Shadow Slave novel Chapter 3138

Time flowed, its slow and steady current eroding both hope and sorrow in equal measure.

The sky was bright, then dark, then bright again.

Its distant veil was blackened by smoke, then cleansed by the purifying fury of rolling stormclouds.

Inside the destroyed city, only the most stubborn cinders still glowed, hidden deep below the ruins.

Outside the city, a vast encampment of the conquering army rested under the ashen sky, drowned by a suffocating atmosphere of suffering, confusion, and fear.

When there was sun, there was dust. When there was rain, there was mud. The tents were dirty, damp, and battered. The people were covered in grime and soot, their grim eyes slowly turning lifeless.

The soldiers were hungry. Hunger was a nightmare that haunted their waking days, stalking them persistently wherever they went, whatever they did. It sunk its fangs into their flesh, sapping them of strength and tormenting them. It also gnawed on their minds, eroding their willpower. Hunger was not the only nightmare haunting the Steel Horde, either.

A vicious plague was preying on the soldiers, stealing their lives away. It was like an invisible monster that walked among them, unseen and silent, marking its victims and feasting on their flesh. There was no way to ward off the man-eating monster and no way to fight it. Once you were marked, all you could do was die.

The agony of those infected by the plague was gruesome. Their deaths were hideous. Long before they could experience the torment of being eaten alive by the plague, however, most perished to cold steel — the King of Kings had commanded to cull the infected, so countless were executed as soon as they started showing symptoms, their bodies burned in communal pyres.

The stench of burned flesh was inescapable. Even worse than the plague, however, was the fear of the plague. The fear was far more virulent than the disease itself, and often just as deadly. The plague only affected some of the soldiers, but the terror of infection affected all of them. A gnawing paranoia made the warriors of the Steel Horde wary of each other, turning their already bleak reality into an oppressive purgatory of suspicion and mistrust.

And on top of the hunger, the plague, the fear...

Was the mounting pressure of a long and brutal siege.

The Steel Horde had already been bruised and battered by the countless assaults on the stalwart city. Then, the Dread Warriors — the most fearsome legion of the horde — were entirely wiped out. And even now that hunger and disease were ravaging the remaining soldiers, the King of Kings was still throwing them at the walls of the Stone Castle over and over again.

To burn in the flames of the fearsome dragon protecting the ruins of the fallen city.

To drown in the river of severing steel that encircled the castle like a moat.

To vanish forever in the billowing clouds of chilling mist, their very souls devoured by the sinister wraith that haunted the ruins.

To see rivers of blood flowing from every little cut they received, sapping them of life in a matter of moments.

To be torn apart when space itself twisted and rippled around them.

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