Jonas had seen cities fall before, but not like this. Not with the dead thinking. Not with a Magi calling them like a shepherd to its flock.
The Citadel stood ahead, its towering stone walls wrapped in the flickering glow of torchlight. The last stronghold of Vorelle. Beyond it, there was nothing but the open road and the ruins of a world already swallowed by the dead.
The barricade behind them was still holding—barely. The undead slammed against it in waves, wood splintering under their relentless assault. Jonas knew it wouldn't last. Their only hope was to move fast.
"Keep running!" he barked, gripping the child in one arm as he led the group forward. The woman beside him gasped for breath, her face streaked with soot and tears. The bearded man had a wild look in his eyes, his rusted sword slick with black ichor. The younger boy, too exhausted to cry, stumbled as he ran.
Veyne took the lead, scanning every alley and rooftop for movement. She didn't trust the silence. Neither did Jonas.
They reached the next street and stopped short.
The Citadel's outer gates were closed.
"No." Veyne's voice was barely above a whisper. "No, no, no."
Jonas clenched his jaw. He had hoped the city guard would still be holding the entrance, letting survivors in before retreating. But the walls were silent. No soldiers stood on the ramparts. The torches burned, but no one manned them.
It was abandoned.
A movement in the shadows caught his attention. He turned, sword raised—
A figure emerged from the alley. Bloodstained armour, a city guard's crest still visible beneath the grime. His face was gaunt, eyes sunken, lips trembling. A survivor.
Jonas didn't lower his blade. "What happened?"
The guard swallowed hard. "They locked it."
Veyne stepped forward. "Who?"
"The captain." His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. "He sealed the gates—kept the highborn inside." A bitter, humourless laugh. "Left the rest of us to die."
Jonas exhaled sharply. He had seen it before. When the world fell apart, the powerful locked their doors and prayed the storm would pass them by. It never did.
"They won't open for us," the guard said. "They'll never open for us."
Jonas glanced at the survivors behind him. The woman clutched her child tighter. The bearded man shook his head in silent fury.
Veyne cursed under her breath. "Then we need another way in."
The guard hesitated. "There's…a sewer access. Runs beneath the walls. I don't know if it's safe, but—"
Jonas didn't let him finish. "Show us."
The man nodded, already moving. Jonas followed, gripping his sword tightly.
Behind them, the barricade snapped.
The horde spilled through the wreckage in a wave of clawing hands and gnashing teeth. The street filled with the deafening roar of the dead.
They ran.
The sewer entrance was barely a rusted grate beneath the crumbling remains of an old tavern. The guard wrenched it open with shaking hands, revealing a dark, stinking tunnel below.
"No other choice," Jonas muttered, ushering the survivors in first. The woman hesitated, clutching her child, but the screams behind them made her decision for her. She dropped into the darkness. The others followed.
Veyne was the last to slip inside, Jonas right behind her. He pulled the grate shut just as the first of the undead rounded the corner.
They pressed against the bars, snarling, reaching, their fingers inches from Jonas' face. But the metal held.
For now.
The tunnel reeked of rot and stagnant water. Jonas took a slow breath through his mouth, stepping carefully. The guard led the way, his torch barely casting enough light to push back the darkness.
"How far?" Veyne whispered.
"Not far," the guard said. "If the path is clear."
Jonas didn't like the way he said that.
They moved in silence, the only sound the distant groaning above and the drip of water below. The passage twisted and sloped downward. The further they went, the more the air thickened—not just with the stench of decay, but with something else.
Something wrong.
Jonas slowed his steps. He felt it again—that whisper in the back of his mind. The same sensation he'd felt when he saw the Magi outside the walls.
Then he heard it.
A sound that did not belong.
It was faint, barely audible beneath the dripping water. But it was there.
Breathing.
Not from the survivors. Not from him.
Jonas turned slowly, raising his torch.
The shadows shifted.
A pair of milky-white eyes blinked open in the darkness.
The tunnel erupted.
Bodies lunged from the walls, from the filth, from the water itself. They had been waiting. They had been lying in ambush.
Jonas barely had time to shout before the dead were on them.
The guard screamed as a corpse dragged him into the sludge, teeth sinking into his throat. The boy fell backward, scrambling, but a skeletal hand clamped around his ankle.
Jonas swung his sword, severing limbs, splitting skulls. The tunnel was too narrow, too tight. They had nowhere to run.
Veyne fought beside him, her dagger flashing. She cut one down, then another, but they kept coming.
The woman clutched her child, sobbing, pressed against the cold stone. The bearded man swung wildly, his blade connecting with flesh, but his strikes were panicked—sloppy.
Jonas knew they wouldn't last.
"Move!" he roared, shoving them forward. "GO!"
They forced their way through the onslaught, hacking and clawing toward the far end of the tunnel. Toward escape.
Then Jonas saw it.
A figure standing among the dead.
Not attacking.
Watching.
The Magi.
Her bloodstained robes clung to her frail frame, her hair slick with filth. Her lips parted in a slow, deliberate whisper.
Jonas felt the air shift.
The dead stopped attacking.
And then, they turned to him.
Jonas' breath caught. He could hear them. Not their groans, not their growls—but something beneath that. A voice that wasn't a voice. A pull at the edges of his mind.
She was speaking to them.
Veyne grabbed his arm. "Jonas!"
The Magi lifted a hand.
Jonas didn't wait to see what would happen.
He ran.
They burst out of the sewer into the night air, gasping, stumbling onto the inner streets of the Citadel. The survivors fell to the ground, weeping, shaking.
Jonas turned back to the tunnel. The dead did not follow.
But the Magi's eyes were still there. Watching. Waiting.
And Jonas realized something, cold and sharp as a knife in his gut.
She had let them go.
And that terrified him more than anything.