Koda moved first.
A black arrow streaking across the mist-choked field, twin blades gleaming in each hand.
Terron was only half a step behind him, heavy boots hammering against the broken earth.
Together, they cut a line straight toward the heart of the undead swarm.
The first of the enemy officers loomed ahead.
A lich, its skeletal frame wrapped in rotted finery, a crown of tarnished silver gleaming atop its hollow skull.
It raised a bony hand, whispering words that twisted the mist into jagged, clawing shapes.
The ground between Koda and the lich erupted, skeletal arms clawing upward.
Grave-born horrors.
Thralls of Greed.
Koda veered right.
Terron veered left.
They split around the erupting dead, pincering the lich between them.
The creature shrieked, a high, grating sound like glass shattering against stone.
It pointed its staff at Terron, sending a crackling bolt of green-black energy hurtling toward him.
Terron met it with a bellow, raising his hammer.
The blast struck him dead center—but the armor of the Order held.
The metal hissed and blackened, but Terron charged forward through the smoke, undeterred.
Koda reached the lich first.
He drove his left blade low, aiming for the creature's spine.
The lich twisted, unnaturally fast, deflecting the blow with its staff.
But Koda's second blade arced upward in the same breath—
And struck true.
The obsidian edge sliced through the lich's ribcage, shearing through the dark magic that bound its rotten soul to its corpse.
The creature shrieked once, a sound filled with bitter, endless hunger—
Then collapsed into dust.
"One," Koda muttered under his breath.
But there was no time to celebrate.
The ground around them boiled.
More dead rose.
More thralls surged forward.
The mist thickened, and within it—
The other officers moved.
Another wraith floated toward them, trailing chains of ghostly mist from its withered hands.
Its face was a void, a black hole of endless, gnawing desire.
Behind it, another lich barked commands, skeletal fingers weaving deadly sigils in the air.
Koda and Terron pressed forward.
But the mass of the dead was thick now—too thick.
Every swing of Terron's hammer crushed three, four, sometimes five bodies at once.
But for every creature that fell, three more rose to take its place.
Koda twisted through the press of bodies, blades flashing, carving a path toward the next lich.
But the dead closed around him like a living wall.
Grasping hands clawed at his armor, teeth snapped at his limbs.
Rotting weapons slashed and stabbed.
Terron saw it happening.
Without hesitation, he roared—a deep, thunderous sound—and spun in place, his hammer a meteor crashing into the tide.
He smashed the thralls aside, sending broken bodies flying in every direction.
He waded into the horde, drawing their attention, taking the weight.
"Go!" he barked over his shoulder.
"I'll hold them!"
Koda hesitated for only a heartbeat.
He met Terron's gaze—
saw the grim determination there—
then nodded.
And ran.
The mist boiled around him.
The world shrank to the reach of his blades and the beat of his heart.
The second lich loomed ahead.
This one was larger, its body reinforced with bands of dark iron hammered into its bones.
It wielded a jagged sword crackling with green lightning, its empty eye sockets burning with cold hunger.
The creature moved with inhuman speed, slashing at Koda as he closed the distance.
Koda ducked low under the first swing.
His left blade parried the return stroke.
His right blade struck high—catching the lich's sword arm at the elbow and severing it cleanly.
The lich staggered back, hissing in fury.
Koda pressed forward, relentless.
He spun on his heel, driving both blades into the creature's chest, crossing them like scissors.
Dark energy poured out of the wound, shrieking and wailing.
The lich collapsed into itself, sucked into the void.
"Two," Koda hissed, turning toward the next.
The wraith glided toward him, faster than the others.
Chains of spectral mist lashed out from its hands, snapping at Koda's arms and legs.
One caught his forearm, burning cold against the obsidian armor.
Koda snarled, wrenching free, feeling the chill bite into his skin beneath the plating.
The wraith struck again—this time aiming for his throat.
Koda dropped low, sliding under the attack.
His left blade whipped around, catching the wraith across its midsection.
The weapon sang as it sliced through the incorporeal flesh.
The wraith shrieked, recoiling.
But it wasn't dead.
Not yet.
It dived for him, all pretense of magic abandoned.
Its hands stretched into claws of raw shadow, slashing and tearing.
Koda rolled aside, feeling the mist itself part around him.
He surged to his feet, both blades flashing in tight, brutal arcs.
One stroke severed the wraith's arm at the elbow.
The next—
cleaved its head clean from its shoulders.
The wraith collapsed into swirling mist, dissipating with a long, hollow scream.
"Three."
Koda panted, his chest rising and falling in deep, steady breaths.
Already his armor was streaked with black blood and the ghostly residue of fallen spirits.
His blades dripped with it, steaming slightly in the cold air.
Around him, the battlefield churned.
The dead howled.
The remaining wraiths and liches hissed commands, summoning new waves of horrors.
And far, far beyond them—
something vast, something ancient, something hungry stirred.
Greed itself.
Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.
Terron fought like a force of nature behind him, crushing anything that got too close.
But even he was slowing now.
The tide was endless.
Koda wiped his blades clean with a flick of his wrists.
He squared his shoulders.
Lifted his weapons.
And set his sights on the next target.
The battle was far from over.
But tonight—
they would carve the heart out of Greed's army.
Or die trying.
——
Terron's hammer slammed into the chest of a charging undead, shattering ribs and spine in a single, echoing blow.
The body flew backward, crumpling into a heap of rotted limbs.
He turned immediately, catching another ghoul mid-leap, backhanding it into the dirt with a snarl.
But they just kept coming.
His armor hissed, scorched black from necrotic blasts.
Every breath came with effort now.
His arms, massive and tireless an hour ago, were starting to tremble under the weight of the endless onslaught.
And worse—
The wraiths.
The incorporeal bastards slipped between his strikes, their forms rippling like smoke.
One brushed past him, its cold touch tearing a burst of pain through his chest.
His armor didn't help here.
His hammer couldn't touch them.
Not really.
"Shit," Terron growled, crushing another undead underfoot.
He swung wide, buying a few feet of breathing room.
Then he made the call.
"Koda!"
The shout cracked across the field like a thunderclap.
"I'm pulling back!"
Koda didn't hesitate.
He twisted, flicking his blades clean of the last shredded corpse, and moved.
No orders.
No words.
Just movement.
Just action.
He surged through the mist, blades flashing as he tore into the dead nearest Terron's path.
The fog parted around him in brief, steaming gusts.
His aura flared—Mantle of Echoes pulsing like a drumbeat.
Fear rippled outward.
Focus tightened within.
The undead turned to him.
All of them.
It was a risk.
An invitation to be overwhelmed.
But Koda didn't slow.
He spun, slashed, ducked low under a clawed swipe and carved upward through a swollen corpse's chest.
Blood sprayed black and hot across his armor.
Another wraith drifted toward him—slow, hungry, trailing chains of fog.
He turned his shoulder into it, letting it pass through his side.
The cold numbed him—but only for a moment.
His blade came back around—
and cut the wraith's hand clean from its body.
It screamed.
Terron saw the opening.
He didn't waste it.
With a last, bellowing roar, he waded through the loosening ring of undead and ran—
a slow, powerful retreat toward the fallback point marked by blue flares.
He turned just once before disappearing into the mist—
And saw Koda.
Standing alone.
Surrounded.
Blades dripping.
A dark flame in the center of an endless storm.
Koda breathed deep.
The taste of blood and rot burned his lungs.
But the pain grounded him.
The enemy was focused now. Drawn in.
Exactly what he needed.
He moved toward the next officer.
A wraith larger than the others, crowned with curling horns of pure bone, its form rippling with cold, green fire.
Its chains writhed like serpents, whispering broken promises in languages never meant for the living.
It saw him.
It smiled.
Koda smiled back.
And sprinted straight toward it.