Walking among the Fallen

He walked among the dark places of the rocks after the battle. If he could smell, the air would be thick with the stench of death. His skeletal hands rested against a rock. If he could tire, he would be bone-tired—but as it was, he was only bones.

Moving through the battlefield in the fading light, he saw hundreds of corpses rotting beneath the rising stars, while vultures circled and fed. They shifted aside as he passed—not abandoning their meals, but acknowledging another seeker of carrion.

He cocked his head, listening for the last whispers of death. Kneeling beside one body, indistinguishable from the rest save for a single difference—the soul still clung to it—he whispered into its dead ear.

“I can feel your pain, brother. Death is a cruel thing. I cannot return life to you, but I can return purpose—if you wish to know it again. Or I can set your soul free.”

The corpse gave no answer—it was dead, after all. A moment later, the heaviness in the body eased, and the soul drifted free, soaring to whatever reward it had earned. That mystery he could neither follow nor understand.

He rose, bony knees knowing no pain, no strain, no ache of age. Moving on among the fallen, he felt the sadness of waste, the folly of it all. What had been gained by the deaths of these men in red wool tunics with copper buttons? Did those in the bloodstained leather byrnies understand any more than the ramblings of their elders why they had been sent to die?

Here and there, he heard the whisper of the dying. He knelt beside each, asking the same question: purpose or release? And each soul took wing into the night sky.

When darkness fully claimed the field and the cruel, bright moon crested the horizon, he knelt once more before a man in a woven wool coat marked with copper roundels.

“Death is cruel,” he said. “I cannot return you to life, but I can give you purpose—if you desire it. Or I can set your soul free.” The dead man said nothing at first, but after a moment, his head turned to look at the walker among the dead. The walker helped him sit, gazing at the ruin of his flesh. The man’s mouth worked, producing only a mumble, as if speech had been forgotten.

“I am Ecthrois,” the walker said. “You remain who you were in life, but your name is now only an echo. You will call yourself something new. Remember the ones who brought you to this fate. Hunt them, and bring justice for the fallen. You came from the west—return there. Gather gold, silver, and treasures. Lay them at shrines as you pass, so the wealth may aid the living. Gold holds no worth for us.”

From the dead lips came a whisper: “Why do you do this for me? Do you seek redemption?”

“I do not ask for forgiveness,” Ecthrois replied. “I ask only that my hands may do some good before the dark reclaims me.” The newly risen man pulled away the loose, blood-soaked tatters of his clothes and began walking toward the land of his birth. Leaving behind the place of his death.

Ecthrois lingered, as though exhausted by the act of raising the dead. The field now held no souls save his own. He looked back, nodding once, drawing air into lungs that no longer breathed—out of reflex, perhaps.

Behind him, across the field, a pale blue mist flowed from his form. Bones it touched rattled. Where enough remained of legs, spines, and skulls, the dead rose. They stood straight and began to walk, leaving behind the shattered and incomplete remains to mark the battlefield. They followed Ecthrois east, into the moonlight, toward the coming dawn.