Thin flakes drifted down over blood and stone, softening the sharp edges of battle. It clung to the broken cobblestones, to the ruined archways of Whitehold, to the bodies…puppet and man alike, littering the courtyard.
Baron Edric stood near the first wall, his shield raised high, breath frosting before his mouth. All around him, his soldiers held the line, not with shouts or songs, but with quiet, ragged resolve.
He heard everything.
The wet crunch of spears piercing through flesh that didn't resist. The snap of joints twisting unnaturally. The silence of dying things that didn't know they were dying.
There were no screams.
Even when they were split open… even when they were burned… not a cry. Only the sound of motion. The sound of war without rage or pain.
It was that silence that stayed with him.
Behind Edric, Serah loosened another arrow. She didn't speak, but he could see the set of her jaw, the narrowness in her eyes. The citizen puppets first, shambling forward with crude weapons and splintered shields. Behind them, the soldier-puppets advanced with purpose, flanking from alleys and breached walls. They moved like they remembered formation, but not meaning.
Serah wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. "They're not pressing hard," she said, voice low. "Just enough to hold us. To bleed us slow."
Edric nodded once. "They are toying with us."
Her next arrow struck a puppet in the chest. It didn't fall.
"They don't even tire," she murmured.
"No," Edric agreed. "But we do, that is their goal."
A scout appeared behind the column line, armour scraped and breath ragged.
"Report from commander Dave's flank," he said. "They tried to draw the enemy wide. No response."
Edric's jaw tensed.
The scout continued, "They advanced anyway. Began a sweep around the courtyard's left arc…minimal resistance. But sir... the enemy didn't flinch. Didn't even glance toward them. They're only watching you."
Serah turned sharply. "Only him?"
"Yes, captain. It's like… they don't care about the rest."
Edric said nothing for a long breath. He simply looked again at the puppets, and for the first time, truly saw it.
All of them… every twisted head, every blank-eyed stare… was pointed at him.
Not the shield wall. Not the archers. Him.
He didn't move. Didn't blink. Just breathed. Slowly. Deliberately.
"Tell Dave to keep pressing," Edric said finally. "Start from the outer edge. Clean through the flank like wheat. They won't stop him… so long as I stay in the field."
The scout hesitated. "Baron…"
"Go."
The man saluted and vanished into the drifting fog behind the lines.
Serah spoke, her voice quiet. "They want to break you."
"I know."
"You think that's who's controlling them? The same one that made the others?"
"Only god knows."
A few more moments passed. Then movement.
One of the puppets…a man in tattered merchant robes, face bent strangely to the left…took a single step forward.
Then another behind him.
And another.
And then they began to walk.
But not charge.
Walk.
Measured. Slow. As if returning home.
They crossed the yard with their eyes still on Edric.
And as they drew closer, the whispers began.
A woman's voice, soft and confused:
"Baron? Is it really you?"
A child's voice, trembling, warbling through frostbitten lips:
"I want to go home…"
A man's voice…far too close now…cracked with sorrow:
"You were supposed to protect us…"
Edric's men flinched. A few stepped back instinctively. One of the younger spearmen lowered his blade.
"I… I know that voice," he whispered.
Serah swore beneath her breath.
"Hold," Edric said firmly, stepping forward. "Do not break line!"
"But sir…"
"They are not what they sound like."
"But she's..."
"It's not her."
The puppet that mimicked the woman broke into a run.
She was fast.
Too fast.
She didn't scream. She didn't shout.
She simply raised a blade and lunged at Edric like she had always belonged there.
He met her with his shield.
The crack of impact echoed off stone. The puppet collapsed, spine bent backward unnaturally…but did not stop. It crawled toward him, half-head turned, whispering something broken and indecipherable.
"Back!" Edric roared. "Spears, ready! Archers, draw!"
Then louder:
"They are playing with our minds! Don't let them!"
More puppets surged forward.
One wept as it swung. One sobbed like a child choking on smoke.
Another whispered, "Save me…" as its blade struck a soldier's thigh.
The courtyard turned again to chaos.
And still, they made no sound when they fell. Not a single puppet cried out in pain. They screamed only when it might slow a blade.
Serah fired again. Her arrow caught a puppet in the shoulder, snapping bone…but it didn't stumble. It pressed forward, lips slack, face familiar.
Baron's shield rang with impact after impact. His sword arm moved with precision, not rage. Each strike deliberate. Each cut final. And still, for every puppet that fell, three more replaced it.
He didn't think of their faces anymore. He couldn't afford to.
But others still hesitated.
A line of younger soldiers…men fresh from Branwyke…wavered under the pressure. One stepped back from a puppet that looked like his uncle. Another lost his nerve when a child-shaped figure ran at him with a kitchen knife, sobbing uncontrollably.
The hesitation cost them dearly.
The child stabbed his thigh. The soldier screamed…not in pain, but in betrayal.
Another puppet tore into his side before he hit the ground.
Edric turned…too late to stop it…and drove his blade through both puppets. No bloodlust. No anger. Just survival.
"Do not stop!" he shouted over the clash of steel. "Do not listen to these creatures! Whatever they say…it is not them!"
Serah fought beside him, arrowless now, her short sword bloodied to the hilt. "They're unravelling the front," she warned.
"I see it."
"They're winning."
"I know!"
From the eastern edge, a horn blew twice…sharp and distant.
Dave.
Edric turned his head just enough to glimpse movement along the far-left flank…movement that was neither slow nor hesitant.
Commander Dave's force had reached the courtyard edge. They emerged like shadows uncoiling from stone, blades low, steps light, eyes locked on the battlefield with the focus of men who had long since abandoned emotion in Favor of efficiency.
Dave gave no call to rally, no order to inspire. He didn't need to.
He raised two fingers. A silent hand signal.
His squad…twelve hardened men, split like water into the ruins. No battle cries. No hesitation. They flanked the line, each cut swift and merciless.
And their leader, cold-eyed and silent, stepped over a dismembered puppet that twitched against a wall, ignoring the sound it made…the rasping echo of a voice not its own, whispering "help me" with cracked lips. He didn't pause to wonder if it meant anything. He didn't care if it had once been someone. He didn't care that it wore the face of a child or a mother or a friend.
To Dave, it was in the way. So, he drove his blade through its skull without flinching and moved on.
His men were just like him, quiet, merciless. One of them skewered a puppet that looked like an elderly baker, mouth agape mid-moan, with a single upward thrust that split the sternum.
Another grabbed a puppet trying to mimic tears…its face contorted in a performance of sorrow…and slit its throat, then kicked the body away.
They weren't just fighting. They were cleansing.
They didn't flinch at the mimicry. They didn't fall for the cries or the pleading voices. They didn't break formation when a puppet called out the name of a fallen friend or mimicked the voice of a lover.
None of that mattered.
The only thing that mattered was the Baron's order: flank, draw pressure, cut a path.
They obeyed with cold precision.
And it worked.
The puppets peeled away from Edric's main line, not in panic, but as if some command elsewhere had shifted. They diverted just enough…some moving to intercept Dave's force, others breaking formation, trying to block the side cut.
It was a crack.
Not a rout…but a fracture.
And Edric saw it.
"Now!" he bellowed, his voice echoing like steel drawn across bone. "Push forward! Cut their line in two!"
The shield wall surged with him, tighter now, braced not by bravery but by grim necessity. Steel met flesh…not in rage, but in discipline. They killed not because they hated the enemy… but because they had no other choice.
Edric's sword never stopped. Every stroke was clean, practiced, honed through years of battles. He didn't think about the faces anymore. Only the angles. The openings. The next motion.
To his left, Serah let out a sound…not a sob, not a scream, but something like a hollow breath. She plunged her short sword into a puppet that wore a child's face. Its mouth trembled like it wanted to say something… but it simply sagged and collapsed.
She didn't blink. She didn't forgive. There was no time for either.
Her hands were already moving to the next one.
The line kept pressing forward. They were bloodied, exhausted, fraying at the edges…but they were still moving. Still cutting.
Still alive.
On the far flank, Dave and his soldiers converged near the central courtyard, blades red and boots slick with snow-melt. His gaze flicked once toward Edric…not to seek praise or direction, but to confirm one thing: the path was opening.
And Edric, without a word, lifted his sword once more.
The shield wall surged again.
They were not winning.
Not yet.
But they were no longer losing either.
And above it all, high above the broken gate and the narrow alleys where puppet blood steamed on the snow, Kaavi's raven circled once in the grey morning sky…its black wings cutting through the fog like a needle threading a wound.
Somewhere beyond the eastern reaches of Whitehold… the next move was waiting.