Prologue

  The battlefield still smoldered. A gray dawn stretched across the hills, the sunlight barely piercing through the thick haze of gunpowder and death. Thousands of bodies lay scattered across the fields. French, Austrian, Russian, piled atop each other in, twisted in their final moments of agony. The crows had already begun their work.

  The 22 years old Henri Fontaine, an infantryman of the 1er regiment d'infanterie de ligne stepped carefully between the corpses, his musket resting on his shoulder. The winds of December bit through his tattered uniform, sending chills to the skins through the holes on the clothes, but was barely acknowledged by him. His mind was elsewhere, on the locket he now held in his gloved hand.

  “Gabriel…” he muttered under his breath.

  Gabriel had been alive just hours ago, laughing about how the Emperor had outplayed two entire armies with nothing but a bit of fog and audacity. Now, his body lay in the mud, his face half-buried in the bloodied earth. Henri had pulled the locket from his fingers, knowing his friend had meant to send it back home, to a girl waiting somewhere far from the horrors of war...

  A gust of wind carried the stench of death, making Henri’s stomach turn. He had seen battle before, but Austerlitz… Austerlitz was something else. The screams, the chaos, the moment when a Russian infantryman's bayonet had rushed toward him, eyes wild with desperation, wanting to take someone's life before the wounds on his body take his first...

  He shook his head. No point dwelling on it. He was alive. And the Emperor had won. That's all that matters...

  The silence was what disturbed him most now. The battlefield should have been noisy—men groaning in pain, officers barking orders, the sound of carriages hauling away the wounded. But it wasn’t. It was quiet. Too quiet. The silence was too loud... Too unbareable...

  But then... A twig snapped.

  Henri turned sharply, his musket lowering instinctively.

  A man stood among the dead.

  No, not a man. Something that had once been one.

  His coat was Austrian, torn and caked with dried blood. His skin was pallid, his mouth slack. A musket ball had taken half his jaw, yet he stood as if nothing was wrong. His arms twitched unnaturally.

  Henri took a step back, gripping his weapon tighter. His breath quickened. The man—no, the thing—lifted its head. Those clouded, dead eyes met his.

  Then it moved.

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  With a guttural, unnatural groan, it stumbled forward. Its motions were slow, almost clumsy, but it did not stop. Did not falter. Its boots dragged through the mud, leaving streaks of blackened earth in its wake.

  Henri raised his musket. “Halt! Stay back!”

  No response.

  "I said stay back! Halt! Or I'll shoot!"

  Still no respond. The thing slowly approached him without a care about the musket pointed at it...

  Panicked, he fired.

  The shot rang out across the field, echoing over the corpses.

  The thing stumbled. Its chest exploded in a spray of crimson, its body rocking backward from the impact.

  And then it stood up.

  Henri’s blood ran cold.

  His hands scrambled to reload, but the creature was already lurching toward him, its mouth parting in a silent snarl. The crows overhead cawed, their wings flapping wildly.

  For the first time since Austerlitz began, the usual fierce Henri Fontaine felt something deeper than fear.

  He felt horror.

  __________

  Chapter 1

  “I’ve seen men survive things they shouldn’t have. But that? That was wrong.”

  Henri sat at the edge of the campfire, rubbing his temples. The regiment’s field camp had been set up outside a ruined farmhouse, just a few miles from the main army. Around him, his comrades talked, drank, and sharpened their bayonets. For them, the battle was over.

  For him, it wasn’t.

  “Are you certain it wasn’t just some poor bastard refusing to die?” asked Pierre, a fellow infantryman, as he gnawed on a piece of stale bread.

  “I put a bullet through its chest,” Henri said. “It stood back up.”

  A moment of silence. The fire crackled, casting flickering shadows across their weary faces.

  “Maybe you missed the heart,” Pierre said, forcing a chuckle. “Bad aim, Fontaine.”

  Henri shook his head. “I didn’t miss.”

  Before Pierre could respond, a commanding voice cut through the camp.

  “Soldiers of the Grande Armée!”

  Every head turned. A French officer, uniform pristine despite the day’s march, stood atop a wagon, holding a sealed letter. The insignia was unmistakable—the personal seal of the Emperor himself.

  “By orders of The Emperor, the 1er Régiment d'Infanterie de Ligne is to advance east! You will march at dawn, securing the road to Bohemia. Intelligence suggests Russian forces are in retreat, but there are reports—...”

  The officer hesitated. His eyes flickered toward the firelight, uncertain.

  “...—reports of strange occurrences along the way.”

  Henri felt a chill crawl up his spine.

  Strange occurrences.

  He tightened his grip on the locket in his pocket.

  The war wasn’t over.

  Not yet...

  "You will march at the first light! So get as much rest as you desire possible before the time comes! Now! As you were!"

  The officer left afterwards. Everyone came back to what they were doing. But it wasn't like before...

  No one spoke a word. They all continued with what they were doing, but their mind was now occupied by the uncertainty from the announcement of the officer.

  Later on... Everyone went back to their tent. Henri, rested on the beddings, mind wondering...

  "What the hell was that thing... Strange occurances...?"

  He was troubled. Troubled of the unexplainable creature he had encountered that afternoon... But he eventually closed his eyes to rest... Whatever it was... It would be explained later... No use spending all night to think about it...

  __________

  The regiment departed at dawn. The snow crunched beneath their boots as they trudged through the frostbitten countryside, muskets slung over their shoulders. A thin fog clung to the trees, muffling their footsteps.

  No one spoke of the officer’s warning. But Henri could see it in their eyes—the unease, the glances toward the horizon where the sun barely rose.

  Hours passed. The first village appeared in front of their eyes.

  Or rather, what used to be a village.

  The houses stood hollow, their windows shattered. Doors hung ajar, swaying with the wind. The smell of rot clung to the air.

  “Mon Dieu…” Pierre whispered.

  Corpses littered the streets. Not fresh, but not old either. Their flesh was blackened in places, twisted. Flies buzzed in thick clouds.

  Henri took a slow step forward. The silence here was even worse than the battlefield.

  Then he saw it—claw marks, deep ones, raked across wooden walls. Like something had torn through the homes from the inside.

  A rustling sound echoed from within a nearby barn.

  That moment, it was like all of the minds of the whole regiment was on the same thing... Every musket in the regiment was raised at once.

  Something was inside... Something... Unpleasant...