I pivot from the herald, sensing the greater threat. The abomination moves with terrible purpose, rising like a tidal wave of corrupted flesh, each eye tracking separate victims, each absorbed warrior adding to its growing mass.

  My captain responds without hesitation.

  His skull swivels toward the main formation, jaw clicking rapid commands without sound.

  The Legion understands.

  As one entity, two hundred bone warriors pivot from their individual battles, abandoning smaller threats to face the greater.

  "Swarm it," I command.

  The Legion surges forward.

  Not in orderly lines or disciplined formations, but in overwhelming tide of bone and ancient steel. They abandon tactical measures for something older, something primal, the flood of countless against the mighty few.

  Twenty reach the abomination first.

  They don't attack its flanks or probe for weakness, they simply climb. Bone fingers dig into pulsing flesh. Ancient boots and bone finding tread on quivering bulk. Rusted blades stab as they ascend, each would weeps black.

  Thirty more climb from the opposite side.

  They swarm over the creature's back, climbing higher, each warrior adding weight and wounding as they rise. The abomination shudders, dozens of eyes blinking in panic even as it absorbs more into its bulk.

  A tentacle whips sideways, catching three warriors and crushing them to fragments.

  The pieces scatter across mud, but purpose remains. Fractured skulls roll back toward the fight. Broken limbs crawl through muck.

  Shattered ribs skitter, then crawl, all returning to battle despite their dismembered state.

  Fifty more Legion warriors reach the creature's base. They attack its lowest portions, blade-strikes coordinated not by command but ancient memory of how many can kill the few. Their swords lash out as one, each thrust timed to occur when the creature flinches from previous wounds.

  I watch this terrible beauty unfold. The Legion moves as I once did in early battles. Each warrior knows their place without needing orders.

  To attack, scatter, reform.

  The abomination writhes, its bulk heaving upward. A dozen warriors lose their grip, tumbling through air. Yet even as they fall, they angle their bodies, weapons extended, turning descent into attack. They strike and strike again.

  My captain stands beside me, his cracked skull tilted in silent question.

  "No," I answer. "Hold the reserve. The herald remains."

  The abomination thrashes wildly. Tentacles lash in every direction, crushing bone warriors by dozens. Yet for each soldier destroyed, three more take their place, endlessly climbing, stabbing, tearing at corrupted flesh.

  A hundred warriors now cover its bulk. They communicate without words, adjusting positions as the creature bucks and twists. When one area becomes too dangerous, they shift to another.

  While my Legion swarmed the abomination, I spared attention for the herald.

  She had retreated to the water's edge, arms raised in fluid patterns. Her movements weren't frantic—they carried deliberate purpose. The water behind her responded, rising in unnatural columns that twisted like living serpents. Each gesture pulled more river water upward, defying nature's laws.

  The herald's translucent skin pulsed with sickly light. Veins of corruption spread through her form, darkening whenever she completed another water-shaping motion. Her mouth moved in constant whispers, words I couldn't hear but felt—vibrations that made the very ground beneath us tremble.

  Six Drowned warriors formed a protective semicircle before her, their weapons raised. Unlike the cannon fodder my Legion dispatched, these bore elaborate armor fused with their corrupted flesh. They stood unnaturally still, only their eyes tracking our movements.

  The herald's concentration never broke despite the battle raging nearby. When the abomination roared in pain, she didn't flinch. Instead, her movements became more precise, more focused. The water columns began to merge, forming a massive wall that curved around her position.

  Beneath the surface, darker shapes moved. Not fish or natural creatures, but something else, waiting for her command.

  The herald's eyes, milky and without pupils, fixed on me specifically. Her lips curled into what might have been a smile on a human face. But on her, it was a stretching of flesh that revealed rows of needle-like teeth.

  She knew I watched her. And she wanted me to see.

  The abomination suddenly thrashes with renewed violence. My Legion warriors cling to its bulk, but something has changed. The creature's flesh ripples, then liquefies wherever they touch. Bone fingers sink into suddenly fluid surface. Ancient boots find no purchase on melting corruption.

  A dozen warriors disappear into the creature's mass, swallowed whole by its adaptive defense. Yet even as they're absorbed, I sense their purpose continuing. From within the abomination's bulk, rusted blades continue stabbing, bone fingers still claw, skull teeth bite into whatever vital structures they can find.

  The creature shudders from internal assault, its cohesion failing as Legion soldiers fight even while being digested. But each consumed warrior adds to its strength, bones becoming new infrastructure, weapons becoming new appendages.

  The abomination or the Harold.

  I must choose.

  I make my decision. The herald is the source—the abomination merely her tool.

  The abomination adapts, fleshing moving with darker hues as the first wave of my Legion soldiers is consumed. Tentacle

  after tentacle lashes out, each strike accompanied by a wet, squelching sound as bone and steel meet corrupted muscle.

  The swarm is relentless.

  Twenty go in, thirty follow, fifty more still advancing. No sooner does one portion of the beast’s surface harden than another seems to melt, pulling my warriors deeper into its corrupted folds.

  Some are sacrificed, some will reform.

  I leave the abomination to my Legion. They will overwhelm it through sheer numbers, even as it consumes them. The herald is the true threat—the conductor of this corruption.

  Aeternus readies in my grip.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  I don't slow. I accelerate.

  Aeternus extends before me, blade-tip aimed at the herald's heart. The guards brace for impact, weapons raised.

  I leap.

  I leap.

  The herald's hands move. The water behind her rises higher. I feel the ancient hatred in that water, something older than the corruption, something that remembers when land first rose from sea.

  Two guards attack from opposite sides. I drop to one knee, Aeternus sweeping in a perfect arc that severs both at mid-thigh. They fall but continue crawling forward, corruption keeping them animate despite fatal wounds.

  The water responds.

  I roll sideways, feeling the ground crack beneath the impact of sudden wave.. Another water-whip lashes out, catching my shoulder. The corruption in that water burns against bone, seeking purchase.

  I shake it off before it can take root.

  The herald's skin ripples, translucent flesh becoming momentarily transparent. Beneath, I glimpse not organs but swirling darkness.

  This is something that came from the deepest trenches

  I advance through her remaining guards. One manages to score a hit across my ribs. I separate his head from shoulders without slowing.

  The herald's magic intensifies. Water forms a spinning barrier between us, each droplet carrying concentrated corruption. Behind her, something massive begins to surface—scales breaking the river's surface, a darkness rising from below.

  Aeternus pulses in my grip. The runes along its length ignite with blue-white fire.

  I don't hesitate. I charge directly into her water barrier.

  The corruption burns against my phantom tissue, eating through spectral sinew as I plunge through the water barrier. Where it touches, divine fragments resist where other pieces begin to fall. The translucent flesh Avernus granted crackles and hisses, dissolving where darkened water makes contact only to reform again.

  I emerge through the other side of the water wall.

  My form is damaged but not destroyed. Bone plates separate, phantom tissue tears, but already I feel the divine pieces working to knit me back together. Fragments of leg and arm bones that dissolved in the corrupted water reform, drawing substance from the air itself.

  The herald's eyes widen. She didn't expect me to survive her barrier.

  Something stirs within.

  The Arkashoth fragment pulses with unexpected intensity. Hatred radiates from it, pure and focused, directed at the herald before me.

  It is the first real emotion from it I have felt.

  These depths-dwellers. Abominations. False dark. The fragment's thoughts intrude into mine, not words but impressions of ancient enmity. We warred against their kind before your bones were dust.

  Images flood my awareness, vast underground caverns where pale watchers stood watch against lapping waters even as one dark invaded dwarven caverns.

  Not from moral opposition, but territorial imperative. Different darks, yet fully enemy.

  This is simply competing hungers.

  I ready Aeternus, bone plates locking back into position as divine fragments strengthen my form against the next assault.

  The Arkashoth fragment burns with unexpected fury within my marrow. Where before it was a silent passenger, now it surges with purpose.

  Let me show you a form reserved.

  My bone structure shifts without conscious command. Dragon plates lock tighter against corrupted water. Wolf claws extend further, gaining serrated edges like those of the watchers of the husks of Arkashoth's fallen kingdom that I fought beneath Maha Marr. My skull elongates slightly, jaw unhinging to reveal rows of teeth I didn't possess moments ago.

  The Arkashoth fragment pulses through my marrow, ancient knowledge flowing into my bones. This is not my transformation, it is its. The fragment knows these water-dwellers, has fought them before in lightless depths where neither sun nor stars have ever reached.

  My ribcage expands, plates overlapping like the scales of some primordial standing fish. My spine extends, vertebrae multiplying and reshaping into a powerful tail tipped with a serrated blade of bone. Gill-like structures form along my neck, not to breathe but to sense vibrations in water.

  The herald steps back, recognition flashing across her translucent features.

  "Grave-mind," she hisses.

  I feel the Arkashoth's ancient hatred burning through me, a territorial fury beyond mortal understanding. These water-dwellers and the grave-mind had warred in the deepest places since before humans walked upright, each claiming dominion over different aspects of darkness.

  My transformed claws flex, dripping with a substance that isn't blood. The water around us recoils from it, corruption meeting substance that Arkashoth fragment produces.

  The herald raises her hands, but her confidence has fractured.

  The massive shape rising from the river hesitates, sensing a predator it recognizes from ancient memory.

  I lunge forward, my new form moving. No longer skeletal knight or wolf-dragon hybrid, but something that belongs to the oldest darkness.

  Primordial hunger.

  The herald steps back.

  We collide.

  My elongated claws rake across her hardened hide, spilling out fluid that smells of brine.

  "You cannot claim these shores," she hisses, voice bubbling through multiple throats. "The drowning comes regardless."

  I answer with violence.

  My serrated tail whips around, slicing through one tentacle.

  It falls, twitching, but immediately begins regenerating from the stump.

  Her remaining limbs tighten around me, crushing pressure against bone plates.

  Dragon fragments creak but hold.

  She pulls me closer to her maw,.

  I twist violently.

  My jaw unhinges, biting down where tentacle meets torso. The taste is foul, ancient water and corruption mingling.

  The herald shrieks her grip loosens momentarily.

  I wrench free,.

  Behind us, I sense rather than see my Legion overwhelming the abomination. My captain leads.

  They are mine to command but not to worry over. They know their duty.

  The herald retreats a step, reassessing.

  Her wounds seal before my eyes.

  My own form stabilizes, the Arkashoth fragment pulsing with dark energy that strengthens bone and sinew.

  We circle.

  The herald moves first. Her form dissolves into water, flowing forward as torrent rather than solid shape. I leap above the flood, my extended spine carrying me higher than normal bones could manage. She reforms beneath me, tentacles rising seeking to impale.

  I crash down among them, my tail-blade severing three before they can pierce my form. My claws rake through her mass, each strike leaving gouges.

  She tries to envelope me, to pull me into her liquefied form.

  The Arkashoth fragment resists. Where her waters touch my bones, they recoil as if burned

  Behind us, I hear the death-scream of the abomination as my Legion finally tears it apart. But I cannot spare attention for their victory. The herald demands all.

  She pulls substance from the river itself, growing larger with each passing moment. Her form towers now, a colossus of water and corruption that blots out the moon. Tentacles multiply, splitting and reforming, creating a cage of flesh around us.

  I don't retreat.

  Aeternus burns in my transformed grip. My claws have reshaped to accommodate the blade's hilt. The runes along its length flar.

  The herald senses the blade's power. For the first time, uncertainty enters her eyes. She summons her greatest defense, a sphere of water that surrounds her like armor.

  I drive Aeternus forward with all the strength borrowed and earned. My elongated arm, transformed by the Arkashoth fragment, provides leverage beyond normal bone structure. The blade's edge touches her water-shield, and for a heartbeat, nothing happens.

  Then Atropos awakens.

  The power of Aeternus manifests. That of Atropos that can cut the ties between soul and vessel. A shadow-wyrm forms from the blade's edge.

  The water-shield parts not as mist, but as threads severed.

  The herald's eyes widen, shocked, scared.

  Aeternus pierces her core.

  Her translucent flesh ripples and splits, the swirling darkness within losing cohesion.

  The herald's monstrous mouth opens in silent scream. Her tentacles thrash once, then freeze. The water around us begins to settle, becoming simply water once more.

  With a final sound, the herald of the Drowned Kingdom collapses. Her form dissolves completely, flesh returning to the depths from which it came. Only her eyes remain, they blink once, twice, then dim.

  I stand amid dissolution, my transformed frame slowly reverting to more familiar configuration.

  The Arkashoth fragment retreats, satisfied and craving isolation among my pieces.

  My blade settles naturally in my hand once more.

  Around us, the battlefield grows quiet. The abomination lies in pieces, my Legion standing atop its remains. They reform demised ranks.

  I have lost some.

  The river flows on, darker than before .

  My Legion stands in broken formation. Two hundred seventy-four remain of the original. Many bear significant damage, limbs missing, skulls cracked, ribcages shattered. Some have merged during reformation, creating unsettling combinations.

  Two warriors share a single pelvis, their upper bodies extending in opposite directions. Three others have fused at the shoulder, creating a three-armed fighter still gripping its weapons. Most disturbing are the dual-headed soldiers, five of them now stand with mismatched skulls perched atop single frames.

  Yet they function. They obey. They serve.

  My captain approaches, his cracked skull dipping in deference, his purpose, as my own, undiminished.

  I raise Aeternus, pointing northward. Not the true north, but my north. Haven. The walls that drew me from the Field of Broken Banners. The people who still breathe, still live, still need protection.

  The pull is unmistakable. It tugs at every fragment of borrowed bone, every piece of this form.

  Haven needs its guardian.

  My captain understands without words. He turns, issuing silent commands to our diminished forces. The Legion forms ranks once more. The damaged warriors take positions they can still maintain. The fused soldiers find their places, awkward but determined.

  I examine the remains of the herald.

  Unlike the balverines or dragons whose bones I've claimed, her form leaves nothing solid behind.

  No harvest.

  We match.

  We leave the fallen Drowned Kingdom forces to rot on the riverbank.