Claimed by the vampire prince

Chapter 512: Chapter 512

The moment the distance between both forces narrowed enough, Ragnar drove his heels into his horse and surged forward like a storm finally unleashed. A roar erupted behind him as multiple mounted soldiers followed.

Then the armies collided. The impact was violent enough to shake the ground beneath them.

Steel crashed against steel in a deafening explosion of sound. Horses whinnied as bodies slammed together. Men were ripped from saddles upon impact, disappearing beneath trampling hooves before they could even rise again. The clean white snow became stained almost instantly with sprays of blood.

Ragnar struck the first soldier that reached him with his morningstar. The heavy spiked head crashed into the man’s chest with such devastating force that armor buckled inward with a sickening crunch. The soldier folded instantly, thrown off his horse by the impact.

Ragnar swung again in a brutal arc, the iron spikes tearing through another man’s jaw and ripping half his face apart.

He barely slowed as the battlefield dissolved into chaos around him.

The shouts of men and the relentless clash of weapons blended together into a deafening cacophony that seemed to swallow the battlefield whole. Arrows sliced overhead while soldiers fought and died within arm’s reach. And Ragnar was at the center of it all.

He fought like a man possessed. A soldier lunged toward him with a spear, but Ragnar twisted sharply in his saddle and raised his free hand.

The shadows beneath the man’s horse suddenly surged upward. Black tendrils wrapped around the animal’s legs, violently forcing it off balance. Horse and rider crashed hard onto the frozen earth. Before the soldier could recover, Ragnar’s morningstar came down and crushed his skull into the snow.

Another soldier rushed him from behind but Ragnar had already anticipated the attack.

Shadows rose up and shot outward, wrapping around the attacker’s throat. The man gagged, clawing at the darkness as it tightened, crushing his windpipe before dropping him lifelessly to the ground. The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds.

Bodies were already littering the ground.

The queen’s soldiers had expected resistance. They had not expected Ragnar and his forces to hold their own against a much larger army, they did not expect to be slaughtered at the rate that they currently were.

Nearby, Aeron Tavish carved through Ragnar’s men with equal brutality.

The man rode a massive black warhorse through the battlefield, his armor drenched in the blood of the soldiers he killed. A long scar now cut across one side of his face, the wound still pouring blood, while his long sword moved with deadly speed through anyone unfortunate enough to get close.

One of Ragnar’s men charged him from the front.

Aeron dodged the strike effortlessly before driving his blade through the soldier’s throat. He ripped the sword free just in time to block another attack from the side, and retaliated by burying his blade beneath the attacker’s jaw.

The man collapsed instantly. Aeron barely looked at him before moving on to the next.

"Push forward!" he shouted to the queen’s soldiers around him. "Break their line!"

The queen’s forces surged with renewed aggression.

Ragnar spotted Aeron almost immediately through the chaos. Their eyes locked across the battlefield and all he felt was hatred.

Then both men charged at each other. freēwēbηovel.c૦m

The collision between them was savage.

Aeron swung his weapon, missing Ragnar by just an inch.

Ragnar retaliated instantly before the other man had the chance to go in for another strike, swinging low toward Aeron’s ribs. Aeron barely blocked it, but the force still knocked him sideways in the saddle.

Shadow shot straight for him but Aeron reacted fast, yanking his mount backward just before the black tendrils could seize him. He cut downward with his sword, slicing through the darkness but more surged upward behind him.

Ragnar pressed harder. His weapon whistled through the air, forcing Aeron into a brutal defensive retreat while shadows snapped at his heels like hunting wolves.

Each time Aeron tried to create distance between them to give himself a better advantage, Ragnar’s shadows countered his efforts. They lashed around his wrists, tugged at his horse, reached for his ankles. Even when Aeron severed them, new ones replaced them instantly.

For the first time, Aeron looked unsettled.

Then somewhere deeper within the battlefield, something changed.

Circe stood amidst the carnage while chaos unfolded around her. The smell of blood and death saturated the air so heavily now that it was impossible to ignore.

And all around her, the souls of the slaughtered wandered.

She could feel every single one of them.

The dead brushed against her senses from every direction, drawn toward her power like starving things searching for sustenance.

Circe reached for her magic and it answered immediately, rising to the surface in the form of glowing threads that curled around her arms.

Only she could see the darkness that spilled from beneath her skin, spreading outward across the snow in twisting veins, moving between corpses scattered on the battlefield.

Then the dead bodies began to move.

A corpse with its throat split open jerked violently against the ground. Another body convulsed beside it before slowly beginning to rise.

One by one, the fallen dragged themselves back upward.

Soldiers stared in horror as broken corpses climbed to their feet with mangled limbs and hollow eyes.

Yet under her command, the bodies still moved and right in front of everyone, Circe created her army of undead.

They had no thoughts or emotions, creatures born solely to do her binding. Her magic was the only thing holding them together and through her power, she shared a link with them. Hence they instinctively knew what they were created to do without being told.

The first reanimated corpse lunged onto a royal soldier with animalistic violence, tearing into his face with darkened fingers while the man screamed. Another sank its teeth into someone’s throat hard enough to rip flesh free entirely.

Panic erupted among the enemy ranks.

"Abominations!" One soldier shouted in terror. "The dead are moving!"

Their terror didn’t stop Circe, it only spurred her on.

More darkness poured from her body.

The breeze stilled around her as corpse after corpse clawed its way upward from the blood-soaked snow.