The death of the Darkan commander should have been a moment of grief—a rallying cry for vengeance. But there was no time to mourn. The battlefield allowed no such luxury.
Their enemy—the Blood Deplorable—had turned the tide.
Every weapon the commanders had deflected moments earlier came back at them, as if guided by a will of its own. The ones they dodged didn't simply fall—no, they embedded themselves into the ground and waited, lying in ambush like vipers in tall grass. The blood weaponry was alive in all but name, weaving itself into traps and horrors.
Panic grew among the ranks.
This had been a carefully planned operation. The enemy they faced was supposed to be weakened. When the battle began, he appeared sickly, exhausted even. There was a collective sense of relief when his rank was observed to have dropped from the dreaded 7th star to a peak 6th.
But now?
Now their most elite warriors were struggling.
And one of them—one of the six—had already fallen.
