The battlefield was a cacophony of despair.
The disciplined shield wall of the Crimson Hunt had become a chaotic melee of friend against friend, the living fighting a desperate, losing battle against the dead they had just mourned.
Fenrir's roars of fury were mixed with cries of anguish as his men were forced to strike down their own brothers-in-arms for a second time.
Elara's golden dome flickered violently, the strain of maintaining it against the relentless assault from both outside and inside pushing her to her limit.
She saw Fenrir take a deep gash on his arm from a corpse that still wore the Crimson Hunt's insignia.
Hope was bleeding out, replaced by the sickly green light of the necromancer's curse.
From within the dome, Zane held the small, gray Soul Remnant in his open palm. It looked so insignificant, a single pearl against a tidal wave of darkness.
[Affirmative,] AURA's voice confirmed in his mind.
[Analysis: Projecting core resonance. Recalibrating psychic frequencies to target reanimated neural pathways... Warning: Unpredictable side-effects may include...]
Zane shut out the warning. He didn't need precision. He needed a bomb. A soul bomb.
He focused his will, not with the raw, reality-bending power of the Primal Script, but with a finer, more intricate touch.
He didn't command the remnant; he unlocked it.
He peeled back the layers of sorrow and rage, exposing the pure, untainted core within: the final, dying moment of the Ashen Crypt's Chieftain.
The echo of an oath. A vow of loyalty, so powerful it had defied death for centuries.
A wave of energy, completely invisible and silent, radiated outwards from Zane's hand.
It wasn't light or sound. It was a feeling. A memory. A ghost.
It swept across the battlefield, passing through the living without effect, but for the dead, it was a thunderclap in the silence of their curse.
The reanimated mercenaries froze.
The green light in their eyes flickered, suddenly fighting against a new, spectral, silver glow.
The mindless puppets of the necromancer were suddenly gripped by a phantom memory.
The memory of an oath sworn, of ale shared, of battles fought side-by-side.
The curse commanded their bodies, but the echo Zane had released was screaming at their souls.
A dead warrior, his sword raised to strike a former comrade, stopped.
His head tilted, a look of profound confusion on his dead face. He slowly, jerkily, turned his head to look at the necromancer chieftain on the cliff above.
Then, with a guttural groan that was half-rage, half-duty, he turned and charged, not at his living brothers, but at the raiders attacking the shield wall.
One by one, the fallen warriors of the Crimson Hunt turned.
They were still dead, their movements stiff and unnatural, but they were no longer slaves to the green light.
They were once again soldiers of the Crimson Hunt, fighting alongside the living, their spectral loyalty overriding their curse.
The dead were now attacking the raiders who had raised them.
The tide of the battle didn't just turn. It reversed, violently.
The raiders, caught between the unbreakable shield wall of the living and the sudden, vengeful betrayal of the dead, were thrown into utter chaos.
On the cliff, the chieftain stared, her jaw slack with disbelief. Her spell hadn't been broken; it had been hijacked. Her puppets were cutting their own strings.
"What is this sorcery?" she shrieked, her voice cracking with fury and a sliver of fear.
From his vantage point, Fenrir Ironhand could only stare in stunned amazement.
The man he had fought beside just moments ago, now dead and risen, had just intercepted a blow meant for him.
The dead warrior gave him a slow, creaking nod before charging back into the fray.
It was the most horrifying, beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Zane let the Soul Remnant's power fade, its light dimming. The job was done.
The remnant itself now looked duller, almost spent. He had used up the centuries of stored emotion in a single, desperate broadcast.
With their greatest weapon turned against them, the raiders broke.
They scrambled back up the cliffs, pursued by both the living and the dead of the Crimson Hunt.
The necromancer chieftain, seeing her army collapse, let out a final curse and turned to flee. But she didn't get far.
A shadow detached itself from the rocks behind her.
It was Nyx, the Silent Assassin. She moved with a liquid grace that was the polar opposite of Fenrir's raw power.
Her twin daggers, dark and non-reflective, were a blur. There was no sound, no wasted motion.
A swift, precise strike to the back of the chieftain's neck. A clean, professional execution.
Nyx glanced down at the battlefield, her gaze lingering for a fraction of a second on the golden dome where Zane and Elara stood.
Her expression was unreadable behind her mask.
Then, as quickly as she appeared, she melted back into the shadows and was gone.
The battle was over. The silence that returned was one of exhaustion and disbelief.
The reanimated mercenaries, their purpose fulfilled and the necromancer's curse broken at its source, crumbled into dust, finally at peace.
Fenrir stood amidst the carnage, leaning on his hammer, his chest heaving.
He scanned the battlefield, his eyes finally landing on the now-flickering dome of light.
He looked at Elara, then at the insignificant F-rank standing beside her.
He didn't know what had just happened. He couldn't comprehend the forces at play.
But he knew one thing. The turning point of the battle had come from that exact spot.
He started walking towards them, his heavy, iron-shod boots crunching on the rocky ground. He was no fool. There were no coincidences in a battle for survival.
And the boy who carried the bags had a lot of explaining to do.