"My love!"
The cry split the air.
Lin froze as if struck by lightning. His body locked in place, every muscle seized. He looked up, and the shock in his eyes tore his breath apart.
It was her.
His wife's voice.
Under the moonlight, a group of villagers was being driven forward, their wrists bound with rope. They stumbled as they walked, dragged and pushed along the edge of the clearing. They were exhausted, filthy, barely standing.
But they were alive.
That alone felt unreal.
The armored warriors moved with them, iron boots striking the ground in steady rhythm. Each step rang out across the clearing, cold and sharp, metal against stone, like death tapping its fingers against the world.
The General reached out and rested his hand against the exposed bone of the skeletal warhorse. His fingers tapped lightly, producing a dull clicking sound, as if the creature were answering his touch.
The horse's hollow eye sockets glowed with a sickly green fire. The light flickered faintly as the skull shifted, a subtle movement that felt less like obedience and more like mockery. It stood waiting. Watching. As if savoring what was about to happen.
The general turned his head slowly.
His gaze descended from above, heavy and precise, like a blade lowered with intent. When his eyes found Lin, it felt as though something sharp had been driven straight into Lin's chest.
"You believe we eat living hearts because we crave blood?" the general asked.
His voice was low, rasping, scraped raw by time and death. There was no anger in it. No excitement.
Only certainty.
"That is merely how we sustain endless life," he continued. "No different from how you eat flesh to survive."
He lifted one finger and gestured casually toward the bound villagers.
"They will not die," he said calmly. "Not if they obey our rules. In time, they will become something more useful."
The words were spoken without emphasis, without threat.
Which made them far worse.
Lin's eyes moved past the ranks of iron and bone and found the faces behind them.
Faces he knew.
Men in their prime. Young women. Children.
No elders.
The absence struck him like a blow.
There was no need to ask where the old ones had gone. No explanation was necessary. Their value had already been weighed.
The clearing felt like a vast, open pit. Lin stood at its edge, staring down into something cold and endless, unable to step back, unable to look away.
They brought her forward.
Lin's wife was pushed toward the general. She was small beside him, her figure fragile against the mass of iron and ancient armor, like a child dragged toward an altar.
Her clothes were wrinkled and stained with mud. Her hair hung loose and tangled, as though the night itself had clawed at her. But her eyes—
Those eyes Lin knew better than his own—
They were still bright.
Bright like a flame crushed deep inside darkness.
Bright enough to tear at his chest with every beat of his heart.
The Iron Cavalry General raised his hand lazily.
Two bronze-armored warriors stepped forward and, without warning, cut the rope from her wrists.
The cord fell to the ground with a soft sound.
Too soft.
Sharper than any blade.
The general's hand came down and rested on her head.
It was massive. Cracked. Cold.
A hand that needed only the slightest pressure—
And her skull would burst like fruit beneath his fingers.
Lin's heart jolted violently.
A dangerous thought surged up from somewhere deep and desperate.
If I join them…
If I submit…
She might live.
The villagers might live.
For a moment, the idea clawed at him, frantic and persuasive.
Then reason slammed back just as hard.
If he did that, he would become one of them.
A monster.
No better than the things standing before him.
The conflict twisted inside his chest, and for an instant his expression wavered.
His wife's legs trembled.
Fear shook her from the inside out.
And yet—
She smiled.
It was a terrible smile. The kind born not of hope, but of resistance pushed past its breaking point. A smile that crushed terror down and refused to let it show.
Her voice was weak.
But every word rang clear.
"Lin will never join you monsters."
"No matter what tricks you use," she said, breath unsteady, "you cannot hide what you are. You were born to enslave others."
The Iron Cavalry General tilted his head and looked at her with pale, pupil-less eyes.
There was no anger in them.
Only mild curiosity.
Almost admiration.
"Oh," he murmured. "So she is the head of this household."
He laughed softly.
The sound was dry and broken, forced up through old bone and dead throat.
The bronze warriors around him burst into laughter. Rough. Cruel. Unrestrained. Like wild dogs howling at prey.
What shattered Lin was not that.
It was that a few of the bound villagers laughed too.
Their laughter was hollow and shaking, filled with fear and submission. The laughter of people trying to survive by pleasing whoever held the knife.
"Join us," the general said. "You may enslave them as well. A privilege you have never known."
He spoke as if offering a gift.
Like tossing a gnawed bone at someone starving.
Lin's wife drew a ragged breath. Her chest rose and fell sharply, but she kept her eyes locked on the general.
"You misunderstand," she said. "We only want to live quietly."
"Naive," the general replied.
He shook his head, as if dismissing a dull and tiresome question.
"Without us, you would still be enslaved by kings. The king is dead. I killed him for you."
He lifted his chin slightly.
"Should you not thank me?"
"You are the same!" she shouted.
Her voice cracked, raw and hoarse, snapping back through the clearing like a broken wire.
"You are worse! When will this world ever end?"
Lin nearly moved then.
Nearly threw himself forward.
Even if it meant being torn apart.
The Iron Cavalry General sighed.
He shook his head again, as one might when deciding how to dispose of something troublesome.
His patience was gone.
"She lives," he said.
The words were flat.
Final.
In the same instant, his claw pressed down.
"And you come with us."
Thin lines of blood appeared at once, seeping down from Lin's wife's forehead, tracing her cheek in trembling paths.
The world seemed to tilt.
And something inside Lin broke, cleanly and forever.