A pair of orcs, each larger than a doorway, lumbered down the center of the avenue. Their leather harnesses creaked with every massive step, their tusks yellowed and stained.
Behind them trailed something that defied natural law: a thick, pale mass of slime, the size of a merchant's cart, rolling slowly along the stones. It moved with an unnatural fluidity, silent and grotesque, leaving no trail yet seeming to consume the very space it occupied.
The citizens of Aethelgard moved like ghosts among these monsters. They didn't scream; they didn't fight.
They walked with their heads bowed, their shoulders hunched in a posture of profound, defeated submission.
A mother pulled her child past an approaching demon patrol, her knuckles white as she gripped the girl's hand, her eyes fixed on the ground as if she could disappear if she simply refused to acknowledge the nightmare.
