SOREN
The first wave didn't come at me like men. They came like a singular, multi-limbed organism, their movements shorn of the hesitation that usually defines a human assault.
There was no shouting, no clatter of shields as they tested my resolve; there was only the sound of a hundred pairs of boots hitting the frozen mud in perfect, terrifying unison.
I stopped counting after the first hundred. They poured from the alleyways and the shattered remains of the garrison, their faces locked in that same agonizing glitch. Behind every pair of eyes, that violet flame flickered with a cold, predatory light.
I understood then, with a clarity that tasted like copper, that they weren't choosing this. The men I had trained, the men who had sworn their lives to the obsidian throne, were being driven like cattle by something reaching into the very root of their souls.
My decision was made in the heartbeat between the drawing of a breath and the release of it. I would not kill them.
