The black fog drifted slowly toward them like a sigh breathed by Death from the depths of hell, silently licking across the entire valley.
It flowed without wind, shapeless yet heavy, like a vast black birth membrane slowly swallowing the entire battlefield into its womb.
The knights of the Dragonblood Legion stood in formation, battle aura flowing slowly through their armor, their heavy boots already sunk into earth soaked with mud and blood.
Even veteran knights who had survived a hundred battles could feel a chill that did not belong to this world.
No-it was the fear of being watched by some presence.
That shudder, which seemed to burrow from the base of their spines into their brains, came from the instinct of reason screaming: Do not go near it.
"What... is that smell?" a knight whispered, his voice dry as sand.
It was neither rotting flesh nor the smoke and scorching heat so common on a battlefield.
It was the scent of death.
Up ahead, the Archmages of Magewood raised their staffs high. Blue walls of wind surged outward, whipping up several howling gusts that lifted the black fog.
For a few brief seconds, the dense mist rolled back like a tide, exposing a corner of the ruined battlefield.
But before they could catch their breath, the black fog writhed and gathered again like conscious strands of blood.
It seeped slowly from the direction of "that thing," sticky as birth fluid and carrying whispers.
"...It moved."
The knight's hoarse whisper was almost inaudible in the wind, yet it sent ripples through the entire battlefield like a stone cast into water.
The first thing to move was a knight's severed, mangled arm.
It had been lying quietly in the snow beside a shattered glaive.
But now the arm slid along