Hugo woke to the gentle patter of rain on his face. Cold droplets splashed against his skin, washing away the grit and blood caked across his cheeks. He blinked, staring up at the grey clouds churning above Greyhaven's broken skyline.
He shouldn't be alive.
Hugo sat up slowly, expecting pain that never came. His hand moved to his side where the stone had crushed him. The armor remained bent inward, but underneath, his ribs felt solid. Whole. His fingers came away wet with blood of his own, but the wounds had closed to puckered scars.
Around him lay the dead. Real dead. Soldiers he'd fought beside for months, civilians caught in the slaughter. Their bodies cooled in the rain, faces frozen in final terror. The battlefield had gone silent except for the distant sounds of fighting deeper in the city.
The undead had moved on.
Hugo staggered to his feet, swaying as a wave of dizziness washed over him. The world looked... different. Sharper. Colors more vibrant despite the ashen sky. He could pick out individual raindrops twenty feet away, count the links in broken chain mail across the square.
And something else. Something stranger.
Faint threads of light hung in the air, nearly invisible unless he focused. They stretched from the bodies around him, trailing off toward the city center like ghostly streamers caught in a breeze. Hugo reached out, fingers passing through one. It didn't move, didn't react to his touch, but he felt it, a whisper of connection, a taste of something that wasn't his.
Souls.
The knowledge came unbidden, certain as his own name. These were the remnants of souls, the last traces of what the undead hadn't consumed.
Hugo picked up a battered sword from beside a fallen soldier. The sword… he realized. His squadmate's body lay nearby, throat torn open to the spine. Hugo swallowed hard, fighting a surge of bile.
"I'll make it worth something," he whispered, though he had no idea what it was. This survival. This strange new power. This second chance he never asked for.
He moved through the ruined gatehouse, stepping over debris and bodies. The inner ward stretched before him, a scene from nightmares. Buildings burned despite the rain. Bodies littered the cobblestones. Blood washed down gutters in pink rivers.
An undead crouched over a fresh kill at the corner of an alley. It looked up as Hugo approached, milky eyes widening. Instead of attacking, it hissed and backed away, abandoning its meal.
Hugo stopped, sword half-raised. The creature turned and shambled quickly down the alley, disappearing into the shadows.
It had run from him.
Testing, Hugo changed course toward a group of three undead feeding on something in a doorway. They sensed him coming, heads snapping up in unison. One stood its ground momentarily, then all three scattered, moving with surprising speed to put distance between themselves and Hugo.
He followed, curious now. When one glanced back, Hugo locked eyes with it, and the creature nearly fell over itself changing direction.
They feared his gaze.
Hugo pushed forward toward the city center, where survivors might still hold out. His head pounded with each step. Strange flashes of memory intruded on his thoughts, a woman singing to children by firelight, hands digging into fresh earth to plant seeds, the taste of honeyed wine on a summer evening.
Not his memories. Hers. The undead woman whose soul he'd taken.
His stomach lurched. Hugo stumbled to the side of the street and vomited, bringing up nothing but bile. His body shook with revulsion even as a strange euphoria hummed through his veins. The contradiction made his head spin, disgust and power, horror and strength.
Hugo wiped his mouth and kept moving. Ahead, the spire of Greyhaven's chapel rose above the smaller buildings, its stone tower cracked but standing. If anyone had survived, they might have sought sanctuary there.
He picked up his pace, jogging through side streets to avoid larger concentrations of undead. They sensed him coming anyway, breaking off their hunts to retreat as he passed. Hugo found himself navigating by their movements, wherever they fled from marked his path forward.
The chapel square opened before him. One side of the building had collapsed, but the main sanctuary still stood. Bodies lay scattered across the steps, defenders who had made their last stand here. Fresh kills, still bleeding.
Hugo approached cautiously. The massive wooden doors hung broken on their hinges. Inside, darkness and silence.
"Anyone alive?" he called out, stepping into the shadowed interior.
A crossbow bolt whistled past his ear, embedding in the door frame with a solid thunk.
"Next one goes through your eye!" A woman's voice, tight with fear. "Back out slowly!"
Hugo raised his empty hand. "I'm alive. Human. Looking for survivors."
Silence. Then hushed whispers. A lantern flared to life, illuminating a group huddled behind an overturned pew. Eight survivors, two men with weapons, three women, two children, and an old man clutching a wounded arm.
"You're from the wall," one of the men said. "We saw it fall."
"I was there." Hugo stepped further inside, the lantern light catching his blood-soaked armor. "I'm looking for anyone who—"
The wall behind him exploded inward. Stone and wood sprayed across the chapel as something massive forced its way through. Hugo spun, sword raised, as a hulking undead crashed into the sanctuary.
It stood eight feet tall, body grotesquely swollen with consumed souls. Its jaw hung dislocated, mouth stretched into a permanent, hungry gape. Arms thick as tree trunks ended in broken bone claws. This wasn't a fresh turn, this was an undead that had fed for days, grown powerful on dozens of souls.
The survivors screamed. The thing roared, a sound like rocks grinding together, and charged.
Hugo moved without thinking. His body responded with impossible speed, muscles propelling him forward as time seemed to slow. He ducked under a massive sweeping arm, sword flashing up to slice through putrid flesh. The blade cut deep but the creature barely noticed, pivoting with surprising agility to grab for him.
Hugo rolled, came up behind it, and hamstrung one massive leg with a powerful stroke. The undead toppled to one knee. Hugo vaulted onto its back, driving his sword down through the base of its skull.
The thing thrashed, trying to dislodge him. Hugo held tight, twisting the blade deeper. Black ichor sprayed from the wound.
Not enough. It was still moving.
Hugo felt the cold connection again, that channel between souls that had opened with the first undead. This time, he didn't wait for it to try consuming him. He reached out mentally, found the thread of its essence, and pulled.
The creature went rigid. Hugo's vision washed white as memories flooded him. Violence, hunger, the ecstasy of consumed souls, hundreds of deaths witnessed through inhuman eyes.
Power surged into him like lightning. Every muscle tensed, his back arched, and a silent scream built in his throat as the undead collapsed beneath him, withering as its stolen essence poured into Hugo.
The chapel fell silent. The rushing in Hugo's ears stopped. The fear that had hummed in his bones since the wall fell… vanished.
He rose slowly, turning to face the survivors. They stared back, eyes wide with terror and confusion. Not at the undead. At him.
Hugo realized he was smiling.