The caravan halted at dusk.
No one wanted to stop in this place, the Reckoning Fields, but the captain knew darkness traveled swifter than wheels. To drive blind here was to invite slaughter. She raised her hand, and with a weary groan, the wagons creaked to a halt in the ash-choked hollow of the scarred hills.
The ground yielded a brittle crunch beneath their boots, as if stepping on the bones of the land itself. When the first fires were coaxed to life, their smoke rose in crooked spirals, vanishing into the starless dark. The acrid tang of old fire clung to every breath, sharp and bitter, refusing to be drowned out by the scent of burning wood. Around them, the hills loomed like broken teeth, black stumps jutting against a bruised sky.
Leo sat close to the wagon wheels, the ropes still biting into his wrists. The air here pressed heavier than in the Graywood, every breath was grit in his throat, as though the very air remembered death. Firelight painted the ash with shifting shadows that stretched too long, twisting into shapes that never quite matched their owners.
The shard in his palm throbbed with a steady rhythm, a second heartbeat that did not belong to him. They are near, it whispered. Not living. Not gone. Empty shells aching to be filled.
He pressed his fists together, the coarse rope grinding into raw skin. "Not now," he hissed under his breath, a plea to himself as much as to the thing within.
But another whisper answered, not from the shard.
The wind curled low across the camp, carrying a sound faint and ragged, like a voice torn apart by centuries.
"...hunnnnggrrrrryy..."
The wagon boy startled awake, clutching his blanket to his chest, his eyes wide as coins. "Did, did anyone hear that?"
The guards stiffened, exchanging sharp looks, hands tightening on spear shafts. Shields rose, edges catching the firelight.
Owen's voice cracked as he swallowed hard. "Reckoning Fields," he whispered. "They say the dead still-"
"Silence," Sofia cut him off. The captain's hand rested on her sword hilt, knuckles white. Her gaze swept the night with the steadiness of one who expected violence at any moment.
The ground answered her vigilance.
At first it was subtle, a crunch of ash under no feet, a shift in the dust as though the earth exhaled. Then more, a dragging sound, slow and uneven.
Shapes stirred among the blackened trunks.
The boy screamed first. From the shadows lurched a figure, its gait broken, its skin stretched thin as parchment over splintered bone. Its armor was no more than rust and memory, crumbling with each step. Its eyes were pits, lit faintly with a ghostly blue fire.
Another followed, then another. The ground itself seemed to split as more clawed their way upward, as though the battlefield was coughing up its forgotten dead. A dozen. Then more.
"Shields up!" Sofia barked. Her guards fell into a ring around the wagons, spears bristling outward. The firelight flickered across their terrified faces, painting them pale and grim.
Leo's pulse hammered in his skull. The shard strained within him, thrashing like a beast chained too long. They are fragments unmoored. Feed on them. Claim them. Rise higher.
"No..." His throat tightened. His breath came in short, shallow bursts.
A corpse stumbled into the shield line, and a guard thrust his spear through its chest. But the thing did not fall, it seized the shaft with skeletal hands and pulled itself closer, grinding teeth gnashing against iron.
Another hurled itself at the circle, slamming a guard to the ground. Screams erupted, steel clashing as men tried to cut through foes that refused to bleed.
Sofia's sword flashed silver, cleaving through one corpse, then another, her voice hoarse as she shouted orders. Still, her steps faltered as the tide pressed in, their number growing with each moment, drawn from the very soil.
Leo fought his bonds, ropes sawing his skin raw. "Untie me!"
The toothless guard snarled, spittle flying. "We'll not unleash you too!"
"You'll die if you don't!" Leo's voice cracked with desperation. The ash around him began to swirl, the whispers swelling in his skull until they were no longer faint but thunderous.
One touch. One opening. I will take them. I will end this for you.
A corpse slammed into the wagon behind him, clawed fingers raking deep into the wood. The boy shrieked, pinned by its reach.
Leo's body moved before thought could stop him. He thrust his bound hands forward. The cloth burned away, and light roared from his palm.
A wave of brilliance burst outward in a shock that rattled every bone. Fire and shadow collided, searing through the stumbling corpse. It screamed with a voice like breaking stone, its hollow eyes flaring white before its body collapsed to dust.
Silence struck for a breath. Every gaze turned to him, guards, captain, the terrified boy. Even the dead seemed to hesitate, blue flames guttering in their sockets as though they had recognized something familiar.
Then the shard laughed inside him, victorious. Yes. More. Take them all.
The hesitation ended. The shades wailed in unison, a chorus of hunger, and rushed the circle in a surge that shook the ground.
The battle was no longer men against ash.
It was judgment.