An isolated force, chaos begins

Garth's mind went blank for an instant.

But a second later, he reacted.

In a tone that brooked no argument, he gave a decisive order:

"Soldier, kill that man!"

The attendant, already driven into a bloodthirsty state by fear, never stopped to consider whether the worker was dead.

Hearing Garth's voice and seeing those lifeless pupils threaded with black blood, he raised his longsword and brought it down hard without half a second's hesitation.

With a crack, flesh and bone were severed in an instant.

The monster's head went flying before it could do any harm.

What chilled them was that nothing but foul-smelling black blood spurted from the passage in its severed neck.

"Everyone! Get away from here immediately!"

An established nobleman who had held power for years, Garth was calmer than anyone else present.

Although he had no idea what had happened, that did not stop him from identifying those two mangled corpses as the source.

At his warning, the onlookers scattered.

They had intended to take to their heels, but seeing Ser Garth Hightower himself still standing there steadied them somewhat.

Cut up like that, surely they could not get back up?

Garth also drew the sword at his waist, watching the two corpses warily as black blood streamed from them.

The shaken guard retreated to his side, his hand visibly trembling.

After waiting a long time and seeing that the two corpses had spilled a great pool of black blood without moving again, Garth gave the guard a look.

Understanding, the guard gritted his teeth and approached the heap of flesh with the utmost caution.

Fighting back his nausea, he prodded it repeatedly with his sword tip, then turned and called:

"Lord Garth, they're completely dead!"

Garth breathed a slight sigh of relief at that.

Fortunately, I dealt with it in time.

Looking back now, the problem had started with the first man brought back.

The second fellow had only changed after being attacked.

Although Garth had no experience dealing with "living corpses," he still analyzed the nature of the problem very quickly.

"Go fetch some men. Don't move anything here. Light a fire and burn them."

Garth gave the order.

The fire was lit, and the foul stench of burning human flesh plunged the entire warehouse into an atmosphere of unease.

The knights charged out through the castle gates, having the last terrified, witless wretch lead them to the place where that man had first been found.

Yet they found nothing.

Apart from the bloodstains that had already darkened on the ground, there were no other traces.

When Garth received their report, he could only order the soldiers back for now.

This warehouse had no resident maester, much less any ravens. Garth could only wait until he returned to the Hightower before reporting everything that had happened here.

He could not determine what had driven the two men mad.

He could only reassure himself that it was some unknown disease.

Once the burning was done, everything seemed to settle down.

Garth could only order the soldiers to strengthen their guard and return to the Hightower immediately after finishing the inventory.

Yet they could no longer leave.

After two peaceful days, Garth was awakened by screams in the early hours of the third.

A guard hurried over, bringing bad news:

An unknown number of "living corpses" had surrounded them from every direction.

The castle was already under attack.

The soldiers had risked their lives to shut the gates and pushed all the dead outside the walls.

It had been a close call. Had these not been House Hightower's elite troops, they would have broken immediately upon encountering something like this.

Only a full-time standing army that trained every day could have held the gates under their officers' command despite such immense fear.

Garth's drowsiness vanished at once, and he hurried up onto the walls.

But the sight before him made him draw a sharp breath.

Beneath the boundless night, burning torches illuminated one bloodless face after another.

They simply watched Garth without a sound.

An invisible pressure came crashing over him like a roaring tidal wave.

It made this powerful figure within the family swallow hard.

Damn it, we're surrounded.

The defenders nocked arrows and drew their bows, but to little effect.

The blood of these still-living "dead" had long since drained away.

An unknown power drove them to attack the living.

Sharp arrowheads pierced their muscles, hindering their movements but unable to take their lives.

For some unknown reason, once they found the gates closed and difficult to breach for the moment, the monsters stopped their assault.

They stared silently at the top of the walls, arrow shafts lodged in their chests.

An unseen command came from the shadows behind them, and the monsters slowly retreated.

Under the defenders' anxious gazes, they vanished into the pitch-black forest.

No one slept that night.

The terrifying night finally passed. Only when sunlight shone upon the Green Lands once more did those weary eyes relax a little.

The nightmarish night had been like a vision of hell.

"My lord... are they... those monsters, still there?"

Someone asked Garth.

Garth shook his head. He did not know.

A few scattered corpses lay on the grass outside the castle.

Without exception, arrows had pierced their skulls.

It looks like these monsters' weak point is their heads.

So Garth thought.

Yet that did nothing to improve his mood.

He recognized the dead.

They were all residents of the villages near the Hightower.

He had only caught a hurried glimpse of their numbers last night, which meant the surrounding villages might all have met with disaster.

Worse still, something this serious had happened, yet the Hightower knew nothing about it.

Who was it?!

Garth's first reaction was that someone had deliberately arranged their current predicament to target House Hightower.

Unlike Baelor, who was a little slow on the uptake, he had already made the connection to magic.

After all, among his brothers, he was also the most inclined to delve into magical lore.

"Necromancy..."

As that fearsome word escaped through his clenched teeth, Garth's heart sank.

Necromancy was the likeliest explanation for everything happening before him.

The problem was that he had no idea how to deal with it.

The family had immersed itself in magical research for years, as had successive lords of the Hightower.

Yet apart from collecting a great pile of ancient objects whose uses were unknown, they had achieved little.

"No, we can't keep waiting here. The nearby villages are already finished. We can't let them spread any farther."

Garth spoke sharply.

"We must contact the Hightower. The family needs to know exactly what happened here."

"If this breaks out in Oldtown, think what will happen!"

Yet realizing it only now was already a little too late.

As the source of it all, Oldtown was not in a particularly good state at present.