Chapter 11: Long Claws

The streets were growing quiet.

Not peace-quiet—the quiet between waves in a battle. Distant clangs of metal and guards shouting to one another still echoed from somewhere, but the nearest alleys had been cleared of undead. Broken bodies lay scattered on the cobblestones, black ichor seeping into the drainage channels between the stones.

Vaste crouched beside a ghoul she'd just beheaded, examining the wounds on its arm. Deep. Identical to the ones on the body in the side street, and on the Wight-turned-adventurer outside the crematorium.

She stood and flicked the ichor from her blade.

"What are you looking at?" Glaze stood two paces behind her, her tone carrying a hint of curiosity. Her boots were streaked with mud and black blood, but those blue eyes remained clear.

"The wounds."

"Same as the one before?"

"Yes."

Vaste didn't continue the topic. She wiped her blade with her sleeve, slid the long sword back into its sheath at her hip, and kept the short blade in hand.

They continued along the street, nearing Norvic's eastern quarter. Torchlight flickered at the end of the road—likely a team clearing undead near the infirmary.

Vaste stopped.

She caught a scent—fresh blood, not yet fully congealed, drifting from the narrow alley on her left. Not the thick, rotting ichor of the undead. Human blood.

A bloody handprint smeared the wall at the alley's entrance, uneven and dragging downward, as if someone had tried to brace themselves and slipped.

She led Glaze into the alley.

It was narrow—barely wide enough for two to walk side by side. Chaos inside—overturned barrels, shattered tiles. Midway down, a man sat slumped against the wall, his right leg extended, left leg bent, one hand pressed to his right shoulder, blood seeping between his fingers.

His face was a mask of sweat and dust. His right eye was hidden beneath a black patch. Vaste recognized him—the thief who'd been polishing his daggers in the Guild corner the other day.

Glaze peered out from behind Vaste, saw the man, and tilted her head.

"You're hurt."

The thief turned at the voice. When he saw Vaste and the girl from the other day, all the tension seemed to drain out of him at once. His head fell back against the wall, and he let out a sound somewhere between a groan and a bitter laugh.

Vaste crouched in front of him, her eyes scanning the hand pressed to his shoulder. Through his fingers, she could see three parallel gashes running from his shoulder down his upper arm—the flesh turned back, the blood still bright red. At least for now. The spacing and depth matched exactly what she'd seen on the Wight.

"The thing," she said.

"You saw it." The thief's voice was dry and raspy, like sandpaper on wood. "That... thing."

"What was it."

"Couldn't see it clearly—too fast—it came across the rooftops—" He coughed, and blood pulsed from his shoulder wound with the motion. "I was on the roof, scouting, and it—swung over from the opposite roof, came up behind me—"

"Describe it."

"Flat body. Not human—no, like human but—the legs and arms bent the wrong way. The face—the lower half had no skin. Teeth all exposed—"

He couldn't continue. Not from fear—from exhaustion and pain. His chest heaved, his lips pale, sweat streaming down his forehead.

"It clawed you," Vaste said.

"Three swipes. Almost took my whole shoulder off."

"Then how are you still alive."

The thief raised his one eye to look at her, a grim smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"It raised its claws to finish me—and I threw that bottle in its face."

"What bottle."

"Potion. Alchemical. Had silver in it." He gasped. "Was saving it for my weapons, never used it—"

He coughed again, harder this time, his whole body shaking.

"It's afraid of that stuff?"

"It smoked when it hit. Screamed and ran."

Vaste's brow twitched slightly.

"Which way."

"East. Toward the infirmary. There's still fighting there."

"Can you walk."

"Legs aren't broken." He tried to push himself up, but slid back down. "Might need a hand."

Vaste grabbed his uninjured arm with one hand, pulled him up, and draped him across her shoulder. She moved him to the mouth of the alley and sat him down on the doorstep of a nearby house. From her pouch, she pulled a vial of pale blue healing potion and pressed it into his hand.

"Thanks." He pulled the cork with his teeth, tilted his head back, and swallowed half in one go. Then he lowered the bottle, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and looked at the three gashes on his shoulder.

"One thing—the wound. It doesn't hurt much anymore." His tone shifted, uncertain. Not painless—numb. Like his entire arm was slowly turning into cotton. He pulled his hand away from the wound and looked at his fingertips—clotted blood and tissue fluid from pressing the wound, the blood still red, but the skin at the wound's edges was beginning to take on a faint, ashen grey.

Vaste saw it too. That wasn't a normal wound color.

She was silent for a moment, then turned to Glaze. "Check those alleys."

Glaze nodded and walked toward the nearest side alley.

Vaste followed her a few steps, then glanced back at the thief. He'd already leaned his head against the doorframe, eyes closed, breathing steady. The potion was working. The ashen grey at the edge of his wound hadn't spread—at least for now, he probably wouldn't turn.

"Hey."

"What."

"Make sure you kill it."

Vaste repeated the word "kill" under her breath, then said nothing more. She walked toward the alley Glaze had entered.

---

Beyond the alley, on the eastern side of the infirmary, more signs of battle were scattered across the street. Dozens of zombie corpses piled in the middle of the road. Three guards surrounded a fourth lying on the ground.

"This way." Glaze's voice came from the left. She was standing at a crossroads, her left hand pointing down an alley that led toward the northeastern wall.

Vaste looked at the ground. A thin trail of black ichor—undead blood—stretched along the alley, leading deeper in.

They followed.

At the end of the alley, they found it.

A small open space—someone's backyard, half its wall collapsed. Several bodies lay in the center—human bodies, likely casualties from earlier fighting. And beside that pile, crouched a long, thin silhouette.

A flat torso, ribs protruding from its back like the shell of some insect crushed and reassembled. Four slender limbs braced against the ground, joints bent at impossible angles. It crouched like a beast—but the posture still held something faintly human in its outline.

One claw hovered above a corpse. Two others supported its weight. The fourth had already pierced a body, and the corpse's muscles began to twitch, convulsing. Then the corpse's eyes opened—not living eyes. The hollow, unfocused gaze of something driven only by instinct.

Another Wight was being born.

"Becoming undead," Glaze said.

Vaste was already moving.

The moment she met its gaze, she dropped low and lunged—close the distance before it could finish creating another corpse, take its head before it could strike again.

The creature sensed their approach. Its head turned toward Vaste without its shoulders moving, twisting nearly one hundred and eighty degrees in an instant—a dry crack of joints grinding against each other. Its exposed teeth gleamed in the moonlight like a grin. The hollows of its eyes held no pupils—just two points of dim green light.

Vaste's long blade came down from above.

The creature didn't meet the strike head-on. It used two claws to push off the ground, springing backward, landing three paces away. Its movement resembled nothing alive—not walking, not jumping, not crawling. It moved like four slender poles propping up a body, each joint bending in directions that shouldn't have worked.

Vaste didn't give it time to settle. She pressed forward with a second strike, then a third. Blade after blade forced the creature to weave and retreat along the edge of the clearing—but it didn't counterattack.

On the fifth swing, Vaste noticed something. Even as it dodged, it kept positioning itself closer to the bodies on the ground.

She made a judgment.

It wasn't trying to fight.

She saw her opening—as the creature dodged her horizontal slash to the left, its body exposed in the center of the clearing. Her left hand pulled the short blade from her belt and threw.

The knife spun once through the air and sank into its flat ribcage. The blade buried about two inches deep. The creature shuddered violently and let out a piercing shriek—high and sharp, like a woman's scream.

Black blood welled from the wound and dripped onto the cobblestones.

Suddenly, it braced all four claws against the ground and vaulted upward, landing on the nearest half-collapsed wall, then launching to the rooftops. Its thin silhouette twisted in the night sky—and vanished into the shadows of chimneys and tiles. The short blade was still embedded in its body, carried away with it.

"The knife," Glaze said.

Vaste stared at the spot where the creature had disappeared into the dark. Her jaw tightened—then released.

"I know."

She turned to face the Wights rising from the ground. They stood not like newly awakened corpses, but like soldiers responding to a single command. Their weapons varied—a short sword, a battle-axe, an iron rod—but their stances were identical: knees slightly bent, weight low, weapons held before them.

Vaste drew her cleaver from her hip. No fear. Behind her, Glaze's fingertips had already begun to form frost. But Vaste's gaze passed over the three Wights and settled on the pile of bodies behind them—adventurers, guards, ordinary townsfolk, all still lying where they'd fallen.

Glaze had already formed an ice spike, about the length of a forearm, suspended before her outstretched palm.

"Same as before. Just a little."

"...I know."

Then Vaste charged.

The first Wight swung its short sword. Vaste sidestepped, her cleaver coming up from below, carving along its forearm and splitting its torso open. The second Wight swung its iron rod from the side—she deflected with her blade, then drove an upward kick into its skull. A sharp crack split the air, flesh and bone bursting apart. The headless body stood for half a breath before collapsing.

"Left." Glaze's voice from behind.

The ice spike shot forward, punching clean through the third Wight's skull.

Vaste glanced up at the rooftops. The thin silhouette had vanished completely into the night, leaving only a dark smear of blood on the tiles, trailing toward the wall.

She looked down. The fight wasn't over yet.