahead, anger coiling in his jaw. He spoke with a rough, aching honesty.

  “ I cannot shake the image of what I cut through. That might have been a person with a life. I feel like I gave the worst kind of answer to someone who already suffered. Whoever did this—I’ll carve them apart, piece by piece”

  Maeve nodded, voice blunt with duty.

  “ We will. But also consider there may be hostages, ordinary people trapped here. We must protect anyone we can. Find the mastermind. Learn why this happened.”

  Rowan breathed hard, the disgust clear in every word.

  “ We have to do it. We will face more of them. It will be hard, but these are bodies of people. No one deserves this to be treated like this even after death. Better we end them than let them suffer like this any longer.”

  Maeve looked toward the thickening fog.

  “If anyone behind this escape, they will do more of such hideous thing. We must go to the source and deal with it first.”

  Tobias glanced to where visibility thinned.

  “But we cannot go to a place we don't know about, not in this mist.”

  Lena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her voice trembled, but she spoke with purpose.

  “ Remember the bell? Head toward it. There has to be a link.”

  Rowan squared his shoulders.

  “ Good. Use your sense. Stay together and move toward the sound.”

  They moved, and the mist closed around them again. Maeve’s warning cut through the fog.

  “ We are surrounded.”

  Tobias stepped forward, axe heavy in his hands. He looked at the nearest staggered figure as if it were a fallen neighbor. His voice was quiet, a promise and an apology wrapped together.

  “ You poor souls. Forgive me for what I am about to do. This is the most I can give—a final farewell, and a promise I will make whoever did this pay.”

  Then he moved. Speed and force carried him in a clean circle. His axe rose and fell. Heads came away in a cascade, torsos slumping. The undead collapsed like puppets with their strings cut.

  Lena followed, blade singing with aura. Her strikes were precise, reverent in their finality. As each form went down, she bowed her head, a brief gesture of respect.

  Maeve and Rowan kept pace, spear and sword cutting the path. For hours, they pushed through the fog, always moving toward the bell. The undead rose like obstacles along a road.

  No matter which path they took, even ground that seemed empty at first filled within minutes—stumbling shapes spilling out of the fog, as if undead knew where they were.

  They did not tire. They did not slow. Their numbers swelled and reformed.

  Four hours passed. But their minds had been taxed by the repetition. Fighting what they all wished to avoid had worn at the edges of them. Each victory brought no comfort, only a new, stubborn line of bodies ahead.

  They pressed on. The sound of the bell hung somewhere deeper in the mist, steady and inevitable, drawing them deeper into the place where the cruelty began.

  The fifth hour bled into mist and shadow. Shapes emerged now not of people, but beasts — a pack of wolves, their fur sloughed and rotting, jaws stretched unnaturally wide.

  A stag with half its antlers broken, eyes clouded white. A bear that lumbered forward with ribs pushing through hide. Behind them, darker still: goblins twisted to cadavers, orcs dragging rusted cleavers, insects the size of hounds clattering with hollow carapaces.

  Maeve shifted first, spear raised. Her knuckles whitened, then relaxed as she whispered words of focus.

  Flame curled up the length of her shaft, wrapping around the blade until it blazed like a torch in fog.

  She lunged — one thrust, and the spear split into fire-born copies, each piercing a wolf in turn. The pack erupted in howls that cut short into crackling ash, their bodies collapsing in blackened heaps.

  Lena followed, blade flashing. Her sword moved without pause, each cut an answer to the undead’s mindless charges. Aura shimmered faintly over her form, sharpening her motion until she seemed less to swing and more to carve.

  Tobias braced himself in the midst of it all. His axe spun once in his grip, then he let it fly. The weapon cut the mist in a wide arc, a disc of steel and wind.

  It split through an orc’s neck, carried on to cleave an insect’s body in half, and with a sharp tug of his wrist, curved back into his palm. The force of it stirred the fog, momentarily clearing their circle.

  His chest rose and fell, steady, the grimness in his eyes breaking only for a quick grunt of satisfaction.

  Rowan stood behind them, his voice thrumming in a low, steady hum. The blade in his grip—half sword, half tuning fork.

  Each of his slash struck the air like a drum, sending ripples of sound spiraling outward.

  Invisible waves slammed into the beasts. Wolves staggered mid-leap, thrown aside as if caught by unseen hands.

  The stag froze, body shuddering before its legs collapsed beneath it. Then Rowan drew the blade across the air in a single, sharp arc—

  And the resonance screamed. A bear’s torso split as if unzipped by the sound itself, its death-cry unraveling into a scatter of broken echoes.

  A brief silence for lives lost, before stepping forward again into the fog.