The meeting happened around a cracked concrete table that had once been part of an office break room.
Maps were spread across it. Old ones. New ones. Some hand drawn, some half melted datapads salvaged from the warehouse. Snow Team clustered close, weapons leaned within reach, bodies tired but alert.
They were not alone.
Three figures stood opposite them, massive silhouettes half lit by the flickering emergency strips along the ceiling. Horse beastmen, all of them. Tall even by beast standards. Broad shouldered. Built like they had been born for momentum.
Each wore scavenged armor reinforced with conductive plating. Their tails twitched restlessly, hooves scraping concrete in slow, impatient rhythms.
Static snapped faintly around them.
Victor stood at the head of the table. "We don't linger," he said. "Tidehaven's gone. Anyone connected to it will either hunt us or avoid us. Neither is safe."
The tallest of the three brothers snorted softly. Lightning cracked across his horns and vanished just as fast.
"Good," he said. His voice rolled, thunder carried in a chest too large for subtlety. "We don't like lingering either."
Voss tapped the map with two fingers. "Trade routes point east," he said, sliding a marker. "There's a city here. Military remnants. Structured command. Not a cult."
That earned the brothers' attention.
"Big promise," Tommy muttered.
"Not insane," Voss corrected calmly. "Or at least, not obviously. They rotate command authority. No single god complex. That helps."
The middle brother leaned forward, hands braced on the table. Sparks danced between his fingers and the metal edge. "What about beastmen?"
"Integrated," Voss said. "Combat units. Logistics. Training corps." He paused, then added, "They run a kindergarten."
That broke the tension.
"A what?" Tommy asked.
"Kids," Rose said slowly. "Being trained?"
"Not indoctrinated," Voss replied. "Basic survival. Movement. Teamwork. Age appropriate. No bloodsport."
Felicity exhaled, shoulders easing for the first time since the warehouse. "That sounds… good."
Victor glanced at her immediately. "It's a possibility," he said, careful. "Not a promise."
"It's a week and a half travel," Voss continued. "Through heavy fog zones. Dense undead. Likely forced engagements."
The shortest of the three brothers laughed, sharp and bright. "That's where we do our best work."
Sarge cracked his neck. "Good. We need levels."
Victor's gaze shifted to the brothers. "You coming?"
The eldest met his stare without blinking. "We didn't survive this long by walking alone."
That settled it.
They moved at dawn.
Or what passed for it.
The foglands were worse than expected.
Visibility dropped to arm's length in places. Static clung to the air, reacting violently to the brothers' presence. The mist hissed where lightning brushed it, briefly illuminating twisted shapes inside before swallowing them again.
Zombies came in waves.
Distorted by the mist, some fused together by rot and static energy. Fog thickened without warning.
One moment the road ahead was a broken ribbon of asphalt and dead grass. The next, it vanished entirely, swallowed by a white grey wall that muffled sound and bent distance.
Snow Team halted instinctively.
Victor lifted one hand.
Everyone froze.
The first zombie came out of the mist at a run.
It wasn't shambling. It wasn't slow. Its legs were elongated wrong, joints bent backward, muscle stretched thin over bone like wet cloth. It shrieked as it moved, a sound that scraped nerves raw.
Victor stepped forward.
Fire bloomed under his boots and froze mid flicker as ice snapped through it, the two forces folding together in violent equilibrium. Space warped around his fist as he struck.
The zombie vanished.
Not fell. Not burned.
Gone.
Victor inhaled once, deeply, and the fog itself seemed to recoil.
Then the horde answered.
They poured out of the mist in waves, bodies colliding, crawling over one another. Hands reached. Teeth snapped. The ground shook with their numbers.
"Formation delta," Voss snapped.
Snow Team moved.
Voss didn't charge. He stepped sideways, eyes tracking a dozen variables at once, fingers twitching as layered skills activated.
"Left flank collapsing in twelve seconds," he called. "Victor, forward pressure. Sarge, stagger rear. Rose, choke center."
Victor was already moving.
Ice speared up from the ground, impaling the first wave mid motion. Fire followed a heartbeat later, detonating inward and shattering frozen bodies into razored fragments.
More surged forward.
That was when the brothers charged.
They didn't run.
They thundered.
Hooves struck asphalt with concussive force as lightning erupted from their bodies in violent arcs. Electricity leapt between them, a living net that tore through the horde. Zombies convulsed mid stride, nervous systems hijacked, bodies locking and collapsing in smoking heaps.
The eldest brother lowered his horns and plowed straight through a cluster of fused corpses, lightning discharging on impact with a deafening crack. The middle brother vaulted high, lightning carrying him forward in a violent leap, landing among the horde and releasing a radial blast that cleared space instantly.
The youngest laughed as he ran, electricity crawling over his limbs as he kicked a zombie clean in half.
A massive abomination burst from the fog, three torsos fused together, arms ending in blades of bone.
Voss raised two fingers.
The ground liquefied beneath it.
Victor appeared.
He slammed skull into skull with enough force to ripple the fog, froze the creature from the inside out, then shattered it with a single kick.
"Rear surge," Voss called.
"Fast movers."
Three broke through.
They didn't reach Felicity.
Damien's curse snapped shut.
The air warped. Momentum betrayed them. Bodies collapsed bonelessly.
Victor glanced back once.
Felicity met his gaze, steady.
"Push," Voss said. "Now."
Snow Team surged forward as one.
Rose's vines erupted from the ground. Tommy whooped. The brothers flanked him, lightning roaring, fog thinning under sustained elemental pressure.
Victor froze the mist itself.
It crystallized mid air and collapsed as fire rolled through in controlled devastation.
When the last zombie fell, silence reclaimed the road.
The eldest brother turned slowly, steam rolling off his shoulders. He looked at Victor. Really looked.
"Yeah," he said finally. "We're staying with you."
Victor nodded once.
The city rose out of the fog like a decision that had survived argument.
Order. Walls. Rotations.
Not worship.
Snow Team stopped at the perimeter.
And now, they stood heavier.
Stronger.
Fourteen instead of eleven.
When the commander scanned them, his pause lingered longer than before.
"Lightning units," he murmured. "Three of them."
Victor said nothing.
The brothers stood tall.
Snow Team had grown.
And the world noticed.