Crimson mist churned in the air. Rageflowers quietly bloomed inside the dead, giving off an eerie red glow. The battlefield resembled a hell of flesh and blood.
The young knight Reynard hid behind a rock, his chest heaving, the longsword in his hand trembling uncontrollably.
His comrades, Joss, Michel, Taran... had been fighting shoulder to shoulder with him only moments before. Now they lay amid the chaotic fighting, their faces twisted beyond recognition by rage and vines.
"They've gone mad..." Reynard murmured shakily.
He had seen Taran's eyes turn red beneath the crimson mist, watched him roar and drive his longsword into a friend's back, as though he no longer recognized his former brother-in-arms.
On the other side, a Tundra Wolf roared and leaped, pinning a knight of the Broken Edge Army beneath it and tearing his skull apart with its fangs.
Red mist rose in its wake. The corpse quickly split open, vines writhing like blood-red snakes, forming a twisted garden of flesh beneath the firelight.
"Run!" he heard someone shout in the distance.
Reynard wanted to flee too, to turn away from this hell, but his legs refused to obey. They could only tremble faintly.
Yet just then, a thunderous voice rang across the battlefield: "Charge with me!!!"
The voice struck like a hammer against an iron heart. Reynard jerked his head up. Through the swirling blood mist and the lingering glow of Rageflowers, he saw that familiar figure.
He was a towering man in deep-blue heavy armor, wielding a massive hammer as he rode into the shattered snowfield, like a hero out of ancient legend.
Duke Edmund, the Empire's strongest shield.
Behind him, hundreds of Veteran Knights from the Cold Iron Legion charged out in his wake. The ground thundered like a landslide. Every gaze was resolute;