Corrupted blood lord

The gates closed behind them with enough force to shake dust from the stone arch.

Inside, Count Maren’s castle no longer resembled the seat of a prosperous border lord. Wagons crowded the lower courtyard, packed so tightly that servants had to turn sideways between them. Refugees slept beneath canvas stretched from the walls. Wounded soldiers occupied the covered walkways, while priests moved among them carrying water, bandages, and bowls of smoking incense.

The smell of smoke did little to cover the scent of decay.

Serenna’s horse shifted beneath her.

She looked toward Teclos. "It’s coming from below us."

"I know."

Captain Dalen heard them.

"What is?"

Teclos dismounted and handed the reins to one of Maren’s stable boys.

"The dead."

Dalen looked around the courtyard. "There are funeral pits outside the walls."

"That isn’t what he means," Serenna said.

A bell rang from the northern tower.

The people in the courtyard stopped moving.

For several seconds, no one spoke.

Then another bell answered from the western wall, followed by shouting above the gate.

The mounted commander who had escorted them inside swore under his breath.

"What happened?" Dalen asked.

"Another body at the northern ditch."

"How does a corpse reach the ditch without your sentries seeing it?"

The commander looked tired enough to strike him.

"It doesn’t walk there. We check the ground at sunset, and the bodies are already waiting. Sometimes one. Sometimes ten."

"Whose bodies?"

"Mostly ours."

The commander dismounted.

"My name is Commander Havel. Count Maren is in the upper hall. He asked to see Veyron’s people the moment you arrived."

He looked toward Teclos and Serenna.

"You two as well."

Pell glanced at the crowded courtyard.

"What about the horses?"

Havel pointed toward a stable boy.

"He’ll take them."

The boy looked no older than fourteen and had one arm tied against his chest.

Pell handed over the reins carefully.

"Was that from the undead?"

The boy nodded.

"My brother came back after we buried him."

Pell’s expression changed.

He opened his mouth, but nothing useful seemed to come.

The boy led the horses away before he could try again.

Dalen gathered his men.

"Jaro, keep everyone together. No wandering, no drinking, and no gambling with the local garrison."

One of the shield bearers frowned.

"We’ve only just arrived."

"That is why I’m saying it now."

Teclos followed Havel across the courtyard.

Serenna walked beside him, her hood lowered enough to reveal the disguised face she had chosen before leaving Veyron’s lands. She still appeared beautiful, although less unnaturally so than in her true form. Dark brown hair framed a pale face with sharper features than most men in the courtyard seemed prepared for.

Several soldiers watched her pass.

Serenna ignored them.

Pell noticed.

"They’re staring again," he said quietly to the man beside him.

The shield bearer glanced at Serenna.

"So are you."

"I’m watching them stare."

"That is still staring."

Serenna turned her head slightly.

Both men immediately looked ahead.

Teclos almost smiled.

—

Count Edric Maren waited in a narrow war room above the inner courtyard.

He was younger than Veyron, perhaps in his early forties, though several sleepless weeks had added years to his face. A trimmed beard covered his jaw, and a dark bruise marked one temple.

Maps had been nailed to the walls rather than placed on the table. Red wooden markers surrounded three villages and the abandoned monastery north of the castle.

A thin woman in gray robes stood beside the count. The silver staff in her hand identified her as a court mage, though the deep shadows beneath her eyes suggested she had not used it recently.

Maren came around the table as soon as Dalen entered.

"Veyron sent you."

"He did, my lord."

The count looked past him at the soldiers.

"Ten men?"

"Ten soldiers, two contracted hunters, and supplies."

Maren’s gaze stopped on Teclos.

"You are Teclos."

"Yes."

"I’ve heard a number of stories."

"Most are probably true."

"That does not reassure me."

Maren looked toward Serenna.

"And you are?"

"Seren."

"She is one of the hunters," Dalen said.

Maren appeared to notice the difference between the name and the woman standing before him, but he was too exhausted to question it.

He returned to the table.

"The first graves opened sixteen days ago. We thought it was the work of common necromancers. Grave robbers sometimes sell bones and bodies to alchemists."

His finger moved across the map.

"Then corpses began attacking farms. Not mindlessly. They cut fences, surrounded homes, and dragged the dead away after each attack."

"How many villages have you lost?" Dalen asked.

"Two abandoned. One burned."

"Who burned it?"

"We did."

The count looked toward the gray-robed mage.

"Magister Lysa ordered the houses destroyed after the dead began rising inside them."

Lysa’s hands tightened around her staff.

"Burning the village stopped them for one night. The following evening, the ashes gathered around the remaining bones and formed new bodies."

Pell shifted behind Teclos.

"That can happen?"

Lysa looked at him.

"It should not."

Teclos stepped toward the map.

"You said a lich was responsible."

"We believe so," Maren replied. "My court mage, Alren, tracked the necromantic current to an abandoned monastery north of the castle. He entered with twenty soldiers."

"None returned?"

"One did."

Maren pointed toward the inner wall.

"He came back alone three days later. He had no tongue, no eyes, and no memory of entering the monastery. He died before sunrise."

Serenna leaned closer to the map.

"What did you do with the body?"

"Burned it."

"Where?"

"The western funeral pit."

She looked at Teclos.

A strand of darkness connected with the shadow beneath his ear.

*Ask whether it moved after death.*

Teclos repeated the question aloud.

Maren glanced toward Lysa.

The mage answered.

"It did. The ashes shifted toward the castle until we mixed them with consecrated salt."

Dalen looked at the markers surrounding the monastery.

"If the lich is there, why are the dead gathering beneath your castle?"

Maren’s expression changed.

"You know about that?"

"Teclos sensed them as we entered."

Everyone in the room looked at him.

Teclos rested one hand on the table.

"There are hundreds below the castle. Some are moving. Others are packed together too closely for me to tell where one ends and another begins."

Lysa’s face went pale.

"That isn’t possible."

"You have crypts beneath the castle."

"Family tombs," Maren said. "The oldest parts were sealed generations ago."

"How old?"

"Older than the fortress above them."

Serenna spoke quietly.

"Then your lich may never have been at the monastery."

Maren turned toward her.

"My court mage traced the power there."

"He traced a current," she replied. "That does not mean he found the source. Necromancers can direct mana through bodies, graves, or prepared objects."

Lysa nodded slowly.

"The monastery cemetery holds thousands of dead. It could act as a reservoir."

"Or a distraction," Teclos said.

Maren looked down at the map.

"If the lich is beneath the castle, why attack the villages?"

"To fill the roads with refugees," Serenna said. "You brought them all inside the walls."

Silence settled over the room.

The count looked toward the courtyard below.

Hundreds of displaced villagers had gathered inside his fortress.

Dalen understood first.

"You didn’t rescue them. You collected bodies for it."

Maren struck the table with one fist.

"They are not dead."

"Not yet," Teclos said.

The count looked at him sharply.

Teclos continued before anger replaced reason.

"If the lich controls the crypts, the castle is where it wants everyone. Soldiers, refugees, priests, nobles. It no longer needs to hunt them across the countryside."

Lysa moved toward the door.

"We need to clear the courtyard."

"Where do they go?" Maren asked. "The villages are abandoned, and the roads are attacked every night."

"Anywhere that is not standing above hundreds of corpses," Serenna said.

A horn sounded from the courtyard.

Not a warning from the walls.

This one came from below.

The note was low and distorted, vibrating through the floor beneath their boots.

Dust fell from the ceiling.

Teclos expanded Dark Sense.

The mass beneath the castle shifted.

Hundreds of shapes began moving at once.

"They know we found them," he said.

Maren drew his sword.

"How long do we have?"

The stone beneath the table cracked.

"Not long."

—

The first dead came through the chapel floor.

Teclos reached the lower courtyard as bells began ringing across the castle. Refugees ran between wagons while soldiers tried to form lines without trampling them.

The chapel doors burst open.

A priest stumbled outside with blood covering his white robes.

"Crypts," he shouted. "They’re coming through the crypts!"

A corpse seized him from behind and pulled him back inside.

Captain Dalen drew his sword.

"Shields forward. Crossbows behind them. Edrin, hold your fire until you have a clear target."

His men formed near the chapel steps.

This time, no one argued.

The chapel windows shattered.

Dead soldiers climbed through them.

They wore rusted armour bearing Maren’s crest from several different generations. Some still carried swords. Others had broken spears, farming tools, or nothing but blackened fingers.

Their eyes burned with pale green fire.

Pell lowered his spear.

"There are too many."

Dalen struck the shaft with his sword.

"Then stop counting."

The first row charged.

The shield bearers met them at the foot of the steps. Bone and metal struck wood. One corpse lost an arm and continued pushing until Pell drove his spear through its mouth.

The crossbowmen fired.

Silver bolts punched through skulls and chests, but only those struck in the head remained down.

Edrin raised both hands.

A sheet of flame crossed the chapel entrance and swallowed six corpses. They walked through it.

Their clothing burned away. Their skin blackened and split.

They did not stop.

"Salt!" Lysa shouted from the courtyard.

Servants dragged open one of Veyron’s supply crates.

Dalen seized a jar of consecrated salt and threw it into Edrin’s flames.

The fire turned white.

Every corpse inside it collapsed at once.

"That works," Pell shouted.

Dalen pointed toward the remaining jars.

"Then use it sparingly. We don’t know how many are coming."

A second crash shook the courtyard.

Stone split near the inner wall.

Skeletal hands pushed through the ground.

Teclos spread his darkness across the courtyard before the breach widened.

Tendrils plunged into the crack and wrapped around the first bodies trying to climb through. He pulled upward, tearing six corpses from the earth at once, then crushed them together.

More hands appeared beneath them.

Serenna landed beside the opening.

She had removed her amulet.

Several soldiers saw her true face and forgot what they were doing.

Pell stared for half a second.

A corpse lunged toward him.

Serenna crossed the distance and tore its head free before it reached him.

"Keep watching the dead," she said.

Pell looked from the corpse to her.

"You look different."

"I changed my hair."

"That is not—"

Another corpse climbed from the ground.

Pell stabbed it through the eye.

"Later," he said.

Serenna almost smiled.

She cut her palm with one claw.

Blood gathered around her fingers, darkening as shadow moved through it. Thin red-black strands spread across the courtyard and pierced the corpses Teclos had pinned.

The darkness inside them reacted.

Their bodies stopped moving.

Teclos felt the control binding them.

A thread of necromantic mana ran through every corpse and disappeared beneath the castle.

"Can you cut the connection?" he asked.

"Not from here. Something is holding them together below us."

"Then we go down."

Dalen overheard.

"Not until the courtyard is secure."

A wagon overturned near the gate.

Three corpses climbed from beneath it and fell upon a group of refugees. Teclos opened a rift and emerged among them.

His blade removed the first corpse’s head.

A tendril tore the second in half.

The third raised a sword toward a child hiding beneath the wagon.

Serenna’s blood thread crossed the courtyard and sliced through its elbow. Teclos caught the falling blade before it struck the ground.

He looked toward her.

She was already fighting something else.

No words passed between them.

None were needed.

Commander Havel rode into the courtyard with twenty soldiers from the outer wall.

"More are climbing from the western well!"

Maren followed on foot, sword in hand.

"How many breaches?"

"Three," Havel said. "Chapel, well, and the old storehouse."

Lysa reached them.

"The storehouse stairs connect to the sealed crypts."

Teclos threw the stolen sword aside.

"Show me."

Maren blocked his path.

"You are not going below alone."

"I’m not."

Serenna wiped blood from her hand and stepped beside him.

The count looked at her true face, then at the broken amulet hanging around her neck.

He understood that another explanation had been withheld.

There was no time to demand it.

"Dalen," Maren said, "take five men and go with them. Havel holds the courtyard."

Dalen looked toward his unit.

"Pell, Edrin, Jaro, Corren, Mikal. With me."

Pell pulled his spear from a corpse.

"I was hoping you’d choose someone else."

"You can complain while walking."

They crossed the courtyard toward the old storehouse.

The doors shook from impacts on the other side.

Black smoke leaked through the gaps.

Serenna stopped before them.

"That is not decay."

Teclos could smell it now as well.

Cold ash. Old blood. Mana that had been sealed beneath stone for centuries.

Dalen adjusted his grip on his sword.

"What is it?"

Serenna looked toward the darkness beneath the door.

"Whatever Count Maren buried under this castle, it has been awake longer than sixteen days."

The doors bent outward.

Teclos raised one hand.

Darkness gathered around the hinges.

"Then we should ask it why it waited."

The doors exploded toward them.