The snow lay heavy and undisturbed around the old granary; save for the mess they'd left behind. Soot and blood had melted into the slush, rust-coloured stains.
The wind had long gone still. No birds. Just silence.
Just fogged breath and a silence that pressed in like a physical weight.
Gavril stood over the body, axes in both hands, his arms heavy as stone. His chest rose and fell with short, strained breaths that sent sharp, stabbing pains radiating from his right side with every inhale. The twin's body lay face-down in the snow, the skull caved inward...cracked, not shattered, the bone finally yielding after the last few brutal strikes. A thin trickle of blood, already freezing, marked the pale skin near his temple.
The forearm was gone, lost somewhere in the churned, wet snow. Gavril's eyes flickered briefly over the crimson-stained patch where he knew it lay buried before returning to the grey sky. His axe was clean now, scraped raw against bone and ice, the vibrations lingering in his palms.
His right rib throbbed with a vicious ache - a dull, grinding pressure that sharpened into a hot lance whenever he shifted or drew too deep a breath. Cracked. Maybe broken. But the pain felt distant, secondary to the cold numbness settling over him. He didn't care.
He looked up, slowly, into the grey sky. Cold breath poured from his nose in long, thin clouds.
Snowflakes had begun to fall again...light, drifting down like ash from a fire long burned out.
Behind him, soft footsteps crunched through the snow, deliberate and cautious.
Tannic emerged, bow still slung over one shoulder, his hand no longer near an arrow but resting loosely on his belt knife. He stopped a few paces away, his gaze sweeping the scene before settling on Gavril, and let out a long, visible exhale that clouded the air. "Didn't think you'd do it," he said quietly, his voice cutting the stillness.
Gavril didn't answer right away. The effort felt immense.
Tannic stepped closer, his boots sinking deep, then looked at the mess in the snow, the cracked skull, the missing limb. "You alright?"
"Yes, but I think one of my ribs is broken," Gavril muttered, the words tight. Every syllable tugged at the injury.
"That all?" Tannic asked, his eyes sharp, noting the way Gavril held himself rigidly, favouring his right side.
Gavril managed a single, stiff nod.
Tannic stared at him for a moment longer, then a slow, wary smirk touched his lips. "Never thought you had something like that in you." He gestured vaguely towards the body with his chin. "That did not look like a guides back there... that was butcher's work or executioner's."
Gavril glanced at him, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. He turned his boot away from a smear of dark red slush. "Didn't know I had to prove anything."
Tannic let out a low breath that might've been a laugh, tinged with disbelief. "Just saying. You got hit like a lunatic. And still walk straight. Where the hell did you learn to fight like that? Swung those axes like they were part of you."
Gavril didn't answer, his gaze drifting back to the falling snow.
Tannic raised an eyebrow, studying the grim set of Gavril's jaw. "Someone with your skill's usually got a name, you know. Some story. A tale passed around the taverns with hushed voices and raised tankards."
"Then they never looked in the right places," Gavril replied, his voice flat, final.
Tannic chuckled, shaking his head, a sound devoid of real humour. "Well, damn. Whoever taught you...that was a rare kind of violence. Remind me not to get on your bad side." He watched Gavril closely, noting how the man avoided looking directly at the corpse.
Gavril gave a small, chuckle that made him wince as his rib flared. "Then don't get on it."
Silence descended again. The wind picked up slightly, a cold sigh that brushed a few flakes across the body at their feet and stirred the frozen hair on the twin's ruined scalp.
Tannic looked back toward the eastern side of the street, where Liran and Corren had disappeared minutes earlier into the swirling grey. "We should get moving. They wouldn't have made it far. And if more are coming…"
Gavril rolled his shoulder once, gritting his teeth against the fresh wave of pain that lanced through his side. He gave a curt nod.
Without another word, the two turned and began walking...axes held ready, footsteps soft and quiet through the thick, muffling snow.
The body of the twin lay still, snowflakes already beginning to gather atop of his skull, dusting the dark hair and frozen blood. The jagged crack in the bone remained, stark against the whiteness.
But not for long.
South Wall, near the city edge
Commander Edric's Vanguard Position
The scent of ash and iron never faded. It layered the air – the metallic tang of fresh blood, the coppery rot of puppets, the sting of burning pitch and charred flesh. It coated the tongue, filled the nostrils, a miasma of war.
Baron Edric moved through the shifting line of his soldiers, sword drawn and drenched in puppets blood that steamed faintly in the air. He had already lost count of how many had fallen. His armour was streaked with soot and gore. His voice, hoarse and ragged. Numb fingers clenched the leather-bound hilt of his sword.
The worst hadn't even arrived yet.
Just behind him, his men strained to hold the central corridor near the old mill road...barricades of splintered wood and overturned wagons hastily raised, torch crews waiting at each end with nervous eyes, their brands dripping fiery oil. At first, the tide had been manageable.
Clumsy, slow-moving puppets had charged blindly. The front lines held, blades rising and falling in grim rhythm.
But then the tactics changed. The enemy began using their own as tools.
The puppets had begun to move in waves. The thin, rotted and broken ones came first...citizen puppets, poorly armed, moving slow. Easy to kill. They walked straight into the blades, no thought for cover. But they weren't trying to kill. They were soft shields, tools to blunt the defenders' edge.
Edric watched it happen, the horror of it coiling cold in his gut.
One soldier puppet...taller, armoured, limbs moving with a chilling, unnatural fluidity...stepped behind two shambling citizen puppets. Before Edric could shout a warning, it shoved its rusted blade *through* both of them to strike a defender crouched behind a wagon wheel. The two bodies jerked, serving as meat shields for the strike, absorbing the desperate blows from the front while the real threat struck unopposed from behind. The defender gasped, eyes wide with shock, then crumpled. A ripple of horrified disbelief ran through the nearby men.
"Bastards are using their own like… sandbags,"
It wasn't over.
Another wave came...this time, the soldier puppets came in tight packs, moving almost as one mind. They ducked behind the rotted ones. Their coordination was unnatural, silent. When one puppet was struck down, cleaved by a poleaxe, the others adjusted their path within seconds, flowing around the falling body like water around a stone. No hesitation. No screams. Just the awful, efficient silence of tools being deployed.
One of Edric's sergeants, Bren, a veteran with a thick beard, tried to flank them, leading a handful of men around a burning cart. The moment they broke rank, the puppets split with insectile precision, surrounded Bren's group in utter silence, and cut them down in seconds. Edric saw Bren go down beneath three blades, his cry cut short, a surge of helpless fury tightening Edric's throat.
"Back! Keep your line! Watch the left!" Edric barked, the command scraping his raw throat. He swung his blade in a practiced arc, cutting a puppet soldier through the collarbone. It fell, jerking, but another stepped over it instantly, lunging with a rusted spear.
Edric parried, the impact jarring up his arm, and stabbed it through eye socket, twisting the blade free. He kept moving, a fixed point in the chaos, his breath fogging thickly before his face. The snow underfoot was no longer white; it was a churned slurry of crimson and mud in too many places.
Overhead, greasy smoke rose from the barricades. Torch crews lit the flammable oil again, and fire roared anew across the narrow corridor. Screams followed – high, unnatural shrieks from the puppets igniting, writhing silently as the flames consumed cloth and desiccated flesh.
But even then, some walked forward, fire licking up their limbs, swords still raised, until their tendons snapped and they collapsed like smouldering puppets with cut strings.
Edric felt a splash of warm, puppet blood strike his cheek. He didn't flinch, wiping it away with a gauntleted hand already stiff with cold.
He grabbed one of his lieutenants, young Arlen, by the collar. "Signal the eastern flank...push them toward the inner line! If we can funnel them..." He saw the fear in Arlen's eyes, the fatigue, but also the trust. They relied on him, this fixed point.
A sudden, heavy impact cut his words short. A puppet soldier, half its face missing, had leapt forward, ignoring a sword thrust to its gut, and slammed bodily into the soldier beside Edric.
Iron-hard hands crushed the man's chest plate inward with a sickening crunch of bone. The soldier, Tomas, who'd joked about the cold just an hour ago, gasped once, blood bubbling on his lips, and went limp. Edric's sword flashed, a blur of desperate steel, cutting the thing's head clean off in a single, brutal stroke.
It didn't even make a sound as it fell.
"They're shifting again!" Morran shouted from the right flank, his voice strained. "Soldiers now...they're taking the lead! They're pushing the damned civilians!"
The citizen puppets...began moving more erratically. Some stumbled. Others were simply shoved forward by the soldier puppets behind them.
Not walking. Not charging. Just thrown like sacks of grain.
One slammed into a tight group of pikemen, its rotten body tangling in their weapons, disrupting the line just long enough for a pair of armoured soldier puppets to slip through the gap, blades rising and falling silently.
It was war stripped of glory or honour. Just blood, the clash of steel, the crackle of flames, the choked gasps of dying men, the wet thuds of impacts, and bodies used like disposable tools.
Edric fought on, the cold biting through his armour. Each swing of his sword was measured, efficient, conserving strength. Each order was barked with frayed precision, the only thing holding the line together. His men followed, their trust in him a tangible force in the chaos. They trusted him...not because he was flawless, but because he endured.
"Archers...rotate to fire east! NOW!" he roared, barely pausing as he parried a clumsy lunge and drove his blade into a puppet's neck, feeling the jarring impact on bone.
Screams rose again, human this time. Some of his men were starting to falter, the relentless, silent pressure grinding them down. The sound of blades clashing grew louder as the line contracted.
He couldn't be everywhere. He couldn't save them all.
Not today.
=
The snow had deepened, a fresh blanket settling over the earlier violence, muffling the world. Nothing moved. Not the air. Just a profound, watchful stillness.
Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the wooden plank leading out of the tunnel beneath the granary shifted. Just slightly. A fine trickle of dust fell from its edge. The plank slid aside with a quiet, deliberate scrape that sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.
A puppet crawled up.
Its arms dragged stiffly, joints moving with a jerk. Its back was arched at an angle. Its head twitched once violently to the side, then tilted, fixing empty, sunken sockets on the scene. And its mouth… moved.
Not screaming. Not muttering nonsense.
But speakin, the sound emanating from its throat like stones grinding together, too deep and resonant for its decaying form.
"…out of time… should've sent the other one…"
Its steps were uneven, lurching, but it moved with chilling intent, dragging one foot slightly, straight toward the shape lying in the snow.
The twin.
Face-down.
The snow around his head stained a deeper crimson, already crusted with ice. The jagged crack in his skull was stark against the fresh white powder dusting it.
But now, the crack had begun to… shift. A faint, wet grinding sound emanated from within. Torn skin at the edges puckered, sealing over with unnatural slowness, knitting together with threads of tissue. It wasn't natural. It wasn't fast. But it was happening, a grotesque reversal.
The puppet knelt stiffly beside the body, movements suddenly becoming smooth, precise, unnervingly practiced. It reached into a small, stained satchel at its side and pulled out a thin glass vial.
Inside: a thick, dark liquid, the colour of old blood and rot, pulsing faintly with a sluggish, internal movement in the dim light. Not glowin.
The puppet didn't look around. It moved like a surgeon who had performed this task countless times...like it was simply employing another tool.
It jabbed the needle-sharp end of the vial deep into the twin's neck.
The liquid hissed as it injected, writhing like living oil as it entered the bloodstream. The flesh around the puncture instantly darkened, thin black veins spidering outwards under the skin.
The body twitched once, violently, a full-body spasm.
The puppet turned its head slightly, as if listening to a voice only it could hear, carried on a frequency of dread. Its posture stiffened minutely at whatever it heard.
Then it spoke again, its grinding voice deeper now, unnaturally steady and filled with cold disapproval:
"This one never listens. Impetuous. I told him not to act without the others." A pause, heavy with implication. "The Lord will not be pleased."
The puppet rose smoothly, its task complete. It turned and walked with that same, too-fluid gait back toward the tunnel's dark maw, not sparing a second glance at the broken tool it had just serviced.
The snow began to fall again...thicker this time, swirling in the gathering dusk, eager to bury the evidence.
And in the red slush, beneath the gathering white shroud, the twin's fingers twitched. Then clenched into a fist.
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