The first reaction to Ludwig's spell was not relief.
It was horror.
Priests recoiled as if the black rain falling over the distant field had splashed across their own robes. Several of them raised holy symbols by instinct, fingers tightening around polished gold and silver until knuckles whitened. Paladins shifted their shields, not toward the horde, but toward Ludwig, as if some part of their training had judged the man casting dark magic to be the nearer danger. A bishop began shouting something about blasphemy, his voice cracking halfway through the word as another curtain of dark bullets tore into the servants of Sloth and made an entire section of the advancing tide collapse into twitching ruin.
The protest did not last long.
It could not.
