"Hold the line!" she screamed, but her soldiers were already breaking. The Reapers didn't just kill; they tore, their movements fueled by an ancient, twisted sorcery.

"It’s a Sand-Reaper," Jael said quietly, his voice like grinding stones. "I can smell the sulfur on the wind. Your scouts are lucky to be alive."

Jael moved through the chaos like a shadow. He didn't use a shield. He used his instinct. As a Reaper lunged, its mandibles dripping with caustic bile, Jael stepped inside its guard. He drove a bone-handled knife—a relic of his people—into the soft joint beneath its primary lung.

The bone-knife left his hand before the thought even finished.

Valerius sneered, his hand resting on a polished pommel that had never seen a real beast’s blood. "Just do what you’re conscripted for, savage. Hunt it, or I’ll feed you to it myself."

Jael watched the Captain retreat, his eyes narrowing. He thought of his ancestors, the ones who had supposedly created the very magic now being used by the invaders to turn man and beast into nightmare fuel. He wasn’t fighting for this Empire—an Empire that had slaughtered his tribe—but for the chance to break the curse they had unleashed.

That night, under a sky of bruised purple, the attack came. It wasn't just a Reaper; it was a tide of them, their chitinous shells shimmering like obsidian. General Larika stood at the center of the line, her gold-engraved armor a beacon of defiance.