Chapter 29: This Time, I Stand

The hooves pounded like war drums beneath him as Reivo galloped across the open plain, wind screaming past his ears. His cursed aura clung tight to his skin like a living shadow, coiling tighter with every heartbeat. Rage simmered beneath the surface, hot and clear, and the sword Baker had gifted him hummed at his side, eager, cold, and ready to taste blood.

The smoke thickened ahead, rising in oily tendrils from the broken carcass of a village. Not a single house remained untouched—roofs collapsed in flame, fences splintered like bone, and corpses painted the earth in shades of red and black. The air reeked of soot, burning thatch, and something fouler still: the cloying stench of rot.

Then he saw them.

Undead.

They stumbled through the village ruins like broken puppets, jerking and swaying in erratic movements. Their bodies were mockeries of life—skin hanging in wet flaps, bones exposed through torn muscle, eyes glassy or missing, sockets crawling with maggots. One dragged its own entrails like a leash, the twitching mass coiling behind it like a grotesque pet. Another was missing its lower jaw, the skin of its neck stretched back in an eternal, silent scream.

A child-sized ghoul sniffed the air and let out a shrill, rasping howl the moment it spotted him.

Reivo leapt from the saddle before the horse had even stopped, hitting the ground in a controlled crouch. The sword rasped free of its sheath in a single fluid motion.

The first undead charged, its claws raised.

Reivo waited—not out of fear, but calculation. He shifted one foot left, just as the creature swiped for his face, and stepped into the opening. His blade sang through the air, slicing clean through the thing's neck. The head tumbled, thudding wetly into the mud.

He didn't stop.

Three more ghouls rushed him, snarling.

He surged forward, cutting through the gap. The first one lunged—he ducked low, his body fluid, momentum unbroken. He rose into a thrust, driving the blade up through the thing's gaping maw and out the top of its skull. Bone cracked. It collapsed.

The second reached for his flank—he pivoted smoothly and twisted, slamming the hilt of the sword into its ribs. As it recoiled, he reversed the grip and buried the blade into its spine. The third screeched and lunged from the side.

Reivo spun, kicked its knee backward with brutal precision, and stomped its head into the cobbled street. Bone split like a ripe fruit beneath his heel.

He exhaled slowly, steadying his breath. "This won't go like last time," he muttered.

Then he heard it—a scream. Not undead.

Human.

A woman's desperate cry, followed by the wail of an infant. Reivo's head snapped toward the sound. He ran.

He cleared the burning ruins and spotted them—huddled behind a flipped wagon, a woman clutching a baby, eyes wide in terror. Five undead clawed at the barricade. One had nearly scaled it, its clawed fingers already reaching for her.

Reivo froze—not from fear, but recognition. For a heartbeat, he saw his mother, his baby brother. The memory hit like a hammer to the chest, sharp and suffocating. The same helplessness. The same horror.

But this time—he could act.

He burst forward, feet hammering the dirt. The undead atop the wagon pulled itself over. The woman shrank back, pressing herself against the broken wall of a house, shielding the child with her arms.

Reivo gritted his teeth, flipped the blade into a reverse grip, and hurled it like a spear. It pearce the ghoul mid-back, driving it into the wall behind the woman with a sickening crunch. It twitched once and went still.

Disarmed—but not helpless.

The remaining four turned toward him, snarling.

He didn't wait.

Baker's lessons thundered in his head: Take initiative. Be the storm, not the shield.

He charged.

The first undead slashed with jagged claws—he dropped low, felt them tear through the air above his scalp. He exploded upward, driving his shoulder into its midsection, lifting it clear off its feet. He grabbed its lower jaw in the same motion and slammed it headfirst into the side of the wagon. Bone shattered. It crumpled.

Another ghoul leapt at him from the left—he turned into it, catching its momentum, and drove his knee into its ribs. As it reeled, he grabbed its jaw in one hand and the back of its skull in the other, then wrenched—a wet crack followed, and it collapsed limply.

A third grabbed his back, raking claws across his shoulder.

He hissed in pain but pivoted fast, elbowing the creature in the side of the head. It stumbled. Reivo tackled it, lifted it clean off the ground, and hurled it into the flames of a burning house. It screamed as it ignited, writhing in the fire.

The last one came in slower—wary now.

Reivo stalked forward.

They circled one another. The ghoul hissed, then lunged with both claws slashing.

Reivo ducked, stepped inside its reach, and punched—a clean hook into the jaw. He followed it with a jab to the throat and then another to the nose. It staggered. He grabbed its skull with both hands and drove his knee into its face—once, twice, three times until the bone split.

He let the body drop.

Reivo exhaled.

The whispers still coiled around him, darker now, hungry—but contained.

He turned to the woman, who stared at him, trembling.

"It's over," he said, voice low.

She nodded, clutching the child to her chest.

Behind him, the sword he had thrown still quivered in the wall, buried in the ghoul's back.

Reivo walked over, grasped the hilt, and pulled. It came free with a wet squelch.

He stood there for a moment, breathing in the ash-filled air.

The tide of death had not yet ended.

But this time—he would not break.