The trench stank of blighted rust and root-sick water.
They called this stretch Dog's Hollow, though no one remembered why. Maybe it was the curl of the land, or the fact that scouts sometimes found gnawed bones without the men they belonged to.
Tarn stepped into it without hesitation.
Behind him trudged six — a patch-band Veiss had handpicked: Jael, Rikk, Fenn, and three more whose names hadn't stuck yet. No banners. No rank ribbons. Just mud-flecked armor, makeshift shields, and enough suspicion to clog a shrine pipe.
Veiss didn't come.
He'd said: "You sit. That's earned. But now they have to see if you bleed right."
So Tarn led.
The trench twisted down into the old silt channel. The kind carved before the last banner war, where water used to run thick with iron and judgment. Now it just sat — brown, still, fetid.
"Keep eyes wide," Tarn muttered. "Quiet until the bend."
Fenn cracked his neck. "You hear the thing about this spot?"
"Don't start," Jael hissed.
"No, this is real. Last week, right? The watcher-post? Found the whole squad turned inward. Faces chewed. No sign of breach."
"Rats."
"No, I know rat work. This was different. They said the flesh pulled up the face. Like something was drawing it toward the eyes."
Tarn paused. Glanced back. "Shields up. Spear points forward. Talk later."
Rikk grinned. "That's him, now. Talking like he expects to be heard."
They rounded the bend.
The fog thickened. Too thick. Wrong thick.
Tarn crouched. The others followed, if reluctantly.
There, barely visible through the mist, slumped a figure. Uniformed. Slumped against the trench wall like sleep had finally won.
Tarn made a quick hand sign — halt, sweep right. Fenn and Jael moved. Rikk followed behind, step-silent. The others waited.
Tarn approached.
The body wore camp grey. Blood at the neckline. But no wound.
He reached forward—
The eyes opened.
Not human.
Too wide.
Too black.
The thing lunged — not fast, but wrong. Jerky, as if learning movement from memory. Tarn shoved back, drew short-blade, slashed — connected. The thing shrieked without breath.
Jael rammed it with a shoulder and slammed his shield into the wall.
Too late.
Others came.
Three shapes, then four, half-formed, too tall, wrong-bent. Trench crawlers. Not Mirehold scouts. Not animals. Leftovers. The kind that shouldn't be — remnants of oath-rites gone wrong. Flesh that took commands from the wrong source.
"Circle!" Tarn shouted.
The squad tightened. Swords drawn. Shields raised. No room to maneuver. Only blood and grit.
One of the creatures dropped into the trench from above — a blur of bone and rot. It landed on Fenn. Screamed.
Fenn didn't.
Tarn slammed his short-blade into the back of the thing's neck and yanked it back.
They fought.
No war cries. Just grunts. Shields cracked. Blade met tendon. Rikk lost his footing, recovered, drove his spear into a thing's gut — and it bled dust.
Jael pulled Tarn's arm mid-swing, redirecting a blow meant for flesh onto a crawler's throat.
They won.
Barely.
When the trench went quiet again, three of the shapes bled out into the soil. One twitched — Jael ended it with the butt of his spear.
Fenn sat panting, bleeding from the scalp.
"You bleed?" Tarn asked.
"Y-yeah."
"Good. You're still ours."
No one laughed. But no one looked away.
Tarn straightened.
"Clean the trench. Mark the dead. We burn at dusk."
Rikk stared at him. "You don't want to report this first?"
"I just did. To the trench. And it remembers better than any scroll."