1058: Story 1058: The Wight General 1058: Story 1058: The Wight General The battlefield had been silent for centuries, but the dead never stopped marching.
Deep in the frostbitten valleys of Wraithmoor Ridge, where no birds sang and no sun ever lingered, the ruins of a forgotten war slumbered beneath stone and snow.
They called it the Crimson Fold, where one general’s ambition bled reality dry and left only rot in its wake.
That general was Vakar Rhend, commander of the Hollow Host.
Once mortal.
Now something much worse.
The survivors had no business being there, but desperation dragged them to cursed soil.
They sought safe passage through the mountains—away from the collapsing cities and toward rumors of salvation.
But as they camped near shattered war banners and rusting blades, an unnatural cold fell.
Fire refused to catch.
Shadows moved without sources.
Then came the drumming—slow and thunderous, like bones on metal.
Ezra, the group’s watchman, saw the first of them.
Helmet caved in, ribs exposed, and sword rust-welded to bone—the soldier said nothing as it advanced.
Ezra struck it down, but more followed.
Dozens.
Then hundreds.
And behind them, riding a war-beast of stitched sinew and black steel, came the Wight General.
His eyes glowed a spectral blue.
His voice echoed like wind through crypts.
“No war ends until the debt is paid.”
Vakar Rhend was no ordinary revenant.
He wasn’t bound by the thirst of zombies, nor the cruelty of demons.
He was bound by duty—a cursed obligation etched into his bones by the Eldritch gods he once bargained with to win a war he never could.
And his army?
Every soul slain in his name marched still—forever conscripted, forever rotting.
He gave the survivors a choice:
“Kneel and join the Fold…
or resist and rise again beneath my banner.”
They chose neither.
They ran.
But the Wight Host does not forget.
As they fled through frozen ravines and collapsed trenches, the dead rose from beneath—crawling from the snow like worms from a carcass.
Arrows of bone whistled through the air.
Warhorns shrieked from tongues long decayed.
And Vakar?
He strode calmly behind them, never hurried, never tired.
Until one of them—Delia, a former medic—threw a relic into the air: a pendant etched with a broken glyph.
It pulsed with warm light… then shattered.
And time froze.
The dead halted mid-charge.
The Wight General looked upward… and blinked.
A memory.
His wife, long dead, whispering through a tear in the veil.
The spell broke him—just long enough.
The survivors escaped into the frozen mist.
But Vakar is not gone.
His army still patrols the Crimson Fold, growing with every soul that dies on cursed ground.
And his voice still carries on the wind:
“They left me duty.
I left behind mercy.”
So tread lightly where wars never end.
For every step is a drumbeat closer to the Wight General’s march.