Outside the castle walls~
The swamp had claimed five of them already.
Once nine, now only four remained. Captain Thadeus stood at the front of what was left—a grizzled silhouette against the rotting green haze of the marsh. He had left without orders, taking a squad of failed recruits, young men desperate to awaken their evolution even at the cost of their lives. He'd acted on instinct, forged in a thousand battles—an instinct that rarely lied.
But they were dropping like flies. Johnson was the latest to fall.
It happened fast. Too fast. One moment, they were trudging through knee-deep sludge, the next—
A blur.
A scream.
A red geyser spiraled into the air as Johnson was torn apart by something massive. His blood hit the mossy trees before his body hit the water.
"Alligator men," Thadeus muttered, already drawing his blade.
They came in low, moving on thick, muscular legs. Long torsos coiled like predators born from nightmares, jaws filled with jagged teeth wide enough to crack bone in a single snap.
But to Thadeus they were just weeds ready to be cut down .
The greatsword in his hands wasn't just steel. It was legend—one edge serrated like a saw, the other so sharp it shimmered in the air around it, as though slicing reality itself.
Slash.
Ssshk.
Two of them hit the swamp in pieces, severed clean through. Their yellow eyes still wide with disbelief, as if unable to understand how the old man moved faster than they could track.
The third leapt—too late.
Thadeus ducked, his blade rising in a fluid arc.
The beast cut itself in half on the sword's edge, its top half sailing overhead before it splashed down with a sickening thud. The captain spun, his greatsword following like a reaper's scythe.
The last creature barely had time to process it.
It watched its kin fall like wheat before a sickle. Watched the human—this grizzled, weather-beaten man—not even break a sweat. Humans were prey. That's how it had always been. But this one—
This one was something else.
Its gaze met Thadeus's.
There was no mercy in those eyes. Only fire.
Run, the alligator man thought.
It turned to flee—
Splat.
A dagger caught it clean between the eyes, burying itself up to the hilt. The creature fell face-first into the muck, twitching once before going still.
Thadeus lowered his hand. He hadn't spoken a word.
Behind him, the three remaining crew members stared—breathing hard, eyes wide.
The swamp was silent again. But not safe.
Never safe.
The words lingered longer than the silence.
Steam curled off the bodies, slow and lazy, like the swamp had stopped to watch.
Thadeus stood still, not from fear, not from fatigue—just listening.
Somewhere deep in the trees, a crow cawed once. Then nothing.
The captain sheathed his blade. The swamp didn't stir.
"Bury the bodies," he said, voice quiet. "No scent left behind."
Daren flinched at the command but moved. Orlen and Brek followed. The three remaining men. Good men. But young. Still thought they'd live forever.
Thadeus didn't correct them.
He moved to a rock jutting from the mud and sat with a grunt. Not exhaustion—ritual. Rest when the blood's still fresh. Breathe while the dead are still warm.
He wiped a finger across the blade's hilt, checking for cracks. There were none. There never were. The sword had been through worse than this swamp. So had he.
His eyes drifted upward, past the canopy of gnarled branches and choked vines, toward the sky he could barely see. Gray. Distant.
A sigh left him without permission.
Rose.
It wasn't just her strength he thought of. It was the way she fought like the world had wronged her. The way she never flinched, never held back.
He remembered the first time he saw her. Barely taller than a blade, fists clenched like she could fight the sun. All bones and fury.
Now she was steel. Hardened. Sharp.
And still, she had so much left to learn.
He wondered if he'd still be around to teach her.
"Captain?"
Thadeus looked up.
Daren stood there, face pale, pointing at the treeline. Not in fear. In curiosity.
"You might want to see this."
The old man rose slowly, joints crackling like dry bark. He crossed the clearing in a few long strides.
There, beyond the burned wreckage of a tree, the ground was warped. Scorched in a perfect circle, the soil cracked like shattered glass.
Mana burn.
Thadeus knelt beside it, fingertips brushing the edges.
Still warm.
"Magic," Orlen said softly behind him.
"No," Thadeus corrected. "Not just magic."
He stared at the pattern, his brow furrowing.
"Her magic."
The mark still pulsed faintly beneath his fingertips, humming with the aftertaste of magic.
Thaddeus straightened slowly, eyes narrowing at nothing in particular. Then, all at once—
Shhhing!
Steel whispered from its scabbard, his greatsword rising into a defensive arc.
"Form up," he growled. "We're surrounded."
The others froze, weapons half-raised.
"Alligator men?" Orlen asked, voice tight.
Thaddeus's gaze scanned the treeline with lethal calm.
"No," he said. "Something powerful. Something ancient."
The swamp held its breath.
Then, from the shadows between the trees, a figure emerged.
Silent. Fluid. Low to the ground at first, before rising on two legs—graceful and terrible. Muscles rippled beneath sleek black fur, and golden eyes glowed beneath a hooded mane. A tail swayed slowly behind her, matching the deliberate cadence of her padded steps.
"Rakeim Thaddeus," she said, voice a purr of velvet and steel. "Evandriel predicted your resolve. She believes it is pure… and just. But you tread paths touched by powers even she dares not name."
The figure stepped into full view.
Lynx.
Half-panther, half-woman. A summon of the old order—Evandriel's most elusive shadow. Not summoned like a spell, but bound through trust and pact.
Thaddeus's stance didn't falter, though his face shifted. Not surprise. Recognition.
The air between them thickened.
"Lynx," he said, tone measured. "It's been years."
"I wish it were under brighter moons."
The others exchanged glances. They sensed it—the familiarity, the weight. These two had fought together before. Maybe bled together. But now…
"What do you mean by forces beyond her control?" Thaddeus asked, his voice edged with command.
"She has invoked secrecy," Lynx said. "I am bound to her will. Even if I disagree."
"And yet you come to parley, not strike." He tilted his head, calculating. "You're stalling."
Lynx's ears flicked, but she didn't deny it.
"She knew you would not turn back with so little," she said softly. "And still, she asked me to try."
Silence.
Then—
"Then you know how this must end," Thaddeus said, voice low as his grip tightened around the hilt.
Lynx stepped forward, claws flexing as her stance shifted. Poised. Balanced.
A warrior.
"So be it."
The crew didn't move. They knew better. This wasn't their fight. Not yet.
Not if either of them could help it.
Silence… until.
The swamp ignites.
A hiss. A splash. Then chaos.
From the muck and mangroves, the alligator men erupted—scaled beasts with jagged bone armor and rusted steel, moving with terrible speed for things so heavy. Jaws wide, claws slashing, eyes burning with unnatural hunger.
The crew barely had time to react. Orlen was the first to shout, sword already half-drawn when a gator-man barreled into him, biting through his side with a crunch that echoed through the trees. Blood hit the moss like warm rain.
"Hold the line!" Thaddeus bellowed, not breaking eye contact with Lynx.
Steel clanged. Screams rang out. But the Captain didn't move.
Not yet.
Lynx tilted her head, eyes flicking toward the ambush. "Go," she murmured. "Your men need—"
Thaddeus was already on her.
The first swing came fast and cruel—a horizontal slash aimed at her ribs. She ducked, spun low, and backflipped, landing with feline grace. His second strike arced downward like a hammer. She moved again, barely, the blade slicing a line through her shoulder guard.
They circled.
"Still fight like you mean it," Lynx panted, baring her claws.
"And you still talk too much."
He surged forward. One step, two—then a feint left and a pivot right. His blade swept toward her flank, but she was airborne again, leaping over him and twisting mid-air, her foot grazing his helm. She landed behind him, claws aimed for his spine, but Thaddeus whirled without pause and met her strike with a brutal shoulder-check that knocked her back.
Their blades clashed again.
Left. Right. Spin. Block. Dodge. Step in. Riposte.
They fought like dancers from two schools of violence—his a storm of grounded discipline, hers a blur of instinct and speed. Each move countered before it could finish, each breath drawn with intent. These were not rookies. These were killers.
Below the battle, the crew was dying. The gator-men tore into them with claws and fangs. Cries turned to gurgles. Steel rang out and fell silent. The swamp was drinking deep.
But Thaddeus had no time for grief.
Lynx ducked under a high slash, twisted low, and lunged forward, claws scraping against his ribs. Sparks flew. The glow beneath his armor surged brighter, pulsing blue along engraved runes. His eyes narrowed.
Then he roared.
A single wide swing forced her back, the sheer weight behind it cracking the bark of a tree she dodged behind. He followed up immediately, not letting her recover. His greatsword came down in a diagonal arc that bit deep into her thigh.
Blood sprayed.
It hit his blade—and the runes shifted red.
His wounds began to close.
Lynx's breath hitched.
"You weren't this fast before," she hissed.
"You weren't this slow," he replied.
Still she stood. Still she fought.
She leapt up and spun over him, claws raking across his backplate. He twisted, elbow-first, catching her in the ribs mid-air. She crashed into the mud but rolled quickly, avoiding the follow-up strike by inches.
Then came a howl.
One of the gator-men, wounded and wild-eyed, charged toward them.
It wasn't after Lynx. It was after Thaddeus.
She saw it before he did.
He turned just as the beast lunged—mouth wide, claws ready to tear. He cursed and pivoted, driving his blade through its skull in a single, fluid strike. Blood erupted. The body dropped, twitching.
But the distraction cost him.
Lynx struck from behind.
Claws slashed deep into his lower back, cutting where the armor gave way. He grunted, stumbled forward a step, then turned like a bull, shoulder smashing into her and sending her tumbling through the swamp water.
"You dare—" he snarled, "—interfere in an honorable duel?"
"I dare to survive."
She pounced again, but this time he was ready. Their blades met midair—her curved daggers, his massive sword. She was faster, but he was relentless. Each parry came with a counterstrike. Every time her claws opened a cut, the blood hit his armor—and he only grew faster.
Evandriel gave her an impossible task.
But she would not back down.
He swung low. She jumped. He spun. She twisted. Mud flew. Trees splintered.
Then, for a moment, everything slowed.
Thaddeus's blade grazed her ribs. Her claws nicked his throat. A breath between them. Mutual understanding. Two warriors who had once stood back to back now forced to face each other with finality.
"You'll kill me," Lynx said, panting. "Eventually."
"Then run."
"No."
She dropped into a low crouch, hands wide, tail twitching behind her.
"I won't let her go alone."
Thaddeus's jaw tightened. Then, with a grunt of fury, he charged again.
She met him head-on.
Clash after clash, blow after blow—they began to lose technique, both bloodied and bruised, driven not by discipline but something deeper. Loyalty. Rage. Regret.
The last of the crew fell silent behind them. The swamp was still again, save for the thunder of their breath and the rhythm of their battle.
They were both slowing now. But only one of them was healing.
Thaddeus's blade shone red with blood. His armor hummed with stolen vitality. And Lynx, for all her speed, was bleeding more than she was dodging.
She knew it.
He knew it.
And still, she lunged.
A final strike—desperate and precise—aimed for his heart.
But he caught her wrist. Twisted. Disarmed her with a brutal kick to the stomach that sent her sprawling. She landed hard, chest heaving, claws buried in the dirt.
Thaddeus approached, slow and steady, blade raised.
"You could've run," he said, voice heavy.
"I was running," she whispered, a small smile ghosting her lips. "Until I saw you."
He hesitated. Just a breath.
It was all she needed.
With a cry, she threw mud in his eyes and lunged low, shoulder-first, knocking his legs out from under him. The sword clattered beside them as they rolled—grappling in the dirt, blades forgotten, instincts raw.
Then—he pinned her.
His blade found her throat.
Silence.
Panting. Sweat. Blood.
She didn't move.
He didn't strike.
Not yet.
"I won't beg," Lynx said, throat exposed. "But I meant it. She needs you to turn back."
"I can't," he said. "You know that."
"I know."
They held there. A heartbeat stretched into eternity.
And then—
A noise. A pulse. Magic in the air.
Both their heads turned.
The swamp shimmered in the distance. Something else was coming.
Something worse.
And the fight would have to wait.
The silence didn't last.
A hum began to rise—low, deep, vibrating beneath their boots like the heartbeat of something vast and unseen. The air grew heavier, dense with the scent of copper and rot. The swamp wasn't just holding its breath.
It was infected.
Then the waters broke.
The first of them emerged, rising from the bog like cursed statues dragged up by unseen hands—bipedal beasts encrusted in calcified algae and bone-like growths. Their bodies were gator-like, but something had warped them. Clusters of fungal spines jutted from their backs, pale and pulsing. Spores hissed with every motion, blooming like tiny lungs. Their thick arms bore jagged, shell-like plates where scales once were, and their claws gleamed wet with a black fungal resin. Worse still—their eyes. They didn't glow with hunger. They were glazed.
Empty.
Thaddeus counted six.
Lynx counted two.
Only two still had the movement of predators. The others were slow, heaving, bloated carriers. Their chests were swollen, the skin stretched thin and cracked around soft yellow molds that twitched in rhythm, as if breathing independently. Threads of crimson fungus webbed across their faces like roots feeding into them from something inside.
"They're not alive," Lynx murmured, stepping close. "They're grown."
"I see that," Thaddeus muttered.
And then he charged.
Steel met rot in a burst of sound. Thaddeus's first swing cleaved clean through a carrier's neck, sending its fungal-coated head tumbling. A thick burst of spores erupted where it fell—clouds of golden dust laced with red tendrils that curled in the air like hunting vines.
The beast's body convulsed—and burst. Dozens of fibrous tentacles shot out, lined with fungal teeth and clinging spores. They whipped toward a fallen soldier and yanked the body into its chest cavity. There was no chewing.
Just assimilation.
Lynx didn't flinch. She vaulted into the fray, bounding from root to root before slamming onto another infected's shoulders. Her claws sank deep, but even that was no longer simple. The flesh beneath was soft but resistant, like cutting into wet bark. A sweet, sickening scent rose from the wound.
She ripped anyway.
Another husk moved toward her, and Thaddeus intercepted it, blade crashing down like a guillotine. It split open in a crack of fungal decay, releasing more of those twitching, tendril-filled spores into the air. He pivoted away just in time.
"Don't breathe too deep!" he shouted.
"Wasn't planning to," Lynx answered, sliding beneath a claw and slashing at the back of its knees. Mycelium snapped like wires under tension, and the beast collapsed.
Behind them, something bigger stirred.
A shadow darker than the rest. Movement beneath the muck.
Then it rose.
Twelve feet. Fifteen. Twenty.
A monstrosity.
It wasn't just a beast—it was a fungal cathedral, walking. A humanoid frame made of bone and twisted muscle, but all of it overtaken by thick, interwoven stalks of mutated Cordyceps. Fungal caps pulsed like blisters across its arms and spine. One arm ended in a hand—barely recognizable. The other had split open entirely into a fan of thorny, writhing vines tipped in hardened, blackened bone.
Its face had no jaw. Just a narrow, vertical split ringed by twelve closed fungal sacs—each pulsing like a heartbeat. The center eye, a single translucent orb of milky white, opened.
The swamp screamed.
The very air pulsed with a fungal vibration, a psychic shriek that made every tree around them tremble. Lynx clutched her ears and dropped to a knee, blood running from one. Thaddeus staggered, gritting his teeth, anchoring his body with his sword jammed into the earth. There wasn't a single chance he would let a creature of this magnitude reach the walls of castle nérou.
"What is this?" he growled.
Lynx's voice was thin. "It's not a summon. It's not even alive. It's… grown."
"By who?"
"Not who," she said. "What. The swamp. The Cordyceps. They've changed. They infect animals now. Turn them into… this."
The creature moved with horrible purpose. The infected husks around them shambled closer—not from command, but attraction. They converged on the creature, climbing it like an altar, and it absorbed them. Fungal roots drank them down into its flesh.
It pulsed brighter. Stronger.
"Burn it!" Thaddeus ordered.
Lynx didn't hesitate. She hurled a flame token. Blue fire erupted in a fan across the beast's side. It screamed—not in agony, but confusion, as if fire was a concept it had forgotten.
That was enough.
Thaddeus roared and lunged. His greatsword flashed red as it cut through the pulsing cordyceps bundles at the creature's thigh. Spores burst around him, but his armor flared, runes glowing as they filtered the air. He rolled left, dodged a hammer-fist from the beast, then surged forward again.
He stabbed deep into its chest.
The runes lit like wildfire—drinking its life.
The creature howled again. Not with a voice. With sound. A deep, vibrating resonance that cracked tree limbs and buckled stone.
Lynx leapt from behind, claws driving into the fungal tissue along its spine, slicing upward in streaks of fire. Steam burst from the wounds. The Cordyceps flared and twitched, trying to grow over her blades, but she was faster.
"Together!" she shouted.
Thaddeus didn't need the call. He struck again, deeper, angling upward toward where a heart might've once existed.
Their blades met within the creature's body.
The light dimmed.
The pulse slowed.
And then—it collapsed.
A mountain of fungal rot and reeking steam crumbled into the swamp with a thundering splash. Spores hissed, but no longer spread. The air cleared slowly.
They stood there, bloodied and burned.
"You good?" Thaddeus said between breaths.
"I'll live," Lynx rasped, her voice hoarse. "But next time…"
"There won't be a next time."
She watched him a long moment.
"She said you'd say that," she murmured.
Thaddeus didn't ask who. He already knew.
Lynx turned and limped away into the smoke of battle past.
And Thaddeus stayed still, letting the swamp settle.
Letting the horror soak in.
Even the plants were killing now.
The fog returned slowly.
Not the magical kind. Not the kind summoned by sorcerers or shrouded in mystery.
Just fog.
Swamp-born, honest, and heavy.
Thaddeus stood alone now. The corpses—if they could be called that—had stopped twitching. The water was still again, though now darker, tainted with black blood and strands of cordyceps mold drifting just beneath the surface like the roots of some great, unseen tree.
He sheathed his sword.
It hissed against the scabbard, runes fading from blood-red to iron gray.
The light on his armor dulled too. No glow. No warmth. Just weight.
The kind of weight you carry in your shoulders long after the battle ends.
He glanced at the bodies of his men—what was left of them. None recognizable. Nothing he could bring back.
Except one.
Thaddeus moved through the carnage with quiet purpose until he found Orlen's blade—half-buried in muck, snapped at the hilt. He knelt and pulled it free. His hand lingered on it.
"I told you not to speak unless ordered," he murmured.
A pause.
Then he stood, slipping the broken weapon into his belt.
He wouldn't bury them here. Not in this infected soil.
He'd burn them later. Somewhere dry.
But first—
He looked toward the horizon, where Lynx had vanished. The path ahead lay quiet. There was nothing left here.
Except the warning.
The plants. The fungus. The very earth.
It had all changed.
Not just beasts. Not just magic.
Life itself was evolving, unchecked, untamed, and unconcerned with humanity's right to rule.
He took one last breath of the swamp air—shallow and sharp—then turned.
The others would need to know.
The king. The court. Dimiour.
Evandriel's disappearance might be part of this, or something entirely separate—but the wilds were changing. The old laws no longer held. What grew in the dark now carried teeth.
Thaddeus began the long walk back to Castle Nérou.
The earth whispered beneath each step.
And behind him, unseen, a cluster of spores nestled into the bark of a dead tree… and bloomed.