The corpses beneath the northern city wall were still emitting black smoke. Viscous undead filth mingled with the blood of human mages, winding into rivers across the cracked ground.
Zhu Meng leaned on a broken magical tool, the cracks in his armor deep enough to expose bone. As he watched the pale dawn spread across the eastern horizon, a trace of weary relief finally showed in his clouded eyes.
"Dawn has come."
Hunter King Xiao tore off his blood-soaked mask, revealing a face covered in scars. His voice was hoarse, as though scraped raw by sandpaper.
"These abominations could never overcome the sun."
On the city wall, the surviving mages collapsed to the ground one after another. Some embraced and wept, while others silently shed tears as they stared at the bodies of their comrades beside them.
After a night of desperate fighting, nearly half a mountain had been leveled along the northern border of the Ancient Capital. The howls of the undead army seemed to still echo in their ears, yet the morning sun was rising now, its golden light piercing through the clouds and spilling over the land.
The remaining low-level undead indeed began to let out agonized shrieks, their bodies melting away like snow and ice.
"We did it! We won!"
A young mage raised his arms and shouted, his voice brimming with the wild joy of surviving disaster.
Yet at the very instant those cheers rang across the city wall, the sky suddenly darkened.
Without warning, a fine rain began to fall, carrying an eerie chill and a faint, sickly sweetness. The moment it touched their skin, it sent a bone-piercing cold through them.
Even stranger, the rain and mist were gray-black, like icy water mixed with ink, staining the newly risen sun into a hazy