Voss floated in darkness.
She had no breath, no weight, no pain—only the vast, endless abyss stretching before her. It was deeper than night, colder than Negar's ice, and yet… she was not afraid. The shadows did not consume her. They knew her. They whispered her name.
Voss.
The voices echoed, slipping through the cracks of existence, speaking in the ancient language of the Eldar. Though she had never been taught, she understood every word.
You were meant to fall.
You were meant to rise.
You are ours now.
Something moved in the void. A force older than the world itself. The air—or what passed for it—rippled with unseen energy. The darkness coiled and twisted, shifting like a living thing. It was neither cruel nor kind, but it was absolute. It did not ask. It did not demand.
It simply was.
And it wanted her.
Voss felt it press against her skin, sinking into her veins, weaving itself into the fabric of her soul. It was not painful. It was right.
A heartbeat.
Her own.
Slow at first. Then faster. Stronger.
Shadows surged through her, filling the empty spaces where death had tried to take root. Her body ignited—not with fire, but with something far more consuming. Power.
Her eyes snapped open.
The battlefield was silent.
No more screams. No more war cries. Just the whisper of the wind over shattered ice and frozen corpses. The ground was slick with blood, steel glinting dully in the fading light of dusk.
The High Lord's army was retreating, their banners dark figures against the horizon. They believed her dead. Believed they had won.
They were wrong.
Voss breathed.
She was no longer kneeling in the bloodstained snow—she was standing. Whole. Unbroken. The agony of battle had vanished, her wounds sealed as though they had never existed.
And her armor… it was different.
No longer cracked and ruined, it had been reforged in blackened steel, its edges humming with shadow. She flexed her fingers, watching tendrils of darkness coil around her knuckles before vanishing into the air. The magic pulsing through her veins was not the same power she had wielded before. It was deeper. Wilder. Unchained.
Beside her, Drakonix stood in eerie silence.
The hydra's six heads bowed low, its massive form gleaming with shadow-forged scales. The bond between them pulsed stronger than ever, an unspoken acknowledgment passing between them.
They had changed.
She turned her gaze to the field of the dead.
The resistance had been slaughtered. Their warriors lay broken, their weapons clutched in stiff, frozen hands. Their faces were twisted in pain, their final moments captured in frost and blood.
Voss raised her hand.
A ripple of darkness spread from her fingertips, rushing across the battlefield like ink spilled in water. It slithered through frozen blood, coiling around shattered armor, slipping between lifeless fingers. The dead did not stir—not yet. But the ground remembered. The bodies listened.
The first to move was a soldier — a resistance fighter whose throat had been cut, his sword still clutched in stiff fingers. His body twitched once, twice, then convulsed violently as shadow magic flooded his veins. His eyes, once dull and empty, snapped open, now burning with black fire.
Then another.
And another.
One by one, the fallen rose.
Voss clenched her fist, and the battlefield obeyed.
Soldiers who had died screaming now stood in silence. Their armor was broken, their wounds still fresh, but they did not bleed. They did not breathe. They were not bound by pain, nor fear, nor the weakness of flesh. They were hers now.
A cold wind howled through the field, carrying the distant sounds of the retreating army. The High Lord's forces were already marching away, certain of their victory.
They would not see her coming.
Voss exhaled slowly. She was different now—more than she had been before. She could feel the magic within her, raw and boundless, no longer tethered by the limits of mortal flesh. Death had touched her, tried to claim her, and failed.
She stepped forward, her boots crunching against the frost-covered earth. Drakonix followed in eerie silence, its six heads moving in perfect unison. The hydra's dark scales pulsed with the same energy that now surged through her—reborn, just as she had been.
The war was not over.
It had only just begun.
And this time, the dead would fight for her.