Chapter 6
The morning dragged on with a humid heaviness over the farm. The atmosphere was charged not only by the heat but by the expectation of what the forest might spit out at any moment. Rick remained by the window of Carl's room, watching the horizon with the gaze of someone who has seen the engine of the universe and didn't like the noise it made.
I stood in the center of the yard, watching Torgad and Jarl as they organized the warriors. My men no longer wore furs; many had adopted light linen clothes provided by Maggie and Beth, or simply marched bare-chested, letting the Georgia sun bronze their Northern scars. They looked more integrated, but no less lethal.
It was Jarl who detected it first. He lifted his head, scenting the air before the sound even reached us.
"Valthor. The noisy metal carriages are approaching," Jarl said, pointing toward the property entrance.
In the distance, the roar of an old engine and the screech of battered brakes shattered the silence. A motley caravan appeared down the dirt road: a faded RV followed by a blue car, with Daryl Dixon's motorcycle leading the way.
The Atlanta group had arrived.
The convoy came to a jerky halt in front of the gate. They couldn't move further because my warriors had formed a human wall—ten men deep—just behind the fence. They didn't raise their weapons, but their mere presence—massive, silent, and alien—made the vehicles stop as if they had hit a stone wall.
Daryl climbed off his bike, crossbow already in hand, looking at the formation with a mix of recognition and annoyance. Behind him, the RV doors swung open, and the rest of the group began to disembark: Carol, Andrea, Amy—looking tired but steady—and a young Asian man scanning the area with nervousness (Glenn).
Rick and Shane stepped off the porch and walked toward the fence. I stayed a few paces behind them, hands clasped behind my back, letting the scene unfold under my supervision.
"Rick! Shane!" an older man with a fishing hat shouted, climbing out of the RV (Dale). "Thank God! We saw Otis's car and—"
Dale stopped dead as he noticed Rick wasn't alone. He looked at the Northern warriors, and his expression of relief transformed into one of pure bewilderment. Carol, however, wasn't looking at the men. Her eyes were frantically searching for something on the porch.
"Rick… is she…?" Carol's voice broke.
I gave a brief signal to Beth. The house door opened, and Sophia stepped out onto the porch. She was clean, wearing a dress that was a bit too large, her hair neatly combed. For a second, time seemed to stand still across the entire farm. The only sound was Carol's stifled sob before she sprinted toward the fence.
"Sophia! Oh, my baby!"
My men stepped aside with mechanical discipline, opening a path for the woman to pass. Carol didn't stop to ask who they were or what they were doing there; she threw herself onto her daughter in an embrace that seemed to want to merge them into one. The rest of the group stood paralyzed in front of the formation of my warriors.
Andrea hugged her sister, Amy, who was staring in fascination at Torgad. Torgad returned her gaze with a rough curiosity; he had never seen a woman with such strange clothes and skin that wasn't hardened by the soot of campfires.
"Rick, what is this?" Andrea asked, pointing to my men with a gesture of distrust. "Who are these people?"
Rick looked at Shane. Shane stood with his arms crossed, avoiding my gaze, still feeling the ghost of Jarl's axe at his neck. Rick sighed and turned toward his group, but his voice lacked the command of a sheriff; it held the resignation of a man who had accepted a new reality.
"Listen up, everyone," Rick said. "Carl is hurt. Otis shot him by accident in the woods. Herschel and… Valthor… saved him."
Rick pointed toward me. The group fixed their eyes on me. I made no gesture of welcome. I limited myself to observing each of them, letting my Majesty subtly seep into the air—a silent pressure telling them they weren't in a public shelter, but on private property.
"Valthor found Sophia," Rick continued, his voice trembling slightly. "He has allowed us to stay. But there are rules. This farm… this place is his territory. It's not like the camp. There is an order here."
"His territory?" Shane finally spoke, his voice laced with a venom he tried to hide. "Rick, this is a farm in the United States. It's not a damn medieval kingdom."
"Shane," I said, taking a step forward. Shane tensed, clutching his shotgun, but Torgad stepped forward at the same time, reminding him of the physical hierarchy. "The United States died in Atlanta. What remains is what we can protect. Your friend Rick understands this because he values his son's life. What do you value, Shane? Your pride, or the safety of these people who are looking at you, waiting for you to tell them what to do?"
Shane clenched his jaw but didn't respond. Rick's presence, submissive due to the debt owed for Carl, prevented him from acting. The group began to move in, unloading supplies under the watch of my patrols. Lori approached Rick, embracing him, while he whispered something in her ear about Carl's surgery.
Lori glanced at me. There was no romance between her and Shane in this world; Shane was simply her husband's loyal partner, but I could see she also felt the strangeness of my presence. I wasn't just another survivor. I was the master of the house.
As the afternoon fell, the tension between the two groups was palpable. My savages had lit small fires along the perimeter, cooking meat Otis had provided. Rick's group, by contrast, had huddled near the RV, feeling like foreigners in a place Rick had told them was "safe."
I gathered the leaders on the porch: Rick, Shane, Daryl, and Herschel.
"Listen well," I said, looking especially at Shane and Daryl. "The dead are approaching. This morning's gunshot was a beacon for them. Thousands are coming, and they won't be long in reaching the fences."
"We're ready," Shane said, tapping the barrel of his shotgun. "We've got plenty of ammo. We can form a perimeter and—"
"No." My voice wasn't a shout, but it made Shane shut up instantly. "No one is to fire a single firearm on this farm."
Daryl frowned, spitting on the ground. "And what do you want us to do? Ask 'em politely not to bite? Guns are the only thing keepin' us alive, man in black."
"Your weapons are noisy and clumsy," I replied. "Every bullet you fire will attract ten more dead from the neighboring counties. Here, we fight with steel, with wood, and with silence. My men will handle the front. You will stay in the house and the RV. I don't want your panic obstructing our formation."
"You don't want us obstructing?" Shane laughed—a dry, bitter sound. "Rick, are you gonna let this guy tell us we can't defend our own skins?"
"Shane," Rick looked at him with gelid seriousness, "Valthor kept Carl's heart beating when it should have stopped. If he says don't shoot, we don't shoot. It's his law."
Shane fell silent, but his eyes burned with contained fury. For a man who believed authority emanated from the barrel of a gun, my order was a castration.
Night arrived without a moon—a dense darkness that seemed to swallow the glow of our fires. The air turned cooler, but the stench of rot began to seep in from the woods. It wasn't a subtle smell; it was the tide of death approaching.
I stood up on the porch. Through my Vision, the Georgia fields transformed. I could see the energy signatures of the walkers: thousands of dull gray dots moving slowly toward the farm. They were a uniform mass, a mindless force of nature with a single purpose.
"Torgad. Jarl. To the fences," I ordered.
My hundred warriors moved with a coordination that made Rick and the others peer out of the windows in awe. There were no war cries or shouted orders. They communicated with gestures and short whistles. They formed a double line behind the stakes they had planted during the day.
Shane was on the porch, shotgun pressed to his chest, sweating despite the night air. He stared into the darkness, trying to see what my men had already detected.
"They're coming," Shane whispered.
First came the sound. A collective moan, a dragging of feet over dry grass that sounded like surf breaking against rocks. Then, the shapes appeared at the edge of our firelight.
Hundreds of them. Thousands. A mass of decomposing flesh crashing against the white fences.
"There are too many!" Glenn shouted from the farmhouse window. "They're gonna take the fence down!"
"Watch," I said, without moving from my spot.
My warriors didn't wait for the dead to break the fence. At a signal from Torgad, the first line of savages surged forward. They didn't use rifles. They used ash spears with bronze tips and reinforced stone axes.
It was a massacre of terrifying efficiency.
The Free Folk moved in pairs. While one impaled a walker through the chest to keep it at a distance, the other shattered its skull with a precise axe stroke. There was no panic, no missed shots. It was the manual labor of butchery elevated to military art.
Shane watched, eyes wide. He was used to the chaos of gunfights—the adrenaline of pulling the trigger and hoping the dead man fell. What he saw now was different: it was absolute physical dominance. My men didn't retreat; they advanced over the corpses, creating a wall of dead meat that served as an additional barricade.
The horde was massive. Despite the efficiency of my warriors, the sheer numerical pressure began to strain the stakes. A group of about fifty walkers managed to break a section of the eastern fence and lunged toward the main house.
"They're coming this way!" Rick shouted, pulling his revolver. "Shane, cover the door!"
Shane raised his shotgun, finger on the trigger, ready to break my law of silence.
"Lower your weapons." My voice rang like thunder over the roar of the dead.
I walked to the edge of the porch. I didn't draw a physical sword. I extended my right hand and concentrated the energy of my Majesty into a blade of incandescent white light that erupted from my palm with a hiss that made the air vibrate.
Rick scrambled back, covering his face from the glare. Shane dropped his shotgun; it hit the ground with a dull thud. His eyes couldn't process what they were seeing.
I leaped from the porch, landing in the middle of the group of walkers that had broken the perimeter. The solar blade cut the air in a perfect arc. There was no resistance. The white light evaporated the putrid flesh before the phantom steel even touched it. In three fluid motions, the fifty dead were turned into piles of ash and charred meat that hit the ground without a sound.
I stood there, surrounded by the smoke of vaporized death, the blade of light bathing my face in divine clarity. I turned toward the porch and looked directly at Shane.
"Your metal tubes wouldn't have stopped this horde without attracting a thousand more," I said with gelid calm. "My men have cleared the perimeter without spending a single bullet. Do you still believe your 'law' holds any value here?"
Shane didn't answer. His hands were visibly shaking. He looked at his shotgun on the ground as if it were a useless piece of wood—a relic of a world that no longer existed. His arrogance, his belief that he was the alpha because he had the biggest gun, had evaporated in the face of a power he could neither understand nor fight.
Rick slowly climbed down from the porch, looking at the charred remains at my feet. He looked at Sophia, who was watching from the window, held by Beth. He looked at his friends, safe and sound thanks to an army of barbarians and a man who could summon the sun with his hands.
"I understand," Rick whispered. "We all do."
The battle ended an hour later. The dead who hadn't been eliminated dispersed, confused by the lack of noise and the ferocity of the resistance. The field in front of the farm was littered with corpses, but the Sanctuary remained intact.
I entered the house. Rick's group was gathered in the living room, sitting on the floor or the Greenes' old furniture. The silence was absolute. Carol held Sophia in a corner, Amy sat beside Andrea, and Glenn spoke in whispers to Daryl.
Shane sat in a chair near the door, eyes fixed on the floor. He was no longer the man who challenged Rick on the road. He was a man who had seen the true nature of power and felt small.
I sat in Herschel's main armchair. Beth approached and stood to my right, like a silent guardian.
"Tomorrow we begin clearing the fields," I said, looking at the group. "Rick, your men will work with mine. Daryl, you will continue tracking the perimeter, but under Jarl's orders. Carol, you and the other women will handle the supplies with Maggie."
I looked at Shane.
"Shane, you will organize the inventory of the weapons you brought. They will not be used, but I want them clean and ready in case I decide it is time for you to learn to use them under my supervision. Any objections?"
Shane looked up. For the first time, there was no defiance in his eyes. There was a bitter, but real, acceptance.
"No," Shane whispered. "No objections."
"Good," I nodded. "Welcome to the Sanctuary. There is no freedom here, but there is life. And in this world, that is more than any king can offer you."
Valthor's POV (Internal Monologue)
I observed the group as they settled in for the night. The horde had been Herschel's final exam and the brutal introduction for Rick's group. By banning firearms and demonstrating the lethality of my savages, I have fractured their dependence on modern technology. Now they know their lives depend on my will and the physical strength of my men.
Shane is tamed, at least for now. His police ego has been crushed by the evidence of a superior power. Amy is alive, which keeps Andrea stable and loyal to the structure providing safety for her sister.
My Domain has expanded. By defending the farm so decisively, I have claimed not only the land but the souls living upon it. The Sanctuary is no longer just an idea; it is a physical fact in the middle of the Georgia chaos.
Tomorrow, I will begin selecting those worthy of being enhanced. Rick is a leader, but I need warriors. Daryl has potential. And Shane… if he learns to follow orders, his aggression can be channeled. But first, they must understand that in this new world, I am the sun that warms them and the shadow that protects them.