The clash of steel, the screams of the dying, and the churn of mud and blood beneath their boots welcomed them to the outer defence lines. The smell of burning flesh was thick in the air. Screeches from the Threshen echoed in unnatural shrills, cutting through the chaos like broken instruments out of tune with the world.
Nyra surged forward, leading Luken and Valen through the smoke drenched battlefield, dodging volleys of arrows and lunges from twisted, hulking forms. She didn't need to ask where the commander was. She could feel it in the way soldiers rallied in a certain direction, in the gaps held by sheer will.
They found her where the fighting was thickest. Commander Elira. She stood tall, clad in tarnished silver armor that bore dents and blood like decorations of defiance. She was the same height as Nyra, but broader at the shoulders built like a fortress. Her face bore a long, vicious scar, carved down from her left brow, across her eye, through her nose, her lips, and slashed into her breastplate below. Her dark red hair was pulled back into a braided bun, but loose strands stuck to her sweat streaked cheek.
In her hands, she wielded a glaive massive, brutal, its edge chipped but still sharp, its haft wrapped in blackened leather. It carved through enemies in wide, devastating arcs, slicing Threshen limbs like she was cleaving through canvas.
She turned at the sound of boots half prepared to kill again until her eyes locked on them.
"Well, shit," she barked through gritted teeth. "Look who crawled out of the east."
"Commander Elira," Nyra said, panting but standing tall.
"Nyra." Elira gave a humourless smirk. "Luken. Valen. Thought you were off chasing ghosts."
"Not ghosts," Luken said, adjusting his grip on his staff. "Something worse."
Valen gave a lazy salute, already eyeing her glaive. "Nice blade. Can I borrow it when you die?"
"Sure. If you pry it from my corpse." She jabbed the blade through the chest of a charging Threshen and kicked its body off with a crunch of ribs.
Even through the smoke and chaos, the recognition in her eyes was clear. She knew them. Not just as soldiers but as the trio who had helped save northern fronts years before. Their deeds had carried weight.
Elira's eyes narrowed. "You're late."
"Didn't realize we had an appointment," Nyra snapped, though a grin tugged at the edge of her mouth.
Elira glanced past them. "Where's your monster?"
Nyra blinked. "Who?"
Elira raised an eyebrow "The one that's supposed to be taller than the walls and wrestle demons barehanded."
"…Thal?" Luken offered.
"That one." She turned back toward the field. "Was hoping he'd show up and squash a few of these bastards for me."
Behind the Kruul and Threshen Thal was already moving, didn't charge, he walked slow, deliberate and measured.
Each footfall crushed a root, cracked a skull, or split open fetid growths that writhed beneath his feet. Tar followed in his wake like a monolith, his great axe resting lazily across his shoulder, its twin heads caked in the black ichor of things that shouldn't exist.
They moved through the enemy lines not like warriors, but inevitability and the enemy whatever it had once been was now dying by the dozen.
Thal slammed a foot into the side of a malformed Kruul that had grown a bark like armor over its chest, shattering the creature's spine with nothing but sheer force. Another lunged at him a Threshen with an elongated jaw and bone split claws. Thal caught it mid pounce by the throat and snapped its neck with a twist. Yet, his eyes weren't on the enemy. They were on Lion's Gate.
The stone walls polished in silver, the banners flying from gleaming towers, the way their officers barked orders from high vantage points while soldiers bled in the dirt. It reminded him of too many things. Too many lies wrapped in the illusion of structure.
He could see them the Lion's Gate soldiers. Faces pale and teeth gritted, watching him and Tar move along the backline. They didn't speak to them. Didn't offer aid. Didn't ask questions but they watched. Like they didn't know if Thal was their saviour or just the next monster coming for their heads.
Tar struck a Threshen that had tried to slither past them, his axe biting deep and carving it in half with a single, slow motion swing. Its limbs still twitched, even as black blood steamed on the earth.
Thal turned, golden eyes tracking every glance, every twitch, every nervous soldier who looked at him not with awe, but with doubt.
He didn't trust them either. He could feel it underneath the fight, buried behind their defences. This wasn't just a war. It was a purge. A cleansing disguised as righteousness and maybe the Kruul deserved it…. but not all of them. Not the ones who weren't here. Not the ones like…. Thal stopped.
He looked back toward the fight, toward where Nyra's silver hair flashed amid the carnage beside Elira, toward Luken's staff burning bright, toward Valen spinning through blood and smoke like a blade come loose from its scabbard.
They fought for Lion's Gate but he didn't. Not really, still… he cracked his knuckles and moved forward again because even if he hated the city they were still his.
Elira swung her glaive down one last time, cleaving through the warped jaw of a Threshen that had clawed its way too close. It dropped with a wet, slack thud at her feet. She turned, sweat streaking the dirt on her face, and narrowed her eye at Nyra, who still hadn't answered her question.
"Well?" Elira barked. "Where's your walking earthquake?"
Nyra opened her mouth to speak, uncertain even how to begin.
"He's… he's here," she said, casting a glance behind her where the battlefield vanished into thick, choking smoke. "Thal and Tar went through the backline."
Commander Elira looked toward the mist and flame, brow furrowing. "Alone?"
"I think that was the point..." Nyra replied, though even she didn't sound sure.
Before more could be said, a soldier stumbled toward them from the rear his armor dented, cloak torn, eyes glassy with the kind of fear that stripped a man bare. He skidded to a halt, almost falling to one knee as he shouted, "Commander! The backline! It's gods it's them! Two of 'em giants! One's horned, swinging some kind of hell axe, the other…" His voice trailed into disbelief. "The other's just walking through them. Like they're nothing."
Elira's attention snapped sharp. "What are you saying?"
The soldier didn't answer because the ground shook. A single, dull tremor rippled through the blood soaked mud then a shadow and a moment later, a Threshen corpse came crashing through the smoke, tumbling like a boulder from the heavens. It smashed into the muck with a sound like a wet tree snapping in half, its grotesque body twitching, half of its chest obliterated. Not crushed. Gone.
A perfect hole like something had punched through armor , bone, and heart. The silence that followed was suffocating.
Every soldier near Elira froze, eyes wide, hands tightening on spears and swords, as if expecting a second monstrosity to come flying out next. From the dark fog behind the corpse, two shapes moved.
Even through the haze, they loomed taller than any man, silent, walking at a steady pace. One had horns, a massive double headed axe slung lazily over one shoulder. The other walked empty handed, his arms slick with blackened gore up to his elbows, his body moving like a siege engine forged from flesh.
They stepped forward like executioners from a forgotten era and the men of Lion's Gate they began to murmur. Voices trembled. Words fumbled.
"…What in the name of the gods is that?"
"Are those ours?"
"He isn't even using weapons…"
One man dropped his sword. Another backed up several paces and looked ready to run.
Nyra, Luken, and Valen watched the reaction more than the giants themselves and for once, it wasn't the enemy that had her allies shaking it was the very people meant to be on their side.
Tar struck first. His axe moved in a sweeping arc, biting deep into the Threshen charging toward him. The bodies didn't fall apart they exploded. Viscera flew, thick and tarry, splashing across trees and stone alike. Each strike was thunder, a rhythm of destruction too wide and too strong to block.
Thal moved like the war was beneath him. He didn't swing. He didn't run. He walked through twisted Kruul, through beasts, through Threshen that were once Kruul's. One lunged at him with spines for arms, its teeth chattering in endless hunger. Thal caught it under the jaw, lifted it, and brought it down like a hammer. It didn't scream. It just stopped existing.
Another tried to flank him. He tore its leg off and used it to bludgeon two more, then hurled the limb like a spear through a fourth, pinning it to a ruined barricade.
"...He's not human," someone whispered.
Valen, quiet beside Nyra, scoffed. "They're only just seeing it?"
Elira hadn't said a word. She was watching studying jaw locked and knuckles white around her glaive.
Behind them, more soldiers emerged from the smoke Lion's Gate men, staggering and bloodied. They weren't limping because of wounds they were limping from shock.
"He didn't even look at me," one stammered. "We were caught. Surrounded and he, he just walked through them. Like a blade cutting thread."
"I saw him crush one's head with his foot," said another. "Didn't slow down. Didn't blink."
A third looked Elira in the eye and whispered, "Commander… I think he smiled."
Elira's grip on her glaive loosened slightly, her expression unreadable. For a moment, she said nothing. Then "Good."
Valen tilted his head. "You like him?"
Elira exhaled through her nose. "I'm terrified of him."
"But?"
"But I've never felt safer on a battlefield." She looked at Nyra. "That monster's on our side."
Nyra nodded. "Always has been."
Elira gave a sharp laugh not amused but edged with something close to relief. "Then gods help whatever's in his way."
More soldiers came running but they weren't running toward the fight. They were fleeing. From the backline. From the same direction Thal and Tar had come.
"They're not retreating…" Luken murmured. "They're running from him."
Elira didn't even blink. "Then we hold the line. We take advantage. While the enemy's confused, while our own men still have their heads we move."
She raised her glaive, voice rising above the chaos. "Soldiers of Lion's Gate! You've feared monsters! Now watch one fight for you! Hold the damned line and push forward!"
The soldiers rallied not because of courage, but because they were more afraid to disobey. They moved. Reluctantly, quietly, but they moved.
Behind them, Thal disappeared again into the smoke his back turned, his steps slow, methodical, unstoppable even and Elira, watching him vanish, whispered under her breath
"Let him burn the path ahead."
The smoke didn't part for Thal. He forced it to move. Every step he took sent tremors through the blood drenched ground. Threshen twisted in the haze around him howling, snarling, shifting through mud and ash. They thought they had a chance.
He gave them none. The first to approach was fast too fast for a human to follow. Thal didn't flinch. He caught the thing by its ribcage mid lunge, fingers digging through bone like parchment. Then he pulled.
Not apart but out. He tore its ribs from its chest like a cage snapping open, and with a flick of his arm, flung its still twitching organs into the dirt.
The body hit the ground screaming. It didn't scream long. Thal's heel came down on its head with a crunch loud enough to send birds scattering from the trees.
He turned to the next. This one wore old armor , dented and fused with flesh. A former soldier, long since turned. It raised a rusted blade, snarling.
Thal stepped inside its swing and crashed into its throat with his fist. He drove it through flesh, cartilage, and vertebrae until his hand came out the back of its neck. Then he lifted the thing into the air by its spine and slammed it down on the corpse of the first, splintering both into gore.
There was no finesse. No art. Only punishment. His breathing stayed calm. However, his movements they were personal. The kind of violence that came from knowing exactly how much force to use to shatter a body in one blow and he was using more than that. He wanted them to break.
A shriek from behind another Threshen charging. Thal turned his back to it letting the thing leapt and let it land. Then he bent forward, grabbed its wrist mid strike, and with a single twist, ripped the arm from its socket, flipped it, and drove the creature's own bone blade through its face.
It didn't even fall. It just sagged there, twitching on the shaft of its own severed limb, until Thal kicked it off. His hands were soaked to the elbows now black, steaming blood dripping from his fingers like oil. But he wasn't slowing down.
He was accelerating. Behind him, Tar was making space his axe an engine of destruction, each swing sending pieces of bodies flying, painting tree trunks red. He moved in wide, thunderous strides, a wall of muscle and brutality. But even Tar, roaring silently through the blood storm, didn't match Thal's precision.
Thal didn't waste a breath. He didn't grunt. He didn't shout. He simply ripped and crushed and broke and kept walking. Then something snapped inside him. It wasn't a moment. It was a culmination.
He looked toward the walls of Lion's Gate, barely visible through the haze of blood and smoke. He could see their banners. Their archers. Their silver plated spears glinting behind rows of shields. Watching.
Watching him. He hated them. He hated this war. Hated this city. Hated that his fists were being used to protect it. Just before he roared, something flickered behind his eyes a memory, sharp and sudden. Quincy. Her smile, the way she once pulled him through the dark with nothing but laughter. Then her face twisted in pain, her body collapsing, and a white-hot flash drowning it all. The rage surged. He roared then not for fear, not for pride but for rage.
A bestial, ragged sound that didn't sound like it came from a man at all. It echoed through the smoke, shaking the ground, silencing even the Threshen who were closing in.
They paused. He didn't. He exploded forward, slamming his body into a cluster of six. The first he tackled to the ground and bit his teeth tearing into its shoulder, ripping sinew and meat free.
The second got an elbow to the eye so hard it collapsed into its skull, jaw hanging like a broken hinge.
The third tried to run. He threw the second's body at it. It crumpled beneath the weight of its dead kin. He stalked over and kicked its face in. Not once. Three times. The mud boiled with blood. Still, he moved. Still, he seethed.
Another enemy rose from the mist, four legged, spine curved unnaturally, its jaw unhinged and dripping. Thal didn't stop. He ran straight into it, took the hit, and wrapped both hands around its throat. He lifted it an eight foot monster and slammed it into the ground so hard the earth cracked.
He dragged it. Dragged it across the battlefield like a rag, leaving a trench of blood in his wake. Then he hurled it into the tree line. He didn't look to see if it got up.
He knew it wouldn't and still he kept going because the battle wasn't over, because his fists weren't clean yet.
The sounds coming from the smoke had changed. They weren't battle cries. They weren't the screeches of Threshen or the war horns of advancing Kruul.
They were something deeper. The sound of bones breaking, of skulls cracking like fruit, of things not being fought but butchered.
Commander Elira tightened her grip on her glaive as she stepped over a fallen soldier. Her silver armor , now blackened with soot and streaked with blood, clinked as she moved, eyes fixed on the wall of smoke where two shadows still struck. They were ripping and tearing until it was done.
Whatever Thal and Tar were doing, it wasn't just combat. It was destruction and the screams weren't coming from the enemy anymore.
They were coming from her men. Some were screaming orders. Some were screaming for the medics. Some were just screaming.
"Did you see it!?" a soldier barked, stumbling back from the rear line, his eyes wild. "He grabbed one by the face and peeled it! Like fruit!"
"That's not a man," another gasped, gripping his side, blood pouring through his fingers. "That's a goddamn storm in a body"
"No," said a third, quieter. "Not just a god. A god of butcher."
Elira turned to the field just in time to see a Threshen thrown through the air its body torn in half, entrails unfurling mid flight. The corpse slammed into the mud ten feet from them, sliding and twitching before going still.
The men recoiled. Even the veterans. Even the ones who'd seen a hundred battles. Elira didn't speak she was watching the smoke and she could see it now see him.
There was no grace to his fighting. No technique. No show of strategy. Just force. Blunt. Absolute.
He moved like a living siege weapon, his body soaked in black blood, muscles straining with every brutal movement. There was something unnatural about him, something different from when she'd first heard the legends.
He wasn't just killing. He was expressing something. Rage. Elira felt a chill settle beneath her armor . This wasn't about helping Lion's Gate nor wasn't about survival…. this was personal.
Beside her, Nyra stepped forward, her breath caught in her throat. "He's… never fought like this before."
Elira flicked her gaze to her. "This is normal?"
Nyra slowly shook her head, eyes fixed on Thal. "No."
He wasn't just efficient. He wasn't just brutal. He was angry. Every movement was a sentence. Every kill, a scream left unspoken and he wasn't stopping.
She knew Thal's silence better than anyone. Knew how he kept everything inside, behind his massive frame and storm golden eyes but right now, she saw it.
He was seething and no one knew why.
Valen, still nearby, stepped up beside Nyra, his twin blades dripping, expression grim. "Whatever he's mad about... I hope it's not us."
Luken, leaning on his staff, pale with fatigue, nodded. "Because we wouldn't survive it."
Elira watched Thal tear a Kruul in half lengthwise and fling its top half into the woods. The soldiers around her flinched.
"…Is he always like this?" Elira whispered.
"No," Nyra said again, quieter now.
Her heart pounded in her chest not from the battle, but from the uncertainty. Thal had been terrifying before. His strength wasn't new. But this?
This was different. There was hatred in his fists and it wasn't aimed at the enemy. It was just being used on them. The battlefield raged around them, but nothing matched the quiet terror of watching Thal.
Commander Elira didn't speak for a long moment, her glaive resting on her shoulder, her crimson smeared cheek twitching ever so slightly as another body was hurled through the smoke.
Even at this distance, she could hear the wet crunch of bone on stone. Could feel the tremble in the dirt from Tar's thunderous movements. Could smell the scorched ichor clinging to every inch of the wind.
She turned to Nyra. "We're not controlling that," she said simply.
Nyra, her eyes never leaving the monstrous shape that was Thal, gave a small, grim nod. "No."
"They don't need us." Elira's tone was matter of fact, but something in her jaw stayed tight. "Hell, they don't even notice us."
"He noticed," Nyra murmured under her breath, almost like she didn't mean to say it aloud.
Elira glanced sideways. "You?"
Nyra didn't answer because she didn't know what to say.
Just before they'd turned to leave, just before the last body had hit the mud Thal had looked at her. Only for a second. But in that single moment, there was something in his eyes she didn't recognize. Not anger just hurt. Then he'd gone back to tearing flesh from bone.
Elira shook her head and raised her glaive. "Doesn't matter. We can't waste time watching gods bleed monsters. We've got men dying to the east flank. And if those bastards breach the barricades downwind, we're finished."
Nyra squared her shoulders. "Let's move."
Together, the two women turned from the chaos of the backline the screams of men and beasts, the firelight flickering against crimson clouds and began sprinting toward the deeper trenches of the battlefield.
Valen and Luken weren't far behind, falling in step.
"What about Thal?" Luken asked, breath ragged as they ran.
Elira answered without slowing down. "Let him burn."
Valen huffed a dark laugh. "That's a terrifying sentence to say out loud."
She glanced at him. "It should be."
They broke through the lines, soldiers parting as they passed. The battlefield shifted around them less chaos, more desperation. Screams became orders, weapons clashed with clarity instead of panic. These were the fronts that hadn't collapsed yet but they would not without help.