The people who charged at Gale were nothing but mindless, soulless husks of what was once human. A far too frightening a comparison with the kingdom of Tibari, where the Knight King once ruled for a thousand years.
They came in a staggered surge through the ruined gate and broken garden line, bodies moving with the ugly persistence of something that had been told to advance and had no other thought left to interrupt it.
Their faces were still human enough to make the sight uncomfortable, not skulls or stitched corpses, but people with slack mouths, glassy eyes, and limbs that didn't quite move in coordination with intent.
If Ludwig let himself look too long, he could almost imagine they were merely sick, merely starving, merely desperate, until the first one took a hit that should have dropped a man and kept walking as if the impact had been a suggestion.
