[Present Day]

  "I don't like this," Caelthon said, his voice a low rumble. He, Macus, and a patrol of ten men were crouched on a rain-slicked ridge overlooking a ruined crossroads.

  "That's a heretic supply line," Macus whispered. "But who are they fighting?"

  Caelthon took the glass. The heretics were in a defensive circle. The attackers were not Alliance soldiers. They were shapes, cloaked in ragged, mismatched gear, moving with a jerky, unnatural speed.

  "It's them," Caelthon breathed. "The rumors. 'The Damned.'"

  "Look at their gear, sir," a soldier muttered. "Alliance tunics shredded and patched with scavenged Heretic plates. They’re dressed in spite."

  "The Potion-Scars," one of his men spat. "Walking corpses. They should be put down like the rest of the undead."

  "They aren't undead," Macus whispered, taking the spyglass back and fixing it on the bark-skinned man below. "Look. He's favoring his left side. He flinches when he swings."

  Macus lowered the glass, his face pale.

  "The undead are empty, soldiers. They don't feel. These men... they feel everything. To be dead is a mercy. To be undead is a curse. But to be that... to be trapped inside a body that is actively trying to kill you, feeling every second of the scar... That is a fate worse than death."

  "They fight like rabid dogs," Caelthon whispered. "No formation. No discipline."

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  In moments, it was over. The attackers weren't celebrating. They were ransacking the heretic cart, grabbing food, medical supplies, and ammunition.

  "They're scavengers," Macus noted. "Desperate."

  One of Caelthon's men dislodged a stone. It tumbled down the ridge. Instantly, the attackers froze. A dozen scarred, monstrous faces snapped up toward the ridge. They didn't look curious. They looked hostile. And unlike the blank stare of a ghoul, their eyes were filled with a terrifying, human intelligence.

  The bark-skinned man hissed and pointed at them with a hatchet. Caelthon raised a hand, palm open. "We are not your enemy! We are Alliance!"

  The bandit group didn't care. They raised their scavenged weapons. A crude arrow whistled past Caelthon's head.

  "Back!" Caelthon roared. "Fall back! Now!"

  They ran for a full minute before Caelthon called a halt. His men were pale, breathing hard.

  "Well," Macus panted. "I suppose that answers that."

  "They're not allies," Caelthon said, his face dark. "They're a pack of bandits, just as hostile as the heretics."

  "They were starving, sir," Macus said quietly. "Did you see how they grabbed the rations? They weren't fighting for territory. They were fighting for dinner."

  "That makes them dangerous," Caelthon countered. "A starving dog bites the hand that feeds it just as hard as the hand that beats it."

  He looked back toward the ridge. "They are a variable we cannot control. If they show up at the Black Spire... whose side will they be on?"

  "Ours, if we're lucky," a soldier muttered.

  "No," Caelthon said. "Likely their own."

  Macus said nothing. Caelthon saw monsters. The soldiers saw undead. But Macus, the Quartermaster, saw the math.

  Undead fight until they are destroyed, Macus thought. But these men? They fight because they are in pain. And a man in that much pain will burn the world down just to make it stop.

  He closed his mental ledger. He didn't know then that the problem wasn't the monsters. It was that the Alliance had forgotten how to treat the wounded.