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Kit flitted into the air, rising above the lines of panicking soldiers to see what was causing such distress. She watched in horror as the bodies of the cultists they’d battled began twitching—moving. Sickening sounds ripped through the air as torn flesh knitted together, as bones popped and wet moans fell from slack mouths. Eyes snapped open, glassy and unfocused.

And the dead rose.

Kit had seen soldiers frightened before.

She had never before witnessed an entire army come undone at once.

Panic spread through the gathered men like contagion. Despite the shouts from Cedric and Captain Gaius and Tristan alike—calls to steady themselves, to hold formation, to remember their oaths and their training—the lines broke quickly, soldiers scrambling to get as far away from the risen dead as possible.

They moved slowly, blood still streaming from their wounds. But it was no longer crimson. It was black as tar.

The red blood that had already been spilled was streaming too—but along the ground, like a hundred crimson snakes suddenly slithering out from all the places it had pooled. The blood carved streaks of red into the snow as it crept toward Malakar. As he called it to him.

“We should have burned the bodies,” someone yelled, their voice cracking, hysterical. “Why didn’t we burn the bodies?”

The desperate cry seemed to spark something in Cedric, who was sprinting through the scrambling soldiers, running straight for the line of reanimated sanguinagi.

Elyria followed after him, her wings flaring wide, calling his name. “No, Cedric, don’t! You’ll⁠—”

Ashrender lit up with a burst of sunfyre, the blade blazing as Cedric reached the nearest corpse, thrusting the sword into its gut and setting it alight.

It did not scream as it burned, as white-gold flames consumed it.

It only fell—first to its knees, then to the ground.

And an unearthly sound gathered in Kit’s ears as the bodies surrounding the burning corpse began to snap and twitch anew.

Bloodied limbs lengthened.

Fingers became claws.

Skin darkened and split, peeling back over bone.

Muscle and fascia and sinew rearranged, re-formed, crafting new appendages that burst from necks and shoulders and backs in a horrifying, ghastly display.

Horns that curved from temples.

Long tails that ended in a wicked, scythe-like blade.

Membranous wings topped with a sharp spike at each joint.

The sacrificed sanguinagi were men and women no longer.

It was as though someone had leafed through a textbook on all of Arcanis’s most nightmarish beasts and hand-selected all the worst, most terrifying, abominable traits to combine.

Because that’s what they were now—abominations.

Even more monstrous versions of the beastly creatures Cedric had fought off in Elderglade.

Kit’s stomach turned. Surely there was no way this was what Malakar’s followers wanted for themselves when they pledged themselves to him, when they sealed their oaths in blood.

It did not matter now.

The deed was done.

And Malakar’s horrific creations attacked.

Men ran screaming as the monsters leapt into the air with bone-chilling shrieks, then descended on the scattering soldiers. Some dove into the crowd. Some flew ahead, then circled back, cutting off those who were trying to retreat.