The Crawlers moved without rest, without hesitation, without breath.
From the ridgelines they spilled, their black shells gleaming in the pallid light of the twin moons. Countless legs scratched against stone and soil, dragging broken earth in their wake. Their bodies poured like oil across the landscape, a tide that no wind could disperse and no wall could hold.
Where they passed, the land withered. Trees stood husked, bark stripped down to pale bone. Rivers ran murky, thick with rot and carcasses gnawed hollow. Fields vanished beneath the gouges of their passage, as though plows from hell had raked them.
No cries rose from them. No war-chants, no banners. Only the endless rhythm of their march—click, scrape, drag—the sound of inevitability made flesh.
On the outer plains, a watchtower had tried to raise alarm. A spark flared against the sky, catching the pitch-soaked beacon. For one moment the tower burned like a torch, the promise of warning carried in its flame. Then the Crawlers surged up its sides, climbing over one another, clawing wood and stone alike. The blaze lasted less than a minute before vanishing beneath the tide.
When the wind shifted, the fortress garrisons far behind smelled only smoke. The silence that followed was worse than screams.
What men called "hunger" was not hunger to them. What men called "strategy" was not strategy either. Their drive was older, deeper, like gravity itself, pulling them toward the living.
Toward the fortress.
Far from the tide, in the high chambers of the Sire's stronghold, Sous Angelus bent over a table heavy with scrolls. The candle before him burned low, drowning in its own wax. Shadows reached long and sharp across his sharp-cheeked face, throwing his youth into relief. Sixteen years, and already commander of knights. Already sung of as prodigy. Already burdened with destiny.
A faint smile curved his lips, though it was not joy. It was fascination.
Before him lay a folded parchment, written in the unmistakable hand of Baron Laos' son. Clean, sharp, exacting: the script of Logos.
Sous traced the lines with his finger. Each mark indicated a location. Villages, ruins, river-crossings, nameless valleys. The pattern was at first subtle, but once seen, impossible to unsee.
The horde's movements matched.
"Impossible…" Sous breathed. He had seen many battles for one his age. He had studied campaigns etched in blood and fire. But never—never—had he seen anything like this.
The Crawlers were mindless to most eyes, driven by blind hunger. And yet here, laid out with ruthless precision, was their rhythm. Their pattern.
As if someone had peeled back the veil of chaos and glimpsed the truth beneath.
A knock jarred him from his thoughts.
"Enter," Sous said, voice clipped.
The door creaked. A knight stepped inside, helm tucked beneath one arm, his armor dulled with dust from long roads. He bowed swiftly.
"My lord, reports from the western ridges."
Sous gestured curtly. "Speak."
The knight cleared his throat. "The Crawlers have split. Two streams. One along the river, another circling north. The villages of Tarsin and Brevay…" His jaw tightened. "Gone."
Sous' eyes narrowed. "Gone?"
"There are no bodies, my lord. Only blood on the ground. Bones stripped clean."
The chamber seemed colder.
The knight hesitated, as though the words themselves threatened to betray him. "Some of the men… they ask how long we can last. If such numbers fall upon us."
Sous turned back to the parchment. Tarsin. Brevay. Both already marked by Logos. The boy had foreseen it. Not guessed. Foreseen.
Sous tapped the page once, his faint smile returning, though this one was sharper, almost cruel. "We will stand. We will hold. But only if we understand what moves them."
The knight bowed, relief and dread mingling in his eyes, before withdrawing.
Alone again, Sous stared at the parchment. For the first time, a flicker of unease stirred in him. Not at the Crawlers—monsters could be slain with blade, fire, and courage. No, what unsettled him was the one who had unveiled their paths.
Logos.
A youth his own age. Sixteen, like him. But where Sous was heir to renown, commander of knights, heir to networks of spies and sages—Logos was scion of an insignificant barony, raised in obscurity, with no council of generals to whisper in his ear. And yet he had divined what even seasoned lords failed to glimpse.
Sous whispered the word that came unbidden.
"Foresight."
Not metaphor, but true foresight. The kind whispered of in old epics, belonging to saints and madmen. The gift to see the flow of what will be, not merely what is.
"The gift of foresight…" he repeated, quieter now. The syllables felt heavy, dangerous.
Sous set the parchment down as though it were a blade sharp enough to cut without touch. He leaned back, candlelight catching the tension in his jaw.
"If such a gift exists," he murmured, "it will change everything."
He imagined the ripples. Nobles scrambling to bind themselves to Laos through marriage or oath. Old alliances splintering as kingdoms tilted toward the weight of prophecy. With foresight, a ruler could unravel plots before they formed, end wars before they began, shape history like clay in his hands.
And yet…
Sous' smile faded. A man who saw too much might never walk among men again. What became of one whose eyes were fixed always on what would be, never on what was?
Would Logos remain human? Or would he drift into something colder, stranger?
Sous' gaze hardened. Once, he had believed himself singular—a prodigy destined to stand above all others, master of the sword, commander of knights. But now, for the first time, he felt another shadow rising alongside his own.
Logos.
Sous reached for the parchment again. His fingers lingered on its edge, trembling faintly despite his iron discipline.
"Which of us will history call master," he whispered into the flickering dark, "and which… pawn?"
The candlelight writhed on the ceiling like restless spirits. In its glow, Sous Angelus—boy of sixteen, already hailed as prodigy—sat alone with a parchment that hinted at futures he could neither deny nor fully grasp.
And for the first time, the certainty of his own destiny wavered.