But running in thick wool clothing now heavy with sweat, blood, and ash, with heavy weapons disrupting balance, over terrain littered with stone debris, bodies, and scattered war equipment, with smoke suffocating lungs until every breath felt like inhaling hot sand—that was almost impossible. Like a treadmill at max incline with added weights in a tear gas-filled room, Johann thought with the part of his brain still trying to find familiar analogies.
And the corpses never tired. They didn't breathe. They felt no pain from broken legs or open wounds. They just walked, walked, walked, at a constant pace like a metronome. A terrifying competitive advantage, his managerial side analyzed. No maintenance cost. No moral issues. Just relentless forward movement.
Forty paces.
They reached the north gate—or what remained of it.
The gate was a structure of oak and iron perhaps two feet thick, designed to withstand months of siege. Now: a direct cannon hit—likely from a howitzer, based on the radial crack pattern in the foundation stone (heh, it's surprising how much information he'd gained as a keyboard warrior was actually useful)—had struck the tower above it, and massive stones, each weighing maybe a thousand pounds, the size of a small car, blocked most of the exit. Only a narrow gap, perhaps the width of a slender man's shoulders, remained open between two giant stones. Morning light seeped through that gap, forming a bright line on the dusty ground like a projector in a dark room. An exit. Or the illusion of one.
"The wounded first!" ordered the Captain, but he didn't point at anyone because everyone was wounded to some degree.
But it was too late.
The corpses had surrounded them, forming a perfect, tightening circle. They were trapped in a triangle between two collapsed gate stones and the wave of corpses advancing from the other three sides. The worst tactical position, Johann thought. No defensible side. No retreat path. High ground occupied by the enemy (the corpses on the rubble).
Captain Vogel stood at the front, facing the first wave. His face was now clear in the brightening morning light—wrinkled, old perhaps in his fifties, an old scar on his left cheek, gray eyes still sharp as knives. "Form a circle! Back-to-back! Hold until the wounded can get through!"
But their circle was small now. Only ten men from the original fifteen. And the corpses… dozens. Johann estimated sixty now. A six-to-one ratio. In ancient military theory, three-to-one was already considered certain defeat.
The final battle began, and it wasn't a battle in the sense of a duel or engagement. It was an industrial process. Like a garbage disposal being fed.
The corpses came without fear, without regret, without emotion. They simply advanced. He, himself, the Captain, the remaining rebels—struck, slashed, stabbed. Each of them destroyed three, four, five corpses. Johann lost count. His axe rose and fell like a piston in a factory. Every swing broke bones with sounds like dry twigs, severed limbs with sounds like frozen meat being cut.
But for every one that fell, there was another. Always another. Like a video game with infinite spawn rate. A bug in the reality system, Johann thought while crushing the skull of a corpse with a girl's face, perhaps twelve—a kitchen maid? Probably.
Weiner was stabbed from behind. Johann saw it happen in slow motion: a corpse with a young face, maybe no more than seventeen, wearing a still-new imperial uniform, thrust its stiff fingers (black, long, dirty nails) into Weiner's back right between the shoulder blades. A precise stab, going in maybe three inches. Weiner turned, his face more shocked than pained, and his short sword beheaded the youth in a near-automatic motion. The head fell, its mouth still shaped as if saying "sorry." But two other corpses were already upon Weiner before the headless youth's own body fell.
Johann tried to help, stepping forward, but another corpse. He swung the axe, severing the arm reaching for him. The arm fell, fingers still moving like a crab with its claw cut off. But there was another. And another. Diminishing returns. Every axe swing drained energy. Every corpse destroyed bought maybe five seconds.
The rebels fell one by one like bowling pins.
Karl with the thick mustache—stabbed in the neck right in the carotid artery, blood spurting like a small, bright red, living fountain, completely different from the corpses' black fluid. He clutched his neck, eyes wide, then fell to his knees as if praying before toppling sideways.
Hans with the squeaky voice—tripped over a corpse's spilled intestines, was pinned by four corpses that didn't attack but simply crushed him with their weight, like a human landslide. His hand still moved from under the pile, then went still.
Others. And others. Names Johann couldn't remember. Faces he'd just seen yesterday in the commander's room, drinking dirty water from the same canteen.
Fifty paces from the gate—a distance that could be covered in fifteen seconds of normal running—now felt like the distance to the moon.
Only Johann and Captain Vogel remained. They stood back-to-back, a tiny circle of two humans within a large circle of dozens of corpses. David and Goliath, but Goliath has fifty brothers, Johann thought with sudden sarcasm. And David is out of stones.
"Reinhold, right?" said the Captain, slicing through a corpse's neck with his sword now dented and chipped at the tip. His voice was calm, oddly calm, like someone asking about the weather.
"Yes, Captain." Johann's own voice sounded foreign—hoarse, raspy, full of ash.
"Fighting well. Better than I expected from a shepherd who joined just six months ago." There was a tone… what was it? Appreciation? Or just observation?
Johann didn't answer. His axe struck a corpse's shoulder—a fat man with a butcher's apron—breaking the collarbone with a sound like splitting wood. The corpse didn't stop, kept reaching with its other hand. Johann struck again, this time to the head. Not a clean cut, but a blow like hammering a nail—crunch, crunch, crunch—until the skull shattered and black fluid spurted. Only then did it stop. Three-hit combo. Inefficient.
The Captain's sword flashed in the now smoke-filled morning light, creating orange silhouettes in the air. Every swing severed necks, hands, legs with a precision still astonishing though he was clearly tired—his shoulders rising and falling too fast, breath beginning to be audible. But he was one man. And the corpses were many. Simple, undeniable mathematics.
One corpse grabbed his arm—a corpse with a face Johann recognized, Giovanni's face, Gilbert's brother. Empty eyes that once held youthful fervor and theological debate. Mouth open, and Johann could see the blackened tongue curled inside like a dead snake. The Captain beheaded it with a swift, almost regretful motion. But another corpse grabbed his leg. Another grabbed his other arm. Like ants attacking a larger insect, they didn't attack but merely held, pulled, pinned.
Captain Vogel fell.
The sound of his heavy body hitting the stone—thud—was the clearest sound amidst the roar of fire and the tread of corpse feet.
"RUN, REINHOLD! THROUGH THE GATE! REPORT TO THE COMMANDER IN THE VALLEY! TELL THEM WHAT HAPPENED HERE!"
Johann turned. The gap in the gate. Only six, maybe seven paces. The morning light there looked like a portal to another world. Out. Live. Report. Duty.
But corpses were already there too, blocking the way. Three corpses stood right in front of the gap, like the guardians of hell's gate in mythology. Johann swung his axe.
He looked back. Captain Vogel was no longer moving. But… his hand. His hand was starting to move again. Fingers clenching with the familiar rhythm. Then the arm lifted, bending at the elbow, trying to push the body up. His face was still the same—eyes closed, mouth locked in a final expression of strain. But his body was no longer his. It had become the property of… whatever drove this.
No.
The word wasn't in Rethian. Not in English. Just an absolute refusal from something very deep within him, both Alex and Johann.
Johann didn't run for the gate. He turned, stepping back into the center of the corpse circle—stepping toward danger, not away—to where Captain Vogel lay. The corpses didn't hinder him. They merely followed, like iron filings following a magnet.
He swung his axe. Not at the approaching corpses.
At Captain Vogel's head.
Crunch.
First sound: cracking skull bone. Not a melon sound, but like a coconut hit with a hammer.
Crunch.
Second: going deeper. Something wet.
Crunch.
Third: until nothing that could be called a head remained, just a cavity with dark remnants.
Johann turned again, facing the corpses now almost closing the last gap to the gate. Nothing left to protect. No orders to obey. Just him, the axe, and dozens of corpses.
He swung the axe. Advanced. One step. Swing. Another step. Like someone clearing brush in a forest, but this brush bled black and sometimes moved on its own.
Maybe he killed five—a corpse with one leg, a corpse with a gunshot wound to the stomach, a corpse with a face too mangled to recognize. Maybe ten—a youth, a bearded man. He stopped counting. Mathematics was irrelevant now. What mattered: forward movement. Basic physics principle. Forward thrust must exceed resistance.
And then he reached the gate gap.
The large stones on either side were still scorched, blackened by fire and soot. Johann could see geological details—yellow limestone with small fossil shells, evidence that these mountains were once a seabed. Geological time versus human time, he thought while forcing his body through the narrow gap. We are just a blink. Even this war is just a blink.
He forced his body through the narrow gap. Stone tore Luke's leather jacket, tore the linen beneath, then tore the skin on his right shoulder. Sharp, clean pain, different from the dull ache in his chest. Fresh blood—his own blood, bright red, alive—flowed warmly down his arm, dripping onto the stone below. My DNA is here now. A biological trace in a world not my own.
He was almost out. Right shoulder through. Head. Chest. Waist.
Almost.
But then hands grabbed him from behind. Not one. Many. Like roots from within the earth, or tentacles from a deep-sea creature.
The corpses couldn't pass through the gap—they were too stiff, couldn't contort like a living human. But their hands, their arms, reached through the gap, grabbing Johann's legs, thighs, waist, anything reachable. The grips were cold—cold as meat from a fridge, but with unnatural strength, like hydraulic machines.
Johann screamed—a scream of rage, of despair, of exhaustion reaching his bone marrow—and swung his axe backward without looking, severing the grasping hands. The hands fell to the ground, fingers still moving like severed insect legs. But more hands came. Always more.
And at the same time, from above, a new sound—a high-pitched shriek like a train whistle, then the sound of shifting air pressure, then the sound of something large and heavy moving through the air at high speed. Physics: free fall. Gravitational acceleration 9.8 m/s².
Johann looked up.
A stone. A large stone from the burning tower above the gate. A cornerstone, perhaps, or architectural decoration. The size of a refrigerator, with a half-destroyed imperial eagle carving. It was falling right toward him, spinning slowly as in a nightmare.
Johann didn't think. His body reacted. He pulled himself fully into the gap—back into the fortress, away from the morning light, back into the hell he'd almost left—and rolled sideways.
The stone struck the ground right where he had stood, with a rumble that shook the earth, completely blocking the gate gap. Stone dust billowed, making him cough. Morning light was now only a thin beam through a small crack between stones.
Johann was trapped.
Completely trapped.
He turned, slowly, facing the inner courtyard of Fort Thares.
The sight of a hell that had reached its peak.
Fire everywhere, licking walls, devouring wood, making stones glow red like iron in a forge. Temperature surely above 50°C now, maybe 60. His skin felt tight, dry, about to crack. Corpses moved everywhere, but now many were also on fire—walking with flames on their clothing, hair becoming torches, skin blistering and peeling like burning paper. But they kept walking. Like Terminators, Johann thought without humor. But a 30 Years' War version.
And there was no way out. The north gate was sealed. The south gate, if it even existed, was too far, filled with fire and corpses. Towers? Probably collapsed. Tunnels? Blocked. The game over screen should appear now, he thought. Or at least the "load last save" option. But no save points. No checkpoints.
He backed up, his back pressing against the large stone that had just blocked the gate. The stone was hot, heated by the fire climbing the tower above it, maybe 70-80°C, almost untouchable. The heat burned through his uniform, but he hardly felt it. Nociceptor overload, his brain diagnosed. Nervous system has given up.
He looked around. A final survey.
Weiner rose. The wound on his back was still open, gaping like a second mouth, but he rose. Empty, cloudy eyes. Open mouth. Began walking toward him. First step limping, then steadier.
Karl with the thick mustache rose. His neck was still gaping, but no more blood flowed. Just dead, grayish flesh.
Hans with the squeaky voice rose, pushed up by the corpses that had pinned him, like a zombie rising from a grave in a movie.
All who had fallen earlier rose. All of them. Gilbert probably too, under the rubble. Giovanni had already risen earlier. Captain Vogel… no, his head was destroyed. The only one not rising.
And all of them, dozens of corpses, walked toward Johann. Not rushing. Not angry. Just walking, like a tide rising slowly, inevitably.
Johann raised his axe. But his hand was trembling now—coarse, uncontrollable tremors, like an old machine about to break. His wounded right arm throbbed with pain with every heartbeat, and the heart itself was beating too fast, maybe 140 bpm, dangerous tachycardia. He was tired. So tired. His muscles screamed, his lungs burned, his mind fogged. Fatigue toxins. Lactic acid buildup. Dehydration. Hyperthermia. Multiple trauma. Shock. A final diagnosis list.
He looked at the sky—or what he could see of it above the fortress. Black with thick, billowing smoke like a mushroom cloud, but beyond it, somewhere high, there was light. The morning sunlight of a world still spinning as usual. The light of Singapore in the morning, where people were drinking coffee, checking emails, complaining about traffic. The light of his previous life, which now felt like a movie watched by someone else.
Mom…, he thought, and it was the first truly personal thought, truly his own, in perhaps the last hour. Not analysis. Not strategy. Just a name, a face, a sudden pang of longing deeper than any wound.
He closed his eyes. Drew a deep breath—a breath full of smoke, ash, the smell of human flesh beginning to burn (smelling like roast pork, but with a disgusting sweet afternote), the smell of burning wood, hot iron.
Then opened them again.
The corpses were closer. The fire was closer. The heat was now almost unbearable—the air shimmering like over asphalt in summer, distorting the view. Johann could see details of every face: skin pores enlarged by heat, clouded eyes reflecting fire, open mouths as if saying something but producing no sound.
He raised his axe for the last time. The wooden handle slick with blood and sweat. The iron blade now blunt and bent at the tip. Its weight felt like holding a mountain.
And in the distance, the empire's hundredth cannon, or maybe more—who was counting?—roared.
"BANG."
But this time, the sound was drowned by the roar of fire reaching its peak, by the scream that didn't escape his mouth (or maybe it did, he couldn't hear himself), by an end that came not with a dramatic explosion, but with a massive burst of flame suddenly erupting from a forgotten powder magazine, consuming everything in blinding white light.
Johann was trapped.
The fortress was burning.
And the corpses kept walking closer, entering the final circle of fire, while the world outside—with its morning sun, with birds still singing in the forest, with the war still continuing—kept spinning, indifferent to one soul trapped between the living and the dead, between two worlds, between fire and darkness.