The silence was worse than the screaming.
Aden staggered forward, his boots slipping in the churned gore of the battlefield. The air hung thick with the stench of opened bowels and charred flesh, clinging to the back of his throat like a physical thing.
Around him, the survivors of the Twelfth Pillar stared with hollow eyes—men who had followed him through a hundred battles, now looking at him as if he were the Reaper himself.
"I didn't—" Aden's voice cracked, his tongue heavy with the taste of copper. "I wasn't in control—"
Captain Dain stepped forward, his armor dented, his face streaked with blood and soot. In his arms, he cradled the remains of Lieutenant Haldon—just the upper half, the lower torso nowhere to be seen.
The wound was clean, precise. The kind only a master swordsman could make.
Dain's hands shook as he adjusted his grip on the corpse. "Tell that to Haldon," he spat, his voice raw. "Oh wait—" His lips twisted into something too bitter to be a smile. "You burned his fucking legs off first."
Aden opened his mouth—
The ground screamed.
A sound like a thousand dying men echoed across the field as the earth heaved, throwing soldiers to their knees. From the corpse-piles, from the blood-soaked mud, from the very air itself—bones twitched, then rose.
The surviving liches moved as one, their skeletal hands plunging into their own ribcages with wet tearing sounds. They pulled free pulsing black orbs—their cores—and hurled them toward their master.
The Boss Lich caught them with outstretched arms, its tattered royal banners flaring as the orbs merged into a swirling vortex of necrotic energy.
The air itself seemed to tear as the Colossus pulled itself from the earth.
Fifty feet of rotting flesh and fused bone, its body a patchwork of the fallen—Aden's own men, their faces still twitching, their mouths stretched in silent screams.
Jorin's face bulged from its forearm, his dead lips mouthing wordless pleas. Another soldier's torso formed part of its ribcage, the man's arms still clutching at the air as if drowning.
Its voice was a chorus of the dead:
"WE DIED FOR YOU... NOW DIE WITH US."
Aden's sword was in his hand before he could think—but it wasn't him moving.
Wrath surged through his veins like liquid fire, his muscles coiling with power that wasn't his own. His right eye burned, vision tinted crimson as his body moved without his command.
The Colossus swung a massive fist—a conglomerate of a dozen soldiers' corpses—but Aden dodged, his body bending at impossible angles. He didn't think—he knew. Knew where the blow would land. Knew how to avoid it.
And he was laughing.
The sound tore from his throat unbidden, a guttural, joyful noise that made even the Colossus hesitate.
From the ridge above, the Ash-Sworn watched in silent horror.
Veyra's horse reared, its eyes rolling white as it caught the scent of death. The mercenaries clutched their weapons, their faces pale.
"That's not..." One of them—a grizzled veteran with scars across his face—took a step back. "No man moves like that."
Veyra didn't answer. Her hand tightened on her axe as Aden leaped—twenty, thirty feet straight up—his sword carving a burning arc through the Colossus's wrist.
The severed hand hit the ground with a wet thud, the faces embedded in its palm still screaming.
Aden landed in a crouch, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The Colossus staggered back, black ichor pouring from the wound—but before it could recover, Aden was moving again.
This time, when he struck, he aimed for the core—the swirling mass of necrotic energy at its chest.
His blade sank in with a sound like a dying sigh.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the Colossus shuddered, its massive form collapsing inward. The faces contorted in agony as the body unraveled, dissolving into a flood of black sludge and teeth.
As the last of it faded, a single skeletal hand shot from the muck, grasping Aden's wrist with surprising strength.
The Boss Lich's voice hissed from the dissolving remains:
"The King knows your true name... He waits for you in the dark..."
Then it too was gone.
Aden turned to his men, his chest heaving. "Listen to me—" he began, his voice desperate. "That wasn't me before! It was—"
A final whisper echoed from the fading sludge:
"Liar...."
The Twelfth Pillar stared at him, their faces unreadable.
Behind Aden, his shadow stretched long in the setting sun—its mouth too wide, its fingers too sharp.
And for the briefest moment, it winked.