Eastern Russia, near the Berezina River.November 1812.
The snow fell like ashes.
It blanketed the shattered corpses strewn across the forest clearing—Frenchmen in tattered blue coats, Russians in frozen rags, indistinguishable in death, all staring blankly at a sky that refused to weep.
Sergeant Lucien Marchand stumbled through the wreckage of what had once been the 12th Light Infantry's vanguard. His arm was slashed open and crudely wrapped in blood-soaked linen. His saber was cracked, his boots stiff with frozen blood. But his eyes—those still burned with fear.
"Saints preserve me," he whispered, stepping over a soldier's severed leg, the bone gnawed clean.
He wasn't alone.
Four men followed—two French voltigeurs, a Polish cavalryman named Tomasz, and a Russian deserter they had taken in, a wiry man with sunken eyes who spoke little and slept even less. His name was Fyodor, and Lucien suspected the man hadn't blinked in days.
They had been running for three nights. Not from the Russians. The Russians were dead. Or worse.
"We need fire," Tomasz said, his voice breaking the silence. "We freeze without it."
"We burn fire, they find us," muttered one of the voltigeurs, Romain. "They come when it's warm. Like wolves."
Lucien knelt in the snow. "They come either way."
Fyodor spoke at last, his Russian thick and rasping. "They smell life. Not fire."
Tomasz stared at him. "And how would you know?"
Fyodor didn't answer. He simply reached into his coat and pulled out a scrap of flesh—gray, twitching. He tossed it on the snow. "Cut from one. Still moves after hours."
The others recoiled. Even hardened soldiers, men who had survived the retreat from Moscow, shuddered.
Lucien stood. "We keep moving. West. Napoleon must've pulled back across the Berezina. If there's any line left, we'll find it."
"And if there's nothing left?" Romain asked.
"Then we keep moving until France, and we burn the rest of the world behind us."
They moved silently after that, winding through the scorched remains of birch woods, past wagons splintered like broken bones. The snow grew heavier. So did the silence.
South of Minsk
Russian Partisan Camp
Zoya Petrova crouched near a dying fire, her musket laid across her knees. She watched the fog curling through the trees, ears tuned for anything that moved.
Her band—once sixty strong—had been whittled down to twelve. Not by the French. Not even by hunger. By something else. Something that wore the face of her brother when it came crawling out of a burned-out church two nights ago.
They had shot him.
He got up again.
Zoya still remembered the way his jaw had hung open, as if trying to scream a warning he no longer had the soul to voice.
A man approached her from the shadows. Pavel, their leader. A bear of a man, though gaunt now, hollow-eyed.
"It's spreading," he said without needing to say it.
Zoya nodded. "It doesn't follow roads. It follows blood."
"More have joined our camp," Pavel added. "Survivors. A priest among them. Says it's a curse."
"Of course it's a curse," Zoya spat. "Do curses bite?"
Pavel didn't laugh. "He says it's from the time before Christ. A punishment buried under the ice. Someone unearthed it."
Zoya looked toward the horizon. "Probably a Frenchman."
But the thought didn't comfort her. The French weren't the only ones digging in sacred places.
Near the Riverbank
That Night
Lucien and his group reached the frozen banks of the Berezina.
What had once been a bustling military supply road was now a graveyard. Shattered carriages, rusted cannons half-submerged in the ice, and bodies frozen mid-crawl. One man's mouth was still open in a scream, icicles hanging from his lips.
"We're too late," Tomasz whispered. "The army's gone."
Lucien didn't respond. He crouched beside the ice and pressed his hand to its surface.
Crack.
The noise didn't come from the river. It came from the trees behind them.
Lucien drew his broken saber. Fyodor readied a flintlock. They turned.
From the woods, they came.
Silhouettes. Dozens. Walking, stumbling. Arms out. French shakos. Russian greatcoats. Torn flesh, hollow eyes. Some still held weapons, swords dragging across the ground like dead limbs.
"Line!" Lucien barked, instinct taking over. "Fire at will!"
Flintlocks roared.
The first rank fell.
They got back up.
Romain screamed as a former drummer boy tore into his throat, teeth gnashing bone.
"Run!" Tomasz yelled.
They broke formation. Chaos. Smoke. Screams.
Lucien fled, blood pounding in his ears. Behind him, Fyodor tossed a torch onto a wagon soaked in brandy.
The explosion lit the night.
The undead staggered in flame.
Lucien ran until his lungs gave out.
Hours Later
Russian Camp
Zoya awoke to the sound of distant thunder.
Not storm.
Gunfire.
Then fire.
The horizon lit orange, a pillar of flame twisting into the night.
A single figure emerged from the forest—half-limping, face frozen and bruised, covered in blood and ash.
Lucien.
He collapsed before their sentries, babbling in French and Russian alike.
Zoya knelt beside him and pressed a water flask to his lips.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Lucien grabbed her wrist. "They don't die," he gasped. "You shoot them. You burn them. But they keep coming."
His eyes darted toward the fire on the horizon.
"And they're headed this way."
End of Chapter 3