Chapter 509: The Culling (1).
The Field of Skulls did not resemble a battlefield so much as it resembled the aftermath of a place of neverending carnage.
Bone lay everywhere.
Bones scattered and buried beneath the bonedust, not even partially contained. It was simply present, spread across the ground in layers that had been degraded and washed away by the wind and elements, suggesting centuries of accumulation rather than any single event. Some pieces were small enough to grind into powder beneath a boot. Others were long, curved fragments that jutted upward like broken pillars, half-buried and half-exposed, as if whatever once owned them had been too large for death to fully erase.
The air itself was tainted.
Every breath drawn into the lungs carried a dry, metallic bitterness that clung to the back of the throat. It was not just dust. It was older than mere dust.
It was weighty, like some strange thing broken down so completely, it had stopped being matter in any familiar sense and become a condition of the place itself.
Chaos bred in this land if bone and death.
Arthur moved at the front of the formation.
Behind him stretched more than a thousand survivors, though even that number no longer felt certain. The initial shock of the trial had already reduced them. Hundreds had fallen in the first chaotic minutes, their remains scattered across the bone field, some already half-buried under shifting dust and trampling feet. The survivors that remained were still moving, because stopping had already proven itself to be fatal.
The Wraiths came again.
There was no warning beyond the subtle change in pressure, the way the fog ahead seemed to thicken and then break outward as pale shapes forced their way through.
Arthur raised his blade with a grim chuckle falling from his lips.