The sound was like a drumbeat made of iron and earth. THUD. THUD. THUD.
Kiron, still slumped against the pedestal, watched in a daze as the shadows of the Sunken Cathedral didn't just move—they solidified. The thousands of grey-cloaked ghosts who had followed him from the mountain were no longer mist. Their forms were thickening into husks of ancient armor, rusted but terrifyingly real.
They didn't have faces, only voids of violet smoke beneath their helmets, but their movements were perfectly synchronized.
From the shadows behind the statue, a figure emerged. It wasn't a ghost. It was a man, ancient and stooped, wearing the tattered remains of a high-priest's robes from a civilization that had been dead for ten centuries.
"The resonance was true," the old man whispered, his milky eyes fixed on Kiron. "The sword has been claimed. But the wielder... the wielder is broken."
Nyra stood in front of Kiron, her knife drawn. "Who are you? Another ghost?"
"I am the Care-Taker of the Lament," the old man said, ignoring her blade. He looked at Kiron's blackened veins. "You struck a Goddess. A feat that will sing through the annals of history. But you did it with 'Authority' you haven't earned. You have triggered the First-Turn Decline."
I knew there would be a catch, Kiron thought, a bitter taste in his mouth. Power is never free. Not in Aethelgard.
"What does that mean?" Nyra demanded.
"It means," the Care-Taker said, pointing to the sword on the floor, "that until he tames the spirits within that blade, he cannot touch it again. And until his body heals, he is no longer the Savior. He is just a fugitive."
"The King's Guard," the Care-Taker whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of awe and terror. "They haven't marched in a millennium. They felt the Goddess's blood... and they have come to claim the field."
"Kiron, we have to move!" Nyra shouted, but she was looking at the Revenants with a new kind of dread. "They aren't just standing there—they're forming a perimeter!"
The Revenants didn't speak. In unison, they raised long, jagged pikes. As the golden Siege-Beam from the God-Ship above struck the cathedral's ceiling, the Revenant army didn't scatter. They pointed their weapons upward. A field of dark, shimmering energy—a collective "Pulse" of the dead—met the golden light, grinding it to a halt in mid-air.
They're fighting a God-Ship, Kiron thought, his mind reeling. An army of ghosts is holding back the heavens... for me.
"This is the March," the Care-Taker said, ushering them toward the tunnel behind the throne. "But look at them, boy. Look at their armor."
Kiron looked. As the Revenants held the beam, their physical forms began to crack. Pieces of their rusted plate fell away into ash.
They're burning themselves out, Kiron realized with a sickening jolt. Every second they stay manifested to protect me, they are being erased from existence. Forever.
"They are giving you the only thing the dead have left," the Care-Taker said. "Time. If you stay here, you are sentencing them to a final death for nothing."
"Kiron, please!" Taz begged, clutching the wrapped sword. "We can't help them!"
Nyra hoisted Kiron up. As they retreated into the dark "Vein of Sorrows," Kiron looked back over her shoulder. He saw the Revenant army begin their slow, methodical march upward—not away from the danger, but toward the hole in the ceiling, climbing the rubble to meet the descending God-Guard in the sky.
It was a suicide march of the already dead.