"We have to cross it anyway," Tank pointed out, his voice carrying that particular flavor of resigned determination that soldiers develop after too many terrible decisions made in worse situations. "That doorway on the far side is our only route forward unless we want to go back up and face the corpse army again."
"Hard pass on the corpse army," Kael muttered,
"Then we cross," Tank decided, cutting off any further discussion before it could spiral into the kind of nervous bickering that got people killed in situations like this. "Standard formation, weapons ready, maximum alertness. If something attacks, we respond with overwhelming force and don't stop moving toward the exit. No heroics, no stopping to investigate strange sounds or interesting shadows, no 'let me just check this one thing' nonsense. We move, we survive, we leave. Clear?"
Everyone nodded, even Kael, whose nod was perhaps a bit too enthusiastic to be entirely convincing.
