The blazing sun cast countless rays across the sky, while towering flames raged over the earth below. Their agonizing red was as vivid as a blood-red lotus, and waves of scorching heat swept past, each fiercer than the last. Several men in heavy armor watched it all in silence. "How many sites does this make?" asked the middle-aged, heavily bearded man standing at the front.
"The third," a young man beside him replied.
"Only the third. This mission is getting harder and harder. Those damned undead have caught on, and we still have seven more to finish before we can return to Gilneas. It's getting more dangerous by the day." The bearded man sighed as he watched the flames, his expression grim.
"There's nothing we can do about it, Captain. This mission was always going to be incredibly difficult. The Prince told us before we left: we're burning graveyards and reducing all the remains to ashes. If we arrive too early, the locals can easily discover us. If we come a little later, we have to worry about those damned undead."
"For Gilneas!" the captain shouted as he watched the roaring flames. He waved a hand and called out, "Time to withdraw!"
The men swiftly mounted their horses and disappeared into the distance. Scenes like this played out again and again across the Lordaeron Lands. Had Rex not known where the undead Scourge got its troops, that would have been one thing, but he knew perfectly well that its main source of soldiers was the remains resurrected from graveyards. If Lordaeron's living population numbered only around two million, the dead buried in its graveyards numbered several times that. Accumulated over countless years and generations, the total was staggering.
In the original course of history, after the undead Scourge broke out,