The clash of steel, the screams of the dying, and the churn of mud and blood beneath their boots welcomed them to the outer defence lines. The smell of burning flesh was thick in the air. Screeches from the Threshen echoed in unnatural shrills, cutting through the chaos like broken instruments out of tune with the world.
Nyra surged forward, leading Luken and Valen through the smoke-drenched battlefield, dodging volleys of arrows and lunges from twisted, hulking forms. She didn't need to ask where the commander was. She could feel it in the way soldiers rallied in a certain direction, in the gaps held by sheer will.
They found her where the fighting was thickest.
Commander Elira. She stood tall, clad in tarnished silver armour that bore dents and blood like decorations of defiance. She was the same height as Nyra but broader at the shoulders, built like a fortress. Her face bore a long, vicious scar carved down from her left brow, across her eye, through her nose, her lips, and slashed into her breastplate below. Her dark red hair was pulled back into a braided bun but loose strands stuck to her sweat-streaked cheek.
In her hands, a glaive — massive, brutal, its edge chipped but still sharp, its haft wrapped in blackened leather. It carved through enemies in wide, devastating arcs, slicing Threshen limbs like she was cleaving through canvas.
She turned at the sound of boots, half prepared to kill again, until her eyes locked on them.
"Well, shit," she barked through gritted teeth. "Look who crawled out of the east."
"Commander Elira," Nyra said, panting but standing tall.
"Nyra." Elira gave a humourless smirk. "Luken. Valen. Thought you were off chasing ghosts."
"Not ghosts," Luken said, adjusting his grip on his staff. "Something worse."
Valen gave a lazy salute, already eyeing her glaive. "Nice blade. Can I borrow it when you die?"
"Sure. If you pry it from my corpse." She jabbed the blade through the chest of a charging Threshen and kicked its body off with a crunch of ribs.
Even through the smoke and chaos, the recognition in her eyes was clear. She knew them. Not just as soldiers but as the trio who had helped hold northern fronts years before. Their deeds had carried weight then. She was deciding how much weight they carried now.
Elira's eyes narrowed. "You're late."
"Didn't realize we had an appointment," Nyra snapped, though a grin tugged at the edge of her mouth.
Elira glanced past them. "Where's your monster?"
Nyra blinked. "Who?"
Elira raised an eyebrow. "The one that's supposed to be taller than the walls and wrestle demons barehanded."
"…Thal?" Luken offered.
"That one." She turned back toward the field. "Was hoping he'd show up and squash a few of these bastards for me."
While they spoke, behind the Kruul and Threshen, Thal was already moving.
He didn't charge. He walked — slow, deliberate, measured — and the battlefield parted around him the way water parts around something that has decided not to stop. Each footfall crushed a root, cracked a skull, split open fetid growths that writhed beneath his feet. Tar followed in his wake like a monolith, his great axe resting lazily across his shoulder, its twin heads caked in the black ichor of things that shouldn't exist.
Thal slammed a foot into the side of a malformed Kruul that had grown bark-like armour over its chest, shattering the creature's spine with nothing but sheer force. Another lunged — a Threshen with an elongated jaw and bone-split claws. Thal caught it mid-pounce by the throat and snapped its neck with a single twist. It didn't scream. It just stopped existing.
Another tried to flank him. He tore its leg off and used it to bludgeon two more, then hurled the limb like a spear through a fourth, pinning it to a ruined barricade.
Tar struck a Threshen that had tried to slither past them, his axe biting deep and carving it in half with one slow-motion swing. Its limbs still twitched as black blood steamed on the earth.
The Lion's Gate soldiers saw them. Faces pale and teeth gritted, watching Thal and Tar move along the backline — not speaking, not offering aid, not asking questions. Just watching. Like they didn't know if what they were seeing was salvation or the next thing coming for their heads.
Thal's golden eyes tracked every glance. Every twitch. Every nervous soldier who looked at him not with awe but with doubt.
A Lion's Gate soldier went down ten feet ahead of him — one of the corrupted Kruul on top of him, its weight pinning the man's sword arm flat. The soldier was screaming. Thal saw it. Had time.
He watched the Kruul finish it.
Then he killed the Kruul. One movement. Clean.
He stepped over both of them and kept walking.
His eyes moved to the walls of Lion's Gate, barely visible through the haze. The silver insignia on the nearest banner — he knew it. Had known it for longer than the soldiers bearing it had been alive. His hands closed into fists at his sides, not from the fight. From something the fight was making room for.
He looked back toward the carnage. Toward Nyra's silver hair flashing amid the smoke beside Elira. Toward Luken's staff burning bright. Toward Valen spinning through blood like a blade come loose from its scabbard.
He cracked his knuckles and moved forward.
Back at the front line, Elira swung her glaive down one last time, cleaving through the warped jaw of a Threshen that had clawed its way too close. It dropped with a wet, slack thud at her feet. She turned, sweat streaking the dirt on her face.
"Well?" she barked. "Where's your walking earthquake?"
"He's here," Nyra said, glancing behind her where the battlefield vanished into thick choking smoke. "Thal and Tar went through the backline."
Elira looked toward the mist and flame, brow furrowing. "Alone?"
"I think that was the point," Nyra replied. Though even she didn't sound entirely sure.
Before more could be said, a soldier stumbled toward them from the rear — armour dented, cloak torn, eyes glassy with the kind of fear that stripped a man bare. He skidded to a halt, almost falling to one knee.
"Commander! The backline! It's — gods — it's them! Two of 'em! Giants! One's horned, swinging some kind of hell axe, the other…" His voice trailed into disbelief. "The other's just walking through them. Like they're nothing."
Elira's attention snapped sharp. "What are you—"
The ground shook.
A single dull tremor rippled through the blood-soaked mud. Then a shadow. Then a Threshen corpse came crashing through the smoke, tumbling like a boulder from the heavens. It smashed into the muck with a sound like a wet tree snapping in half — its grotesque body twitching, half its chest obliterated. Not crushed. Gone. A perfect hole where something had punched through armour, bone, and heart.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Every soldier near Elira froze, hands tightening on spears and swords, eyes fixed on the dark fog behind the corpse. From it, two shapes moved. Even through the haze they loomed taller than any man, walking at a steady pace. One had horns, a massive double-headed axe slung lazily over one shoulder. The other walked empty-handed, his arms slick with blackened gore to the elbows, his body moving like a siege engine forged from flesh.
They stepped forward like executioners from a forgotten era.
The men of Lion's Gate began to murmur. Voices trembled. Words fumbled.
"…What in the name of the gods is that?"
"Are those ours?"
"He isn't even using weapons…"
One man dropped his sword. Another backed up several paces, eyes wide.
Nyra, Luken, and Valen watched the reaction more than the giants themselves. For once it wasn't the enemy that had their allies shaking — it was the people meant to be on their side.
Tar struck first. His axe moved in a sweeping arc, biting deep into the Threshen charging toward him. The bodies didn't fall apart — they exploded. Viscera flew, thick and tarry, splashing across trees and stone alike. Each strike was thunder, a rhythm of destruction too wide and too strong to block.
Thal moved like the war was beneath him. He didn't swing. He didn't run. He walked through twisted Kruul, through beasts, through Threshen. One lunged at him with spines for arms, its teeth chattering in endless hunger. He caught it under the jaw, lifted it, and brought it down like a hammer. Another tried to flank him — he tore its leg off and used it to bludgeon the next two, then drove the jagged bone-end through a third. He didn't break stride.
"…He's not human," someone whispered.
Valen, quiet beside Nyra, scoffed. "They're only just seeing it?"
Elira hadn't said a word. She was watching — jaw locked, knuckles white around her glaive.
More soldiers emerged from the smoke behind them — Lion's Gate men, staggering and bloodied. They weren't limping from wounds. They were limping from shock.
"He didn't even look at me," one stammered. "We were caught. Surrounded. And he just walked through them. Like a blade cutting thread."
"I saw him crush one's head with his foot," said another. "Didn't slow down. Didn't blink."
A third looked Elira in the eye and whispered, "Commander… I think he smiled."
Elira's grip on her glaive loosened slightly. For a moment she said nothing.
"Good," she said.
Valen tilted his head. "You like him?"
Elira exhaled through her nose. "I'm terrified of him."
"But?"
"But I've never felt safer on a battlefield." She looked at Nyra. "That monster's on our side."
Nyra nodded. "Always has been."
Elira gave a sharp laugh — not amused, but edged with something close to relief. "Then gods help whatever's in his way."
More soldiers came running, but they weren't running toward the fight. They were fleeing — from the backline, from the same direction Thal and Tar had come.
"They're not retreating," Luken murmured. "They're running from him."
Elira didn't even blink. "Then we hold the line. Take advantage. While the enemy's confused, while our own men still have their heads — we move." She raised her glaive, voice rising above the chaos. "Soldiers of Lion's Gate! You've feared monsters! Now watch one fight for you! Hold the damned line and push forward!"
The soldiers rallied — not from courage, but because they were more afraid to disobey. They moved. Reluctantly. Quietly. But they moved.
Behind them, Thal disappeared again into the smoke, his back turned, his steps slow and methodical. Elira watched him vanish and said quietly, to no one in particular:
"Let him burn the path ahead."
In the smoke, the sound of the battle had already changed around him. Thal moved through it without slowing, the haze thickening with every step further into the backline, the screams of things dying replacing the screams of men. Threshen howled around him, snarling, shifting through mud and ash. They thought they had a chance.
He gave them none.
The first to approach was fast — too fast for a human to follow. Thal caught it by the ribcage mid-lunge, fingers digging through bone like parchment. Then he pulled. Not apart — out. He tore its ribs from its chest like a cage snapping open and flung its still-twitching organs into the dirt. His heel came down on its skull with a crunch loud enough to send birds scattering from the distant treeline.
He turned to the next. This one wore old armour, dented and fused with flesh — a former soldier, long since turned. It raised a rusted blade, snarling. Thal stepped inside its swing and drove his fist through its throat, through cartilage and vertebrae, until his hand came out the back of its neck. He lifted the thing into the air by its spine and slammed it down on the corpse of the first, splintering both into gore.
There was no finesse. No art. Only punishment.
A shriek from behind — another Threshen charging. Thal turned his back to it, let it leap, let it land. The first he tackled to the ground. His teeth found its shoulder before he'd decided to — ripping sinew and meat free — then he was already rising, moving to the next one before the first had stopped screaming.
He killed quickly. He hadn't decided to — it was just happening, each thing ending faster than the last, no lingering, nothing drawn out. She had always been like that. Even with things that didn't deserve it. Even with things that had earned worse.
He hated that it was still in him. Hated that it was here, of all places, being spent on this.
He kept moving.
His hands were soaked to the elbows now, black steaming blood dripping from his fingers like oil. He wasn't slowing down. He was accelerating. Behind him, Tar made space — his axe an engine of destruction, each swing sending pieces of bodies flying, painting the ruined earth red. He moved in wide thunderous strides, a wall of muscle and brutality. But even Tar, moving silently through the blood-storm, didn't have what Thal had right now.
Thal didn't grunt. Didn't shout. Didn't waste a breath. He simply ripped and crushed and broke and kept walking — until something shifted in him. Not a moment. A culmination.
He looked toward the walls. The banners still flying. The archers still watching from their high ground.
He looked at them the way he had from the ridge.
Then he roared.
A bestial, ragged sound that didn't sound like it came from a man at all. It echoed through the smoke, shaking the ground, silencing even the Threshen closing in around him.
They paused.
He didn't.
He exploded forward, slamming into a cluster of six. The second got an elbow to the eye so hard its jaw hung like a broken hinge. The third tried to run — he threw the second's body at it. It crumpled beneath the weight of its dead kin. He stalked over it and kept moving. Another rose from the mist — four-legged, spine curved unnaturally, jaw unhinged and dripping. Thal ran straight into it, took the impact across his chest, wrapped both hands around its throat, and slammed it into the ground so hard the earth cracked beneath them both. He dragged it. Left a trench of blood in his wake. Then hurled it into the treeline.
He didn't look to see if it got up.
He knew it wouldn't. And still he kept going, because the battle wasn't over and his fists weren't clean yet.
The sounds reaching the front line had changed. Elira heard it first — not battle cries, not the screeches of Threshen or the war horns of advancing Kruul, but something deeper. Bones breaking. Skulls cracking like fruit. Things not being fought but butchered.
She tightened her grip on her glaive, eyes fixed on the wall of smoke where two shadows still struck.
"Did you see it?" a soldier barked, stumbling back from the rear line, eyes wild. "He grabbed one by the face and peeled it. Like fruit."
"That's not a man," another gasped, blood pouring through the fingers pressed to his side. "That's a goddamn storm in a body."
"No," said a third, quieter. "Not just a god. A god of butcher."
Elira turned to the field just in time to see a Threshen thrown through the air — body torn in half, entrails unfurling mid-flight. The corpse slammed into the mud ten feet from them, sliding and twitching before going still.
Even the veterans recoiled. Even the ones who'd seen a hundred battles.
Elira watched the smoke. She could see him moving through it — no grace, no technique, no strategy. Just force. Blunt. Absolute. His body soaked in black blood, moving like a living siege weapon that had stopped caring about the distinction between controlled and uncontrolled.
Beside her, Nyra had gone quiet. Her breath had caught somewhere in her chest and hadn't fully released.
"He's never fought like this before," she said.
Elira glanced at her. "This is normal?"
Nyra slowly shook her head, eyes fixed on the smoke. "No."
Valen stepped up beside her, twin blades dripping, expression grim. "Whatever he's mad about… I hope it's not us."
Luken, leaning on his staff, pale with fatigue, nodded once. "Because we wouldn't survive it."
Elira watched Thal tear a Kruul in half lengthwise and fling its top half into the woods. The soldiers around her flinched as one. "…Is he always like this?" she asked.
"No," Nyra said again. Quieter now.
She knew Thal's silences. Knew the particular weight of him when something was pressing against the inside of that stillness. She had seen him hold it back across every fight, every dark mile, every moment that asked something of him he didn't want to give. This was what it looked like when he stopped holding.
Elira didn't press. She watched the smoke for another long moment — the wet crunch of bone on stone, the tremors in the dirt from Tar's movements, the scorched ichor clinging to every inch of the wind.
"We're not controlling that," she said finally.
Nyra gave a small, grim nod. "No."
"They don't need us." Elira's tone was matter-of-fact, but something in her jaw stayed tight. "Hell, they don't even notice us."
"He noticed," Nyra murmured. Almost like she hadn't meant to say it aloud.
Elira glanced sideways. "You?"
Nyra didn't answer.
Just before they'd turned, just before the last body had hit the mud — Thal had looked at her. Only for a second. But in that single moment there had been something in his eyes she didn't recognise. Not anger. Something underneath the anger. Something older and quieter and considerably worse. Then he'd gone back to it.
Elira shook her head. "Doesn't matter. We've got men dying on the east flank and if those bastards breach the barricades downwind, we're finished." She raised her glaive. "Move."
Nyra squared her shoulders. "Let's go."
Together the two women turned from the chaos of the backline — the screams of men and beasts, the firelight flickering against crimson clouds — and broke into a sprint toward the deeper trenches of the battlefield. Valen and Luken fell in behind them.
"What about Thal?" Luken asked, breath ragged as they ran.
Elira answered without slowing. "Let him burn."
Valen huffed a dark laugh. "That's a terrifying sentence to say out loud."
She glanced at him. "It should be."
They broke through the lines, soldiers parting as they passed. The battlefield shifted around them — less chaos, more desperation. Screams became orders. Weapons clashed with clarity instead of panic. These were the fronts that hadn't collapsed yet.
They wouldn't hold without help.