They ran along the southern wall, already cracked, its plaster peeling like leprous skin, exposing the old yellow sandstone beneath. Johann counted the cracks in the wall: one, three, five… a random pattern that suddenly reminded him of a collapsing stock chart: lines once neat and predictable now torn, wild, unreadable. The heat from the blaze in the center courtyard scorched his face until it stung, making his eyes water not from emotion but from pure physical torment. Every gust of wind carried swirling ash like dirty snow from hell, clinging to the ragged uniform now containing more of other people's blood than his own sweat.
Ahead, at the half-burnt door of the northern barracks—the thick oak now licked by blue-orange flames at its edges—a group of rebels was making a stand. Five, maybe six. But their formation had collapsed. One of them, a man with tangled blond hair wearing a knee-length coat buttoned up tight as if he were closing himself off—a new trend in the Indropa continent starting in the capital state of Auster—was severely wounded. Blood gushed from a wound on his left thigh, flooding his coarse wool trousers until they shone black like oil. The blood-spread pattern was interesting: initially spurting, then flowing along the fabric folds, forming a delta-like pattern on an ancient map. He had maybe two minutes before hypovolemic shock. Unless…
As the man fell, his wounded leg no longer able to bear his body's weight and the burden of fear, the corpses did not discriminate. They did not choose. Three figures moved towards him with a synchronization reminiscent of the new robots being developed back on Earth. Stiff hands grabbed: one seized an arm, one the neck, one went straight for the open wound on the thigh. The gray fingers dug into the flesh like shovels.
"Help!" the rebel screamed, his voice high, desperate, and too young. A teenage voice not yet fully broken, perhaps not even eighteen. Johann suddenly remembered his own younger brother—not Johann Reth's sister from the foreign memories, but Alex Tan's brother studying in Melbourne—and how his voice had sounded just as panicked calling because he'd forgotten his passport a day before a flight. Such a small problem, he thought while his legs kept running after Weiner. Now compare it to this.
But Weiner pulled their group onward. "Can't! We have to get to the Captain! One life for many!" The logic was simple, brutal, and so similar to the cost-benefit analyses he'd studied and used in meetings.
Johann looked back as they turned a corner around a collapsed storage building. The young rebel was no longer moving. But Johann counted: one, two, three seconds, and the hands that had been trying to defend themselves began moving again. The fingers clenched with a regular rhythm: clench, release, clench again. Like a hand testing the grip on a new tool. Then the body pushed itself into a sitting position with a stiff, creaking-joint motion audible even from twenty feet away. Then stood. And the eyes… the eyes that had been full of terror, full of pleading, were now empty. Cloudy like the windows of an old, uncleaned warehouse. Their blue color had faded to a milky gray.
He had become one of them. That realization hit Johann. Something even less scientific than his own regeneration and transmigration. This wasn't a disease. It wasn't a virus. It was… conversion. Like in those zombie movies, most of which were so bad he felt cheated buying the tickets.
Yet without commotion, without hungry groans. Only silence and terrible efficiency. Like a broken photocopier still working, producing bad copies of something already dead. Something truly repulsive.
They finally reached the commander's room. The thick oak door with an imperial eagle iron knocker—though the eagle had been hammered flat into a shapeless metal plate, likely by the rebels upon capturing the fortress. Symbolic desecration that now felt utterly insignificant. Johann noted the wood grain was still good, the wood maybe a hundred years old, grown in a forest now likely burned for farmland or mining. Cycles. Everything was cycles.
"Weiner! Open up! It's Weiner and the survivors!"
The door opened with a screech deafening in the corridor's relative silence. Inside, Captain Vogel stood behind a map table now covered in ink scribbles and dried bloodstains.
About fifteen other rebels leaned against walls or sat on the floor, their faces like a gallery of expressionist paintings depicting extreme exhaustion: sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, cracked lips. The room's smell was a complex mix: the sour sweat of men who hadn't bathed for weeks, fresh and old blood, gunpowder, and beneath it all, the smell of rotting wood and ink reminiscent of his old university library.
"Report," said Captain Vogel, his voice flat, hard, like cold-forged steel. The voice of a man who had passed the point of shock and now operated purely on procedure.
"Corpses rising everywhere, Captain," said Weiner, his breath still heavy like an exhausted horse. "Lower storage collapsed. Gilbert buried. Giovanni… separated. Don't know."
The Captain nodded, showing no emotion. Only the sharp gray eyes—the color of storm clouds over the sea—blinked once, quickly. A micro-expression that might have been grief, or maybe just the reflection of firelight from the window.
"Same here. Started not long after the first bombardment. No more than ten minutes after that strange first boom." He paused, his fingers in worn leather gloves tapping the map. "All the dead are rising. But they're not intelligent. They don't think. They don't strategize. They just… move."
He paused again, searching for the right word, his mouth twisting as if tasting sour wine.
"Like marionettes," said Johann, and all eyes in the room turned to him. The gazes varied: some hopeful (perhaps thinking he had an answer—heh, I understand this even less than you do!), some suspicious (who is this new guy who knows the right word?), some empty (too tired to care).
"Yes," said Captain Vogel, observing him briefly with an intensity that made Johann feel like a specimen under a microscope. "Like puppets. Marionettes with half-cut strings. Moving, but without a logical mover. Without a visible puppeteer."
"What's causing it?" asked one of the rebels, a man with burn scars on half his face, the skin still pink and shiny like freshly boiled pork. His voice trembled despite his effort to hold it steady, like an overtightened violin string.
"That's irrelevant now," said the Captain, his voice rising slightly—the first sign that behind the steel calm was the same pressure crushing them all. He looked toward the window. The fire was getting closer, its orange light now illuminating his profile dramatically, elongating the shadow of his nose like in a Caravaggio chiaroscuro painting Alex had once seen in a museum. Art and death, he thought involuntarily. Always connected.
Smoke began seeping under the door, rolling across the stone floor like evil mist from a cheap horror film, creeping into their boots. The smoke pattern was interesting—it didn't spread evenly but formed small vortices, as if there were an airflow from somewhere. Ventilation. Or a hole. Perhaps an old air tunnel. But not now. Focus.
"This fortress is falling. We're trapped." Captain Vogel drew his sword from its sheath. The ringing of metal in the suddenly quiet room was a clean, sharp sound, utterly different from the dull sounds of combat outside. The sound of an end, thought Johann. Or the beginning of something else?
"Secret tunnel to the western slope?" asked Weiner, still hoping, still believing in an escape like in the adventure stories he'd probably heard in village inns. Hope itself was a strength, but also a vulnerability.
"Blocked. Collapsed in the middle by a direct cannon hit. Eight-pounder, I'd guess, based on the stone diameter blocking it," said another rebel. Captain Vogel looked at them all, one by one. Face to face. Like taking mental note of who was left, who was worth remembering before the end. "Our choices are simple: burn alive here, or fight our way out through the north gate."
"The north gate is partially collapsed," someone said from a corner.
"But still passable. One at a time," the Captain continued, ignoring the interruption. "We fight to the gate. Form a classical wedge. Wounded in the center, strongest at the spearhead. Whoever makes it outside, run for the black pine forest on the northern slope. Don't stop. Don't look back. Don't return for anything."
He paused, and for the first time his voice trembled almost imperceptibly, like a bass string plucked too softly. "And if anyone falls along the way… make sure their head is destroyed before they rise again. That's not murder. It's burial. Understood?"
They nodded. Johann nodded. Group survival over the individual. Movement efficiency. Weak points: base of skull or complete brain destruction. Contamination protocol: avoid their bodily fluids. Insufficient data to determine transmission mode. This was the core of the plan.
The Captain opened the door. Smoke immediately flooded in, making several men cough. "Wedge formation. Wounded in the center. Ready?"
"Yes, Captain!" in unison, though weak, though full of doubt like an under-rehearsed choir.
"ADVANCE!"
The journey from the commander's room to the north gate was a distance of seventy paces, according to the map Johann had seen hanging askew on the wall. A map with beautiful blue and gold ink, neat lines showing mountain contours, red arrows for imperial troops, black for rebels. An artifact from an orderly world where war was still something that happened on paper, in meeting rooms with wine and fireplaces.
Today, in Fort Thares turned into a giant furnace, those seventy paces were a journey through seven layers of hell custom-designed to test every limit of human psychology.
They emerged into the main corridor, wide enough for two horse carts, with a vaulted ceiling perhaps fifteen feet high. Early Gothic architecture, probably from the First Rhein era, when this was still a trading post before the First Rhein eventually collapsed to Woland. Johann noted the capitals on the pillars: simple carvings of fern leaves. Art that outlasted its maker. Outlasted the kingdom that made it. Now witnessing this.
Three corpses immediately approached from the left: two imperial soldiers with relatively intact uniforms, and one rebel in a shabby brown jacket with a bronze pin shaped like the strange cross still on his right chest.
Captain Vogel himself stepped forward.
His sword was a rapier with an intricate basket hilt that indicated noble status, gleaming in the firelight beginning to penetrate the broken windows. The orange light from the blaze outside made the steel blade look like solidified flame tongue, like CGI effects in those expensive, amazing fantasy movies.
First swing: fast, precise, economical. Not a wild slash, but an expert cut like a surgeon's. To the neck of the first imperial soldier, precisely between vertebrae C3 and C4. The head separated with a sound like splitting wood, rolled on the stone floor, and came to rest face up, mouth still opening and closing with a horrific, rhythmic motion like a koi fish in a pond. Spinal reflex. Brain probably dead, but spinal nerves still responding. Data.
Second swing: a spin, utilizing momentum like a dancer, severing the hand of the rebel corpse reaching for him. The hand fell, fingers still moving, clawing at the floor, creating faint scratch patterns in the dust. Like a cockroach with its head cut off but its body still moving. Primitive survival mechanism.
Third swing: a thrust straight into the eye of the second imperial soldier. The blade entered through the orbit, pierced the thin ethmoid bone, into the cranial cavity. A wet sound reminiscent of a melon being skewered. The corpse stopped instantly, like a machine unplugged.
Three corpses. Three movements. In ten seconds.
Captain Vogel wasn't breathing heavily. He simply nodded, his face like a marble statue. "Advance. Maintain formation. Don't get drawn out."
They advanced. Ten paces.
Johann noticed details of the floor: yellow sandstone, polished by thousands of footsteps over centuries, now covered in stains—blood in various stages of drying (bright red, brown, black), the corpses' black fluid, ash, filth. A palimpsest of death. On the walls, a faded fresco depicted Therion Himself, part of the Creator who is the blood and brain of the First Creator. He was depicted slender, as if more familiar with long roads than battlefields, looking like Western Christian paintings of Jesus.
His hair fell to his shoulders, dulled by the sun; His face calm but weary.
He carried no weapon, yet people spoke more softly in His presence. His gaze was not challenging—it just made lies feel awkward. At the foot of the fresco, charcoal graffiti: "THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE." Graffiti from a rebel who might now be dead, or perhaps walking these corridors as a corpse.
But what made Johann take note wasn't that, but that Therion's figure in this painting was strikingly similar to Western paintings of God in Christianity! Truly, an insane world. How could there be so many similarities and dissimilarities since he first transmigrated?
Five corpses waited at the intersection, standing motionless like statues in an overgrown garden. Precisely like the statues at Gardens by the Bay, frozen waiting for tourist photos. Until they saw movement. Their heads turned in unison, with a mechanical motion that made the hair on Johann's neck stand up, then they began walking.
A rebel with a still-loaded musket—a man with a thick Franz Joseph-style mustache from a history book he'd read—fired from the edge of the formation. Boom! The sound like thunder in a can. Thick white smoke. The fresh smell of gunpowder (potassium nitrate, sulfur, charcoal) cutting through the rot like perfume in a landfill.
Two corpses fell. Three kept advancing with the same indifference.
Close-quarters combat again. Johann still carried the axe, weighing about six pounds by his estimate, with its center of gravity too far forward, making it unbalanced. But he was used to it now. Every swing that connected was a corpse's last. Efficiency. Minimize movement. Conserve energy. Project management principles applied to killing.
But for every corpse they destroyed, more emerged from the darkness like mushrooms after rain.
From open doors along the corridor—former soldiers' quarters with empty wooden bunks and ransacked personal chests. From smaller passages branching toward kitchens or secondary armories. Even falling from the burning upper floor—partially burnt bodies, skin blistered like overcooked sausages, hair turned to ash flying like black confetti, yet still moving with a terrible determination not born of life.
Twenty paces.
One of the rebels in their formation was impaled.
By a corpse they had passed, thinking it inert.
It was an old soldier with a white mustache and an imperial uniform torn at the stomach, revealing dried intestines like old rope. Lying on the floor, and the rebel accidentally stepped on its arm while stepping back to avoid another corpse's swing. The arm moved, not a reflex, but a directed action—grabbing the rebel's ankle with unnatural strength for something dead eight hours.
The rebel fell with a heavy thump, his simple metal helmet clanging on stone. Before anyone could help—before Johann could turn, though he was only three paces away—three other corpses were upon him. Not a coordinated attack, just coincidence of numbers and direction.
Captain Vogel ordered them to keep moving. His voice was like heated iron quenched in water: hissing, hard, undeniable. "Don't stop! Stopping means death! That's an order!"
Johann looked back as they left the rebel behind. The man was still struggling, his right hand—a hand that supposedly used to play guitar according to Karl's stories—reaching for the sword that had fallen half a pace away. His fingers almost touched the oak hilt carved with an acorn leaf pattern. Then the corpses swarmed—not attacking in a military sense, just falling upon him, pinning him under their dead weight, and nothing more could be seen except a body twitching beneath the pile of other corpses, like a man drowning under ice.
Thirty paces.
Fire now ran along the corridor's roof. The centuries-old oak that had withstood mountain weather now burned with blue flames at its base—a sign of perfect combustion, high temperature. Embers rained down like a small fire shower, each speck leaving a small burn mark on uniforms, on skin. Johann felt an ember the size of a peanut land on his shoulder, burning through Luke's leather jacket and into his skin. The pain was sharp, clean, almost refreshing amidst the numbness of fear. He slapped it away, and the burnt skin peeled, leaving a weeping pink wound. Second-degree burn. Risk of infection high. No antibiotics. Add to list of problems.
Thick, black, toxic smoke—a mix of burning wood, wool, flesh, and something chemical. Hard to breathe. Some rebels began coughing, the sound like broken engines, their eyes red and watering like people who had been crying for hours. One rebel, a young man with a squeaky voice who always asked about dinner menus even in the midst of battle—Hans was his name—fell to his knees, coughing like a drowning man, each breath sounding like sandpaper on wood.
Weiner hauled him up roughly, almost breaking his arm. "Keep moving! Don't stop! Breathe through wet cloth!" But there was no wet cloth. No water. Only smoke and panic.
They passed through a large door leading to the inner courtyard—the door was half burnt, hanging on hinges glowing red from heat. And here, in the fortress's main courtyard where parades or drills were once held, the most horrifying sight awaited.
Dozens of corpses.
Johann did a quick estimate: area sampling method. He visually divided the courtyard into quadrants. Average seven corpses per quadrant. Four visible quadrants. Twenty-eight. But areas were obscured by smoke. Correction factor 1.5. Conservative estimate: forty-two. Maybe fifty. Maybe more.
They wandered aimlessly in the burning courtyard. Walking in perfect circles like birds struck by electricity. Standing still facing a wall like punished children. Lying down then rising again with movements reminiscent of babies learning to stand. But all the faces—the faces of imperial soldiers with remnants of pride in their posture despite rotting skin, the faces of rebels with the marks of life's suffering still visible in eye wrinkles, the faces of fortress servants (one even still holding a bucket, its contents dried to brown mud) who never asked for a part in this ideological war—shared one thing: eyes clouded like old stained glass, and mouths shaped for sounds never made.
When their group emerged from the corridor, all those corpses stopped.
In unison, as if conducted by an invisible conductor.
All heads turned toward them. Hundreds of clouded eyes focused. No expression. No recognition. But there was… attention. Like activated motion sensors.
Then, with terrifying synchronization—more terrifying than the tactical movements of trained troops—they all began moving toward Johann's group. Not running. Not walking fast. Just walking. But their numbers. The numbers made the difference.
"RUN!" shouted Captain Vogel, his voice nearly lost in the growing roar of the fire—a sound like a dying giant's breath.
They ran.