Silence spread through the ranks, broken only by the faint clink of armor.
A gulf naturally lay between life and death, one that was difficult to cross. It held questions of morality, fear, and far too many other things, even when the dead had once been the living's loved ones. They, too, had once lived, had once been living people in the World of the Living, so they knew just how hard it was for someone alive to cross that gulf.
The living could accept the death of loved ones, respect the dead by giving them dignified funerals, and miss their departed relatives enough to visit their graves every year. But it was difficult for them to accept those same relatives truly returning to stand before them in another form. It was like someone mourning their ancestors and visiting their graves during the Qingming Festival, only for those ancestors to become zombies and actually crawl out of their graves to greet them affectionately. It was just as hard to accept.
A reforged female elf raised her hand, brushing her fingertips over the unfamiliar emblem on her breastplate-a red hawk perched on a dead branch, rather than the sun of Silvermoon City. There were no tears in her eyes, but cold white flames unique to the undead burned in their dark depths.
"Quel'Danil..." she repeated softly, as though savoring a word both unfamiliar and familiar. "It doesn't belong to Silvermoon City, nor does it entirely belong to the World of the Dead. Then who are we?"
No one could answer.
They had once been rangers, mages, proud citizens of Silvermoon City. Now, even their right to be acknowledged by their homeland hung in doubt.
Yu Lin Bloodhawk watched these people of his, dragged back from death. At that moment, they seemed