CHAPTER 699: 699

No one believed it.

Weapons were lifted higher. Shields tightened in trembling grips. Step by step, they edged closer to the extinguished torch, glancing around with frantic, jerking motions.

They saw nothing.

Relief, thin and fragile crept in as they went ahead to relight the torch.

That was when the entire stretch of wall they stood on plunged into darkness.

One after another, the torches lining the ramparts winked out as if pinched by invisible fingers, snuffing light from the world in a single sweeping motion. Shadows devoured everything. Sight vanished.

Panic rippled through the line.

Men gasped. Someone whispered a prayer. "Fuck" Someone else cursed through chattering teeth.

They knew then, the enemy was already here as there was nothing natural about what just occurred.

A cold wave of dread surged through the dark as shapes began to move in the darkness before them. At first, it was only the suggestion of motion, soft, crawling, almost liquid.

Then their eyes adjusted just enough to see.

Shadows.

Crawling on all fours at impossible angles, limbs stretching too far, joints bending the wrong way. A cluster of them, slipping forward with spidery, predatory grace.

Slowly, almost deliberately... they rose.

They stood upright in the darkness, tall, wrong, trembling with some internal violence and those gathered shapes opened their eyes.

Blood-red, dozens of them staring directly at the gathered group of common man and soldiers.

The breath left everyone’s lungs at once, the horror was confirmed and it was already too late.

One of the villagers let out a scream at the sight of those red eyes,

But the scream was short-lived.

The thralls surged forward in the darkness, their movements almost soundless, perfect predators born for the night. The villagers and guards, robbed of all light, found themselves helpless, unable even to see the full form of the things attacking them.

The scream cut off abruptly.

Tenichi and his men snapped their heads toward the sound. Where a section of the wall had been moments earlier... now only a pool of darkness remained, with a brief glance of figures moving and falling.

Tenichi didn’t know what pushed his legs to move, fear, instinct or duty but he was running before he realized it.

"Bring extra torches!" he roared, the order cracking through the air.

His men scrambled after him.

When Tenichi reached the darkened section, his steps faltered.

His people, his own townsfolk and the guards stationed there lay scattered across the stone. Their bodies were collapsed, shriveled, sunken in on themselves as if every drop of moisture, every bit of life, had been sucked out. Skin clung tightly to bone. Eyes were hollow caves. Not a single wound marked them.

And the enemy... was nowhere to be seen.

A cold dread crawled up Tenichi’s spine.

The squad behind him finally arrived, thrusting torches forward. Flames flared back to life, pushing back the darkness inch by inch.

Tenichi knelt beside one of the collapsed forms. His hand hovered over the withered chest, unable to touch it.

"This... this happened in seconds," one of the guards whispered behind him, voice trembling.

Another guard squatted to examine a fallen comrade, pushing back brittle skin with shaking fingers. "No blood... no wounds... just dry. Like they were drained."

Tenichi swallowed hard.

They crouched beside the shriveled bodies, hoping, desperately that they might find some clue, something useful that could explain what had happened.

But this night offered no answers, only horror

A sudden scream of fear tore through the air.

Everyone jerked their heads toward the sound. From the height of the wall they stood on, they could overlook the town and what they saw froze the blood in their veins.

Light was dying.

One torch after another flickered out below them, as though a great shadow swept through the streets, devouring every flame in its path. Houses, alleys, and courtyards vanished into darkness in rapid succession.

Then a roar. The same inhuman roar as before... but closer now.

Tenichi and the others whipped their heads back around just in time to see the source of the scream near them.

One of the men who had followed Tenichi was no longer standing. He was lifted off the ground, held tightly in the rigid, clawlike hands of one of the shriveled corpses they had thought dead.

The dried husk clung to the struggling man with impossible strength. Its jaw unhinged slightly, revealing long, needle-like fangs that it sank into the man’s throat. A wet choke escaped him, his limbs kicking weakly.

Tenichi watched, frozen, as color drained from the man’s face in seconds, his body collapsing inward as though being emptied from the inside. At the same time, the once-dried corpse began to writhe.

Bones snapped sharply into place. Veins pulsed with stolen fluid. The hollow skin stretched and filled as the corpse twisted into a new form becoming a thrall right before their eyes.

Tenichi felt his stomach drop, his mind unable to accept what he was seeing.

Around him, another sound began soft, awful, unmistakable.

The other husks on the ground twitched, then they jerked and started to rise.

A chorus of crackling joints and rasping breaths filled the air.

The men who had come with him stared for a heartbeat too long, then terror ripped through their composure. They dropped their crude weapons with panicked clatters and screamed, stumbling over each other as they tried to flee.

Some couldn’t even run. Their legs simply refused to move. They collapsed where they stood, paralyzed by fear as the undead forms shifted toward them.

Tenichi ran too.

But unlike the others, he didn’t drop his weapon.

He clutched it tightly... though the look on his face made it clear that he didn’t believe it would help. His eyes were wide with despair, with the crushing hopelessness of a man who had just realized the truth.

This was not something a modest town, filled mostly with farmers, craftsmen, and a handful of trained soldiers could ever hope to handle. Even if the county sent reinforcements, Tenichi doubted they would fare any better. Ordinary men were not meant to stand against something like this.

The town was becoming the enemy.

By the time dawn rose, Tenichi feared there would be no living souls left behind at all. Even his life, despite his own training, despite his instincts was nowhere near guaranteed.

Tenichi understood the horror unfolding around him. He understood that these creatures "thralls" spread through feeding. But what he could not comprehend was the speed.

This was not the slow, crawling plague he might have expected from a beastly, mindless monster. The thralls moved with ferocity and intent. Their growth was coordinated, almost strategic. There was no waste, no hesitation. They struck, fed, and rose again in mere seconds.

If they had truly been nothing more than animalistic beasts with no guiding hands, things might have been different. The corpses left behind would have been torn apart, ruined beyond use, barely coherent enough for anything to rise from them. The spread would have been slow, a tragedy, but a containable one.

But these thralls were something far worse.

They killed with precision, leaving the bodies intact, preserving them like empty vessels ready to be filled. Their purpose was clear and horrifying:

Feed. Multiply. Expand.

Before the first hint of sunrise brushed the sky, the screams had stopped. The windows remained dark. The gates stood unmoving. No hurried footsteps. No calls for help.

Only silence, a silence too complete to be natural. The silence of absence.

And then, as the dim blue light of predawn touched the edges of the horizon, the truth of that silence revealed itself.

The streets crawled with them. Thralls, dozens, hundreds moving on all fours like grotesque hunting dogs. Their bodies were unnaturally swollen, distended from the fluid and life they had absorbed. Their skin stretched too tightly over shifting muscle, pulsing in slow, unnatural rhythms.

They sniffed at the air, heads twitching, ears rotating toward the slightest sound. Some skittered along walls. Others prowled abandoned doorways. Their blood-red eyes glowed faintly in the half-light, scanning for any last traces of life.

The town was theirs now.

It was at that moment, all at once that every thrall stopped.

Their bodies froze mid-movement, heads snapping upward in eerie unison. A low rumble rolled through their throats as they turned their glowing red eyes toward the city wall.

Silhouetted against the paling sky stood a line of cloaked figures. Motionless. Watching.

Before them hovered a large bowl, its surface carved with runes that pulsed with a blood-red glow. The light inside the bowl shimmered like liquid blood, swirling slowly as though hungry.

One of the cloaked figures lifted a hand and made a simple, deliberate gesture.

The thralls obeyed instantly.

Their swollen, engorged bodies began to shrink. Skin tightened. Limbs withered. The grotesque fullness drained from their forms until they collapsed inward once more, becoming the shriveled husks they were meant to be.