The mud clung to their boots like the ghosts of the dead — thick, red-soaked earth churned by war and betrayal.
Jay didn't look back.
Behind him, Jaques' mutilated corpse lay crumpled in the filth — his headless body twitching its last, the blood pooling beneath him like a dark halo of treachery. His severed head, face twisted in terror, sat jammed into the muck where Joan herself had driven it — a final curse upon his name.
The French soldiers gave the corpse wide berth — not out of fear of Jaques, but of Jay and Joan.
Whispers followed them like shadows.
"That was no ordinary boy..."
"Did you see his eyes?"
"He moves like death itself..."
Jay walked beside Joan — his hands still stained crimson, dried blood like paint upon his jaw, his torn shirt clinging to his hardened frame. The once-boyish features of an outsider were gone. In their place was a warrior — cold, calculating, sharpened by violence.
Joan... she was no less terrifying.
Her once-shining armor was a ruin — dented, cracked, splattered with gore. Strands of her golden hair clung to her dirt-streaked face, her pale blue eyes devoid of mercy. The young Maiden of Orleans had shed innocence like a serpent sheds its skin.
"Move," Joan commanded coldly to the men frozen in their tracks.
And move they did.
Jay's voice was low beside her. "The English won't stop. And neither will I."
Joan glanced at him — something dark in her gaze... but something else too. Pride. Respect. And something unspoken.
They reached the edge of the forest — the sound of distant war drums echoing over the hills.
Smoke filled the horizon.
They were marching toward another battlefield... but this time, something fundamental had changed.
Jay was awakening fully to what he was — not just of Arc blood... but a weapon born of chaos.
And Joan — hardened by loss — would wield him like a sword.
The French camp was distant now — a dying light in the storm that followed them. Jay and Joan moved with the hardened remnants of their force — veterans, blood-soaked survivors who had stared death in the face and did not flinch.
Crows circled above them — waiting.
Their march was silent — save for the hollow sound of boots crushing broken bones beneath the mucked road — remnants of those who had fallen days before. The air smelled of iron and ash — a suffocating mixture of burnt wood, blood, and rotting flesh.
The land itself seemed cursed.
Jay could feel it pulsing in his bones — that ancient bloodline awakening deeper within him. His senses sharpened with every step. Every creak of leather, every whisper of steel unsheathed in the distance, he heard.
Joan noticed.
"You feel it, don't you?" she asked quietly, walking beside him.
Jay's eyes glinted unnaturally beneath the low light of dusk. "Like fire in my veins. Like something ancient is... watching me."
Joan gave him a grim smile. "That's your Arc blood. It does not slumber forever. War stirs it awake."
They crested a ridge — and saw it.
The English encampment sprawled in the valley ahead — fortified, brutal, black banners whipping in the cold wind. Fires burned low. And impaled bodies — French prisoners — decorated the approach like grotesque warnings.
Men. Women. Even young boys.
Jay's jaw tightened — his heart hardened.
"These monsters..." his voice was venom.
Joan placed a hand on his shoulder. "We will answer their cruelty with fire and steel. But we must be wise. We are few."
Jay's glare never left the distant camp. "Then we strike like ghosts in the dark."
Joan's voice lowered — almost reverent.
"We will cut out their hearts. We will send their souls screaming to whatever gods they pray to."
Their soldiers behind them — ragged, hungry, battle-worn — gathered like wolves around their leaders.
Jay turned to them — his voice calm, cold, iron.
"Tonight... we are not men. We are wrath. We are death itself."
The soldiers let out a quiet growl — no cheering, no celebration. Only murder in their eyes.
And so they descended into the valley — shadows in the night — their blades thirsty, their hearts blackened by all they had lost.
The slaughter was about to begin.