The camp stank of smoke and blood.
Even after the Draugr had been beaten back into the night, the scent clung to everything — the scorched leather of bedrolls, the charred edges of the rebel banners, the iron tang of blood seeping into the dirt. Fires had been doused, but ash drifted like a second snowfall, graying the air. The rebels' camp at the edge of the ruin should have been quiet now, yet it seethed with restless whispers.
"Machines casting fire…" one refugee muttered, clutching her child against her chest. Her voice was sharp, brittle with terror.
"The Infernal Rain is back," another said.
"Are we cursed again? Has the world finally damned us all?"
The words spread like infection through the tents and fire circles. Fear had always haunted them — hunger, disease, Eisenreicher patrols, the relentless weight of winter storms — but this was something new. What they'd seen last night defied reason.
The Draugr had always been monsters. Rusted machines brought back from the dead, fueled by corrupted Synthex cores. Soulless, relentless, merciless. But last night, they hadn't just swung rusted blades or fired repeating bolts. They had cast fire, walls of burning air that had consumed fighters and tents alike. The survivors swore they'd seen runes glowing on the Draugr's frames, pulsing as if alive.
Rumor twisted the truth into horror.
Some swore the Draugr had been possessed by spirits — demons crawling into their iron husks. Others whispered the machines had finally absorbed the Infernal Rain itself, the cursed storm that had broken the world once before. Still others muttered about Skjoldur — the cursed kingdom, Brynhild's homeland — and the sins of its generals, dragging them all back into nightmare.
The refugees huddled closer to their fires, unwilling to sleep, eyes darting at every creak of the wind. The rebels kept their weapons within reach, patrols doubling their rounds. But even the veterans moved with unease, their eyes shadowed.
Captain Ingrid Falk stood at the edge of the camp, cloak drawn tight around her shoulders. She hadn't slept either, her lined face sharp in the glow of the embers. Her people needed rest, yet rest was impossible. Fear was louder than any command she could give.
"Captain?" Lieutenant Edda approached, her voice low, as though afraid to be overheard by the firelight whispers. "The camp won't settle. Word's spreading too fast."
"I know." Ingrid's eyes narrowed. She looked out toward the black horizon, where the Draugr had retreated. "We can't let rumors rule us. Facts first. Fear later."
"You're thinking what I'm thinking," Edda said grimly.
"Aye." Ingrid nodded. "We need to know what we're up against. Send the scouts. Have them bring back wreckage if they find any."
Edda hesitated. "That's dangerous. The battlefield—"
"Everything is dangerous," Ingrid cut in sharply. "But I won't be blindsided again. If the machines have changed, I'll damn well know how."
Her tone brooked no argument. Orders were given, and a small team of hardened scouts slipped into the night, weapons drawn, faces pale.
The camp watched them go in silence, the refugees clutching each other tighter. Nobody said what they were all thinking — that the scouts might not come back at all.
Dawn came gray and weak, the sun hidden behind smudges of ash-heavy clouds.
The camp was already awake when the scouts returned.
They stumbled into view, dragging burdens behind them — twisted, blackened shapes scraping against the earth. Gasps rippled through the crowd. Some of the refugees shrieked outright, clutching their children away as the scouts entered the perimeter.
Three Draugr husks.
The things were half-shattered, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, plating warped from fire and blade. But they were unmistakable — iron skeletons, humanoid frames still faintly sparking with energy. One's skull flickered with faint light where an eye had once burned.
"Don't bring those things inside!" a man shouted, his voice cracking. "They'll wake up!"
"Keep them out! Burn them! Burn them now!" cried another.
The crowd surged, panic rising like a wave. The scouts froze under the pressure, dragging their burdens no further.
"Quiet!" Ingrid's voice cracked like a whip, cutting through the clamor. She strode forward, her expression carved from stone. "These husks are dead. They won't rise again."
"You don't know that!" someone screamed from the back. "We've all seen them get back up before—"
"They are wrecks," Ingrid said coldly. "And we will study them. If we burn them, we learn nothing. And if we learn nothing, we all die the next time they come."
The logic was harsh, unyielding, and it silenced most. But the fear didn't fade.
Brynhild shoved her way to the front, yawning, hair disheveled, still in her armor from the night before. She eyed the Draugr husks with the easy disdain of a tavern drunk eyeing a bar brawl.
"Relax," she said, grinning, voice loud enough for everyone to hear. "If they wake, I'll bash their heads in again. Not the first stiff I've had to handle."
The joke drew a few nervous chuckles, but more glares than laughter. Mothers clutched their children tighter, soldiers spat into the dirt. Brynhild's irreverence, meant to cut through fear, only deepened the anger.
"You think this is funny?" one man snarled. "My brother burned last night. Burned. And you—"
"Better to laugh than piss yourself," Brynhild snapped back, smirking. "Or do you prefer crying in front of your kids?"
The confrontation nearly boiled over before Ingrid raised her hand, silencing both sides.
"Enough," the captain said coldly. "Bring the husks to the command tent. Now."
The largest tent had been half-burned in the night raid, one side collapsed, canvas blackened by fire. But it still stood, and Ingrid had claimed it for her officers. Now the Draugr corpses were dragged inside, their metallic bodies scraping against the floor.
The officers gathered around them, grim and silent.
At first, the husks looked like wreckage — nothing more than twisted machines. But as lantern light fell across their frames, something else became clear.
Etched into the iron plating were runes.
They were jagged, uneven, carved with no smith's hammer or mage's hand. Yet they pulsed faintly, veins of dull light running through them. One rune flared brighter as a lantern flickered nearby, sparking faintly as though drawing on the fire's heat.
The room fell silent.
"These markings…" Ingrid murmured, crouching closer. "They're not Eisenreicher script. Not Arcanorian either."
"They're not from any school I know," muttered Father Alrik, the camp's aging scholar-priest. He traced one rune with a shaking hand but pulled back as it pulsed beneath his fingers. "They're… improvised. Growing, even. Like the machines themselves etched them."
"That's not possible," Lieutenant Edda hissed.
"It wasn't possible for them to cast fire either," Ingrid said flatly.
The silence deepened, pressing heavy. The runes pulsed, faint and sickly, as if mocking them.
"They're learning," one soldier whispered, almost choking on the words.
"They weren't taught," Alrik muttered, voice hollow. "Not inscribed by man or mage. The machines themselves are changing."
The realization rippled like a cold wind. No one spoke for a long time.
Finally, another rebel broke the silence, his voice shaking: "They learn faster than we do."
No one disagreed.
The revelation spread through the camp like wildfire, worse than any rumor.
Some were quick to claim this was the curse of the Infernal Rain returning, reshaping the Draugr as it once reshaped the land. They muttered of doom and punishment, that all resistance was futile against such divine blight.
Others pointed fingers at Skjoldur, at the sins of Kaelen Dravik and his mad generals. The Skjoldurians had unleashed this scourge once before, they cried. Why not again? Their experiments had damned them all — and now their curse was evolving.
Brynhild bore the blame with her usual smirk, though her hands tightened on her sword hilt.
"If they can use sorcery," one refugee woman sobbed, "then where in this world is safe?"
The camp divided.
One faction, mostly civilians, demanded they flee — scatter into the countryside, hide in caves, abandon this doomed rebellion before it consumed them all.
Another faction, hardened rebels and embittered soldiers, argued they had to strike first, hit the Draugr before the machines mastered this new sorcery.
The shouting grew louder, a storm of fear and rage.
Brynhild leaned against a tent pole, watching with narrowed eyes. When the shouting reached its peak, she pushed off and raised her voice above the noise.
"Well," she drawled, "if the tin boys are learning magic… guess it's time we stole the trick for ourselves."
The words cut the noise like a blade.
She'd meant it half in jest, half serious, but the silence that followed was suffocating. Faces turned toward her, eyes wide, some in horror, some in dawning thought.
Ingrid's eyes narrowed, studying Brynhild with something sharp and dangerous.
The silence stretched. The campfire crackled, the wind moaned against the tent's burned canvas.
Finally, Ingrid spoke, her voice steady, cold, heavy with the weight of truth.
"If the machines have mastered sorcery," she said, "then steel alone won't win this war."
She turned, looking not just at her officers but at the refugees gathered near the fire. All of them, soldiers and civilians alike, felt the weight of her gaze.
"We'll have to learn it too."
The words dropped like stones into a pond, rippling outward.
Some gasped. Some whispered prayers. Others simply stared, too numb to protest.
And outside, in the dark beyond the firelight, one of the Draugr husks twitched. A rune carved into its chest pulsed faintly, casting a sickly glow against the night.