The scythe curved through the air in a wide, deliberate arc—graceful, almost elegant, if not for the brutal intent behind it. Its descent was silent but not without malice, a sweeping slash of blackened steel made to reap, to end, to punish. And it found its mark.
With a sickening crunch, the blade landed on the exposed back of the Reaver—the same one that had so greedily swallowed the Wrath Core Fragment moments earlier. The impact wasn’t clean; it was jagged, savage. The edge didn’t slice through as much as it punched inward, cleaving through hardened skin with resistance, grinding through sinew and vertebrae like a saw against soaked wood. The Reaver shrieked, a high, gurgling squeal that tore through the mist-heavy air—a pig’s death wail in a slaughterhouse where mercy was not on the menu.
It thrashed as if electrocuted, body spasming beneath the force of the strike. Dark blood, thick and clotting, geysered upward in a violent spurt, coating Ludwig’s chains in viscous sheets. The stench was foul—hot iron and bile, rot and sulfur.
Ludwig didn’t wait.
His hands clamped down hard on the chain, wrapped tight and wet with gore. He yanked. The links strained, creaked, pulling taut as the embedded blade anchored itself into the creature’s flesh. With a grunt, he drew the Reaver from the swamp’s muddy cradle, tearing it from the thick, sucking earth with a revolting squelch. The muck tried to cling, forming long strings of clotted earth and gore, but they snapped one by one as the Reaver rose into the air.
Its wings flailed in a broken rhythm, not enough to fly, but enough to writhe midair as Ludwig dragged it toward him like a fisherman hauling in something monstrous and unwilling from the depths.
He pivoted on his heel, driving momentum into his swing. The scythe embedded in the Reaver’s back would carry it directly into the next blow.
Ludwig’s muscles coiled. His arm jerked to the left in a quick flourish. “Oathcarver!” he barked.
The weapon obeyed.
Oathcarver shimmered into his palm with a pulse of dull light—the gigantic balde itself was more threatening than the sight of the gallows for the Reaver. Without hesitation, he swung forward. Not overhead, but a tight horizontal arc meant to cleave the creature cleanly, to end it here and now.
And it would have.
It should have.
But something changed.
As if aware of its kin’s impending demise—or perhaps something more primal, more sacred, tied to the fragment buried in the beast’s gut—a ripple went through the remaining Reavers. Two of them surged forward in synchronized panic, their wings exploding outward with a sound like tearing cloth, flinging swampwater in all directions.
They moved with purpose, not feral chaos. That was what felt like the worst part of Reavers—how aware they were beneath all that savagery.
The first intercepted.
It reached Ludwig’s position faster than expected, claws already drawn. Its shriek was a battle cry—raw, frantic. It struck downward, aiming to catch Oathcarver mid-swing.
Bad move.
The Reaver’s claws met the blade and instantly shattered, exploding into bone shards as if they’d struck a wall of adamant. The weapon didn’t even slow. It surged forward with brutal finality, crashing into the Reaver’s face. Not slicing—bludgeoning.
The creature’s skull caved in with a meaty crack, its head whipping back as the force of the blow lifted it off the ground. It spun wildly, twisting through the air like a broken doll hurled by a tantrum-possessed child, limbs flailing in a grotesque spiral before crashing hard into the swamp water with a muted splash.
The second Reaver, however, had been smarter—or perhaps just luckier.
It barreled into the Reaver that had swallowed the Core, shoulder-first, slamming into it just before Oathcarver’s fatal follow-through. The impact was jarring, like stone colliding with flesh. Both beasts tumbled away in an awkward tangle of limbs and wings, but the trajectory had been changed. The giant blade whiffed by only centimeters, slicing through empty air.
Ludwig cursed beneath his breath, already repositioning.
The Core-swallowing Reaver dropped hard into the mud again, this time landing with more of its weight sinking deeper into the bog. It let out a pained, guttural groan. The scythe embedded in its back was now at a difficult angle. Ludwig gave the chain another pull—this time harder, teeth clenched.
Nothing.
The Reaver didn’t rise.
The more he pulled, the more the creature’s bloated, writhing body simply pressed deeper into the muck. It was like trying to lift a slab of meat glued to tar. Worse still, the act of yanking was causing the blade to slice through the creature’s insides, threatening to exit its body entirely. If that happened, the chain would come loose. The Reaver might escape. It might fly away. And with the Core inside it?
That couldn’t happen.
Ludwig growled under his breath, tightening his grip.
There weren’t many choices. And time wasn’t on his side. The full descent of the Moon Flayed King was hanging above him like a death sentence.
The rest of the Reavers—those that had been following him earlier like a tide of predators—were finally here. He could feel the air shift with their presence. The swamp had gone louder—sloshing, gurgling, the wet slap of clawed feet stepping into thick muck. Snarls. Hisses. Chittering howls. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. A hundred nightmare silhouettes moving through the fog toward him, eyes glowing, fangs bared.
They were encircling. Hemming him in.
If they entered the swamp en masse and surrounded him, it would be over. Even with Oathcarver.
He needed something more.
He needed a way to even the odds.
Then—movement caught his eye.
Off to the side, just on the edge of his peripheral vision, the hulking shape. Half-sunken, barely distinguishable human from monster body was lying there., A corpse.
No—the corpse.
The one he had checked earlier but hadn’t inspected closely.
The Drowned Lord.
He turned fully now, eyes narrowing as he took in the bloated monstrosity.
Now that he was closer, the full horror of it hit him like a wall of rot. The creature was… hideous. Grotesque in ways even Reavers couldn’t match.
It was a massive amphibious abomination, a foul hybrid of bloated frog and lumbering humanoid. Its skin, once a murky bluish-gray, was now bloated and swollen, stretched taut over its grotesque frame like a water-logged tarp. Slime coated every inch, glistening like oil in the gloom. Its massive belly was distended, sagging outward, and partially torn—ripped open by what looked like Reaver claws. Ribbons of entrails spilled out in lazy coils, floating atop the swamp like discarded offal.
Its face was worse. Wide, froglike, with an unhinged jaw lined in crooked, shattered teeth. The eyes—once bulbous and bulb-white—were dulled and sunken, staring upward into nothing. Dead.
But the body was intact enough.
And it was still useful.
Ludwig leapt off the boulder he’d been standing on, boots splashing hard into the mud as he landed on the Drowned Lord’s massive belly with a loud squelch. For one stomach-churning moment, he thought the flesh might give way under his weight—dumping him into a pit of wet entrails and muck—but the rubbery skin held.
His stance wobbled, but he kept his balance.
No time for hesitation.
He knelt low, slammed his palm down on the creature’s gaping wound.
“Rise, Undead.”
Darkness answered.