An hour before.
Gwen saw the Grand Magus elder of Greymoor break from the encirclement.
He was bleeding badly. Some kind of escape art carried him clear of the swarm in a blur of fractured light, and the moment he landed he turned and loosed a volley of spears behind him, impaling the closest of his pursuers. For an instant it looked as though he had bought himself room to breathe.
Then his expression turned grave.
Gwen followed his gaze, and she saw it too.
Beyond the northern gate, one figure stood apart from the rest of the horde. It was not the Grand Magus aura radiating from its twisted frame that froze her blood — it was the eye.
A single massive yellow eye had opened across its shoulder, lidless and unblinking, sweeping over the battlefield with a cold, ancient awareness that did not belong to anything that had once been a man.
It threw back its head and roared, and the infected around it answered as one.
