“Shh,” he said, not for the first time.
“You shh,” she shot back, annoyed. It wasn’t sound that would bring the undead down upon them—it was their beating hearts.
He rounded on her, ready with an angry retort, but didn’t manage to get out a single word. Instead, his eyes bugged out, fixated on something over Wren’s shoulder.
She whirled around.
Her senses kicked into overdrive, along with her pulse, as she spotted the unmistakable glow of an undead hovering between the trees. It wasn’t near enough to clearly discern—probably twenty feet away and newly risen, but its indistinct edges were becoming brighter with every passing second.
And next to it… there was another light, fainter than the first. Farther away, Wren thought, until it started to move. Plodding ever nearer with a slow, lumbering gait.
This was not the movement of a ghost.
This was a revenant.
As it stepped between the trees and into her line of sight, she saw why the ghostlight had seemed faint and distant. The spirit was obstructed by its partially decayed body, the light winking and moving not between bark and leaf, but between flesh and bone.
Wren recalled what Odile had said, something about the way they moved, like a puppet on strings. She thought of everything she’d ever been taught about the walking undead, and somehow it still didn’t prepare her.
She returned her attention to the first undead she had seen, and now that it was closer, it became evident that it, too, was a revenant—though its body was in a much worse state of decay, allowing the ghost to more brightly shine through.
Wren swallowed, drawing her twin blades. Two tier fives heading their way.
Behind her, Julian shuffled his feet, staggering backward.
“Stop,” she snapped, glancing over her shoulder.
This was no different from every reapyr-valkyr training exercise she’d ever done—no different from the Bonewood Trial itself. As creepy as this forest had suddenly become, the milky-green light gilding the trees and casting Wren’s and Julian’s skin into sickly pallor, it had nothing on the Bonewood.
Except for the tier fives, of course.
The problem was, Julian was not, in fact, a reapyr. He was entirely untrained against this particular adversary, and there was no defeating these undead, no distracting them long enough for the scythe’s fatal cut.
There was only offense and defense, and Wren knew which she preferred.
She met Julian’s wide, startled eyes. She shook her head. “Never run.”
His muscles tensed, and she knew he wanted to argue. Might even be tempted to remind her that last time they’d fought side by side, he’d asked her to stay… and she hadn’t. She could only hope that he was a better listener than she was as she turned back to their foe.
Her grip tightened on her swords, and her mind raced through her various options. They had covered tier fives in her lessons, but the reality of facing them was far more terrifying than she could have imagined.
Knuckles or bonedust were always a valid stalling tactic, but what good was a few extra seconds of time in the middle of an apparently haunted forest? The undead would only continue their pursuit. Besides, they were revenants—they wore bones of their own, which would protect their ghosts and help them keep their form.
Her swords were the best option, giving her range as well as precision. The soul tended to reside in the rib cage or the skull, and while the former would be easy enough to get to, the latter would be far more difficult.
Still, if she could dispatch one of them, the other might flee or be hesitant to approach.
Just as she’d decided on that course of action, two more began to materialize in the gloom, nearer than the others and ranged to their left and right. Wren’s stomach clenched.
They were closing in.
She raised her swords, and the closest revenants recoiled, but only for a moment before continuing steadily forward.
Except, they weren’t actually converging upon her as she’d originally thought. They moved almost in a wave, but not circling or surrounding. Their movements seemed defensive, as if they wanted her and Julian to move in a certain direction.
It was like being herded. Every time Wren stepped to her right, the undead didn’t so much as flinch. But even leaning to the left had them bristling within their bones, casting jarring, dancing light across the forest.
They still didn’t pursue her—they just crackled with tension and stood their ground.
Sometimes ghosts behaved that way, becoming almost territorial over their corpses and unwilling to venture too far from their anchor bone. But these were tier fives—these were revenants—and they brought their bodies with them. What could they be protecting?
Wren took a deliberate step to the left.
“Don’t,” came Julian’s voice from behind her, somehow both breathless and sharp. Wren had almost forgotten him, which was poor behavior for an aspiring valkyr.
“I’m not… I’m just…，” she replied softly, keeping her eyes on the revenants as she moved, slowly and cautiously. She had been taught to think of them like animals, with simple instincts and predictable behaviors. They were echoes, shadows of their living selves, shackled to their bones and to this world.
They did not think, and they did not work together.
“Go…，” came a voice, as soft and unpleasant as an icy finger trailing down her spine.
And they certainly did not speak.
Wren halted, tension locking her muscles tight. It couldn’t be…
She searched their rotted faces, seeking moving lips and vocal cords, but if an incorporeal ghost like the one from the bandit attack could shriek and attempt to talk, then she supposed these revenants could form words. Obviously the sound didn’t come from their bodies at all. It came from their souls, their spirits. It came from beyond.
Wren turned to Julian, but his attention was fixed on something behind them.
Another revenant.
This was the one who had spoken, Wren knew instantly, though it stood silent as the grave.
Julian withdrew his staff, releasing the sharpened points and leveling it at the approaching revenant—but he didn’t strike.
This undead was small.
Child-small, and it wore the decaying scraps of what had once been a lace-trimmed dress. The fabric rippled in an otherworldly breeze, along with strands of wispy hair, and though the body was little more than mottled bone, the way the ghostlight emanated from its wide, empty eye sockets in focused points gave the impression of keen interest. Of life.
It tilted its head, an uncomfortably innocent gesture, and seemed to stare at the weapon hovering near its face. As if it were curious. Julian’s hands shook.
Then it lifted a bony arm and pointed into the trees back the way they had come.
“Go.”
The word whispered through the air, raspy with age but retaining the pitch and tone of the child who had spoken it.
Julian didn’t move—neither of them did—but then, in a blink, the child’s skeletal hand snaked out and took hold of Julian’s weapon. He could have dislodged its grip, could have speared it through or struck it hard enough to crack its bones.
But he didn’t. He’d gone still as a statue, frozen before the revenant.
As Wren watched, tendrils of the undead’s ghost began to lift from its bones like steam. It swirled and eddied and then sharpened, crawling down its arm… toward the staff. Toward Julian.