The wind that swept through Hollowreach was different now—heavier, denser with purpose. Where before it whispered the pain of survival, now it carried the promise of war.
Ezra stood atop the central overlook, the city ruins stretching beneath him like broken bones waiting to be reassembled. Below, dozens of survivors moved between reinforced barricades, patrol towers, and flame-lit corridors. Kael's squads trained in brutal rotations. Vesper's engineers laid enchantments into the stone. The Hollowborn's dominion was taking shape.
And for the first time in his life, Ezra felt it.
Momentum.
He could feel something stirring beneath his skin. Not just his necromancy—but his will finally rippling outward into the world.
"Today," he muttered, "we stop waiting."
Three Days Later
The Bone March began at dawn.
Ezra led from the front. His armor, newly reforged from soulglass and dragonbone, radiated a dim glow in the early light. Each step he took sent pulses through the earth, bone and shadow intertwining beneath his boots.
Behind him marched his vanguard.
A hundred Hollowborn loyalists, half of them undead and half living. His undead were no longer the shambling corpses they once were. They were redefined—unique, forged in hardship and adapted through magical evolution.
Revenant Hounds with crystal-clawed limbs and hollow screeches that shattered enemy focus.
Gravetide Walkers—towering skeletal giants with spiked bone armor and hollow cores that carried chained wraiths within.
Ashwrought Witches-reanimated spellcasters with scorched robes and the ability to channel mana storms.
The living among them were just as loyal—former mercenaries, rescued survivors, and awakened nomads who had thrown their lot in with the Hollowborn after seeing what he'd built.
And among them were the Strays.
Despite their age, the four had refused to be sidelined. Juno, the girl with the ruined arm, had bonded with Nox and was now learning stealth recon. Drex, the blade-user, had displayed the first sparks of Earth Affinity. They were growing—fast. Perhaps too fast. Ezra worried, but he also understood. They didn't want protection.
They wanted purpose.
Their goal was the old transit corridor between Hollowreach and the Luminous Divide—an ancient trench that separated the eastern frontier from the collapsed urban zones. Rumor said the divide once held a floating city. Now, it was overrun with Revenant Cultists, Rogue Guilders, and something worse:
The Choir of Rust.
A newly emerged faction, whispered about in panicked breaths from traders and scouts. No one had seen them and lived to describe them—only echoes of static, body horror, and machine-warped chants carried back by fleeing survivors.
Ezra had no choice but to investigate.
The road ahead was dangerous, but if they could secure a path through the Divide, they'd have access to the Spine of Eltarra, the oldest and most mythic region in Surge lore.
That was where Veylin had gone.
And Ezra intended to follow.
Two Days into the March
The land had changed.
Where once there were ruined highways and collapsed metro lines, now strange, biomechanical flora grew like tumors. Spires of obsidian metal jutted from the ground. Some pulsed faintly, like veins beneath the skin of the world.
Ezra paused at a ridge, motioning for Kael to halt the caravan.
"This wasn't here last time."
Kael scanned the surroundings. "Definitely Surge-born. Mana density's off the charts."
Galen, riding nearby on a skeletal direwolf, added, "I'm picking up residual frequencies. Like a corrupted dungeon... but not anchored."
Ezra narrowed his eyes.
That was new.
Usually, dungeons anchored themselves into a specific layer of reality—a bleeding wound between Surge-space and the real world. But this… this was floating. Roaming. Infecting.
Vesper rode up, lenses over her eyes scanning the metal flora.
"This entire valley is synthetic. It's rewriting the land."
"Can we go around?"
Vesper shook her head. "Not unless we want to lose four days. And anything outside the signal perimeter could risk a crossfade."
Ezra didn't like it. But they couldn't afford to delay.
"We go through. Tight formation. I want recon flights every quarter-mile."
He turned to Kael. "If anything even breathes the word 'Choir,' we burn it."
An Hour Later
They were halfway through when the music started.
It wasn't music, not really—more like the memory of a song, broadcast through a rusted speaker and layered with static, distortion, and agonized whispers.
Ezra spun.
The first attack was silent.
No war cry. No roar. Just a blur of chrome, smoke, and madness that slammed into their left flank. Bonewalkers shattered. Screams echoed.
Ezra raised his hand and clenched.
Gravecall: Execution Spire.
The ground exploded upward beneath the intruders—piercing them with jagged bone spears. One died instantly. The other reassembled.
What stepped from the wreckage wasn't human.
It was a Choir construct. Humanoid in shape, but its limbs were replaced with coiling wires and serrated blades. Where eyes should have been, it had a rotating lens made of red crystal. Its skin was a mix of flesh, rust, and surgical scars.
It sang.
Not with a voice, but through vibration—distorting the air around it with grief-tinged notes that made Ezra's vision blur.
He stabbed it through the chest.
It laughed as it died.
The next hour was hell.
Dozens of Choir constructs emerged from the fog—slithering from behind trees, descending from the cliffs. Some looked human. Others were built entirely from reformed scrap. All of them sang.
Ezra fought with fury and precision. His undead adapted quickly, prioritizing dismemberment and incineration. Vesper's arcana turrets locked down choke points, and Kael led a brutal charge through the center line.
But it was the Strays who surprised him.
Juno, barely thirteen, had crawled onto a high ridge and begun marking targets with a stolen wraithbeacon, allowing Ezra's long-range units to fire without visual confirmation.
Drex protected the wounded, holding off three Choir drones with nothing but a rusted blade and a fragment of mana shield.
Ezra realized, mid-swing, that this wasn't a march anymore.
It was a warpath.
When the smoke cleared, nearly half their force had taken damage. Five loyalists were dead. Twelve more wounded.
Ezra sat beside one of the corpses. It was Laris—a girl who had helped him set up the Hollowreach infirmary. Her chest had been opened like a book, filled with wires.
He didn't cry. He just stared.
"They're evolving," Vesper said quietly.
Ezra nodded.
"No. They're preparing."
Later That Night
The Hollowborn camp was silent, save for the hum of wardstones and the soft clink of armor being repaired.
Ezra sat alone outside the perimeter, gazing up at the fractured moon. Pieces of it still floated above the atmosphere like broken teeth, circling a world that had long since cracked.
He traced a line in the dirt with his gauntlet.
Veylin had once called this world unready. Ezra was beginning to understand why.
But he wasn't going to run.
He wasn't going to wait.
This was the beginning of something bigger than any Surge Gate or faction war.
It was a reckoning.
And he would walk through the fire if it meant reaching the other side.
[System Alert: Trait Acquired – March of the Hollow]
⟢ Each time you travel through corrupted terrain with your undead, they adapt.
⟢ +5% resistance to adaptive Surge anomalies.
⟢ +2 to Undead Morale.
Far to the south, Veylin Dros watched from a spire made of glass and bone. Choir constructs knelt at his feet.
"He's learning," he said softly.
A silver-eyed child beside him smiled. "Should we kill him yet?"
Veylin chuckled.
"No. Let him build first. Then we break him."