[During Black Spire War]

  The city groaned beneath the weight of the dead. Stones cracked. Windows burst. Bells rang. The cries of the living were drowned beneath the howls of the risen. Smoke clawed its way through the alleys, carrying with it the smell of blood and rot.

  She ran.

  The child pressed against her chest didn’t cry—he was too young to understand fear, but she felt enough of it for both of them. Her legs ached. Her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know where her husband had gone, only that he promised to return.

  "I’ll come back. No matter what."

  That lie rang louder than the church bells now. She stumbled through the square—half of it collapsed. A half-dead knight crawled toward her before something dragged him back into the mist.

  Then the air changed.

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  Heat rolled in—unnatural, suffocating, carrying the sharp, electric scent of ozone. The smoke parted. And he stood there.

  Tall. Cloaked in something burnt and fraying. His shoulders hunched unnaturally. White steam hissed from his body with each step—not like breath, but like pressure escaping a cracked shell.

  He made no sound. He did not bleed. He walked toward her like a blaze—alive, but wrong.

  And she froze. The heat should have driven her back, but it didn’t. Instead, cold flooded her veins. Fear turned her blood to ice even as the world around him burned.

  She had seen monsters before. Undead that wore familiar faces. Wraiths who mimicked voices. But this one didn’t need to speak.

  It simply raised a hand—slow, like reaching through water. Not fast enough to strike, not gentle enough to comfort.

  And she backed away. Shielding her child, heart pounding, arms shaking.

  "Stay away..."

  She whispered—and everything in her body screamed it. The figure paused. For a moment, it trembled. The hand dropped. Then it vanished, leaving only white smoke and the lingering smell of a storm.

  She didn’t chase it. Didn’t wonder. Didn’t dare believe.

  In that moment, she was just a mother protecting her child.