**Wilhelm Yuwen**
We have been on the road for a better part of three weeks. We pushed our horses to the very limit in hopes of reaching Aldmoor in time. When we arrived, we saw the former rice paddies had been trampled to pits of mud with rotting corpses floating at the top like meatballs in a soup.
The city had several mounds of corpses lining the outer wall. And the gates had been broken down to little more than scrap wood. A seed of fear began to nestle in my heart.
I urged my horse forward past the ruined fields, through the broken gate, along the corpse-littered main road. Driven by my unwavering determination to find my sons. Right behind me were the sixty men who had left Rosedorn with me.
When I had sent them out, I had been confident that they could handle some mere bandits. Even when the news came that they needed help fighting an undead army, I wasn’t really scared. But now, after seeing all the destruction and the sheer amount of corpses, old and new, littering the inside and outside of Aldmoor, my heart began to ache.
What if we are too late?
What if they are dead?
I swallowed these thoughts, not daring myself to think them again. Hoping that just by suppressing this horrible fear, I would be able to somehow stave off death itself. Hadn’t I sworn that I would never lose another child, never again? Would this be the day that I would break my vow to you, my love, after all these years?
I pressed my horse further. The poor thing nearly gave out under me as it raced through the ruined street, crushing skulls and rotten meat under its hoofs. But I didn’t care; all I wanted right now was to see my two sons safe and sound.
Then I saw it. A lone figure standing in the middle of the road.
It was Janus.
I dismounted my horse and ran towards him, not even noticing the large crowd of people behind him. As I ran towards him, I shouted,
“Janus!? Are you alright!? Where is your brother!?”
But Janus didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his sword against me. And a second later, he was already swinging towards me. I instinctively sidestep, avoiding his blade by a mere hair’s breadth, before grabbing his outstretched hand and throwing him to the ground. I kick his sword away and try to talk sense into him.
“Janus, listen, you won. There are no more enemies. You are safe.”
“D-dad?”
“Yes, here is your father. You are safe. Do you know where your brother is?”
Sadly, I didn’t get an answer from him because he had already fallen asleep. I lift my sleeping soon up onto my shoulder, ruining my previously clean fur coat, before making my way deeper into the crowd of survivors.
“My name is Wilhelm Yuwen. Has anyone seen my son, Joel Yuwen?”
The crowd began to look around until Collin broke through the crowd of onlookers, his face smeared with blood and dust.
“Ser!”
“Ah, Collin, you are alive. Have you seen Joel?”
“Y-yes, I have. He is over there.”
“Thank you, can you look after Janus for a moment? I’m gonna look for Joel.”
Collin stared at Janus before asking a myriad of questions, but I had already taken off. Janus was alive, and that was all that really mattered. Ruby had been able to heal anyone so far, so as long as he was alive, she would fix him. Without even noticing, this belief has settled in my mind like a strong pillar.
Now that Janus was safe, I prayed that the same was true for Joel.
I was already regretting that I had been so harsh on him the last time I saw him when I finally noticed him in the crowd. I sprinted towards him, not caring about anything, and pulled him into a tight hug.
“DAD!?”
A while after this, I finally had the peace of mind to take a few of my men and Collin with me to hunt down this piece of shit necromancer. But we found nothing. We looked for hours but couldn’t find a single trace of the bastard. We only found the entrance of an old Mining tunnel with countless traces left by the undead. They must have led them through the tunnel. But did the necromancer escape through the tunnel or by some other means, even Collin couldn’t tell, as there was no smell in the air other than rotten flesh. I didn’t want to risk losing any more of my men by sending them into the tunnel. So instead, I just ordered a few of them to remain here and to inform me of any movements. The mystery of where the tunnel led and what to do with it would have to be solved later. For now, the most important thing was to help the injured and provide safe food and shelter for the citizens. As well as a massive cleanup operation to clean the city and its surrounding lands of any remaining undead. Not to mention cleaning the land of their remains.
When we returned from our fruitless hunt, I saw a distant hooded figure standing on the top of a hill against the setting sun.