Munich Outskirts – April 1813
The sky over Bavaria burned with a blood-orange hue, and the rivers stank of rot.
Farms lay abandoned. Roads were littered with half-eaten cattle and shattered wagons. Forests echoed not with birdsong, but with whispers—voices of the lost, carried by wind that should not speak.
At the foot of the Isar River, Napoleon's Army of Reclamation made camp. Twelve thousand strong—five thousand living, seven thousand dead—arrayed in unnerving symmetry.
General Eugène de Beauharnais studied the misty treeline from atop a ruined bell tower. "They'll come at dusk," he muttered, tightening his gloves. "They always come at dusk."
Beside him, Marshal Davout nodded grimly. "Let's pray they only come from one direction this time."
From the forest came a single, distant horn. Hollow. Faint. And then—silence.
That silence didn't last.
A howl split the evening, unearthly and layered, like multiple voices sharing the same breath.
The undead had arrived.
Northern Defensive Line – Fortified Roadblock
Sergeant Armand, a Corsican grenadier missing his left hand, gripped the torch-staff in his remaining fist. His squad of twelve stood behind a barricade of overturned carriages, wooden spikes, and gunpowder barrels. Among them stood four Reclamation soldiers—stitched together from French, Austrian, and Prussian corpses, eyes glowing blue beneath iron visors.
Private Rolin whispered, "They say the ones that speak lead the others…"
Armand hushed him. "Silence."
Then they saw them—crawling through the mist like beetles in a corpse. Hundreds of them, hunched and jerking, many with swords still lodged in ribs or jawbones hanging loose. Some crawled on all fours, others ran upright, weapons clutched in decaying hands.
But the worst were the tall ones.
Twice the height of a man, their armor fused to their flesh, these hulking beasts bore flags on their backs—flags of once-proud regiments twisted into nightmare standards. Their hollow mouths opened in shrieks that made even the undead beside Armand twitch.
"Light it!" Armand roared.
He hurled his torch into the barrels.
Boom.
Flames erupted across the road, incinerating the first wave.
But the horde didn't stop.
They walked through the fire.
And so began the Battle of Munich.
Command Tent – Napoleon's Position
Reports came in waves. Villages lost. Regiments broken. Entire squads pulled underground by clawed hands emerging from root-thick earth.
Letour burst into the tent, a scroll of runes clutched to his chest. "The glyph shields are failing. They've adapted."
Napoleon did not look up. He was drawing.
A map, yes—but more than that. A plan.
"Then we adapt faster," he said. "Initiate Aquila Ignis."
Letour paled. "But that's untested—"
"It's war, not science."
Outside, the sound of screams pierced the tent wall.
Eastern Flank – Reclamation Vanguard
The dead of Napoleon's army moved with terrifying coordination—reanimated officers barked orders in broken Latin, their throats stitched shut, orders issued psychically through glowing medallions embedded in their chests.
Flamethrower units in black leather swept through the infected villages, igniting everything—barns, homes, animals. Nothing was spared.
The undead fought back with the relentlessness of water against stone. No tactics. No fear. Only numbers.
Then came the first Voice—a creature taller than a man, wrapped in the robes of a Russian Orthodox bishop, its skin stretched paper-thin over bone. It floated rather than walked, mouth gaping endlessly. Wherever it passed, dead villagers rose and joined the tide.
One Reclamation unit hesitated.
That was all it took.
In seconds, they were overrun, screaming as the tide tore them apart. Pieces of their flesh animated and stitched themselves into the horde.
Midnight – Cathedral of Munich
Napoleon himself stood at the gates of the ancient cathedral.
Its walls were cracked. Its bells shattered. Its altar defiled.
But still he entered.
Behind him followed his elite guard—half living, half dead, all fanatically loyal.
On the floor of the nave lay a wounded child. Her eyes were gone, sockets weeping blood. But she smiled at him.
"Are you the devil?" she whispered.
Napoleon crouched. "No, child. I'm the sword that will slay him."
From the shadows, a new figure emerged—a woman in French uniform, pale but alive. Her badge read Zoya Petrova.
She saluted. "Eastern front lost twenty kilometers today. No survivors from Ingolstadt."
Napoleon stood. "Then it begins here. Munich will not fall."
He turned to his officers.
"Gather every Reclamation battalion. Let them see our fire. Tonight, we show Europe that the tide can be pushed back."
Dawn – Aftermath
The battle for Munich raged for thirteen hours.
Three thousand living French soldiers died.
But five thousand undead soldiers held the lines—and for the first time, the undead plague was halted.
Smoke rose from the battlefield. The fields were black with ash and strewn limbs.
And yet, in the ruined square of Munich, Napoleon stood beneath the tricolor, flanked by two Reclamation generals missing half their faces.
Behind him, soldiers—dead and alive—stood in ranks.
He had not won.
But he had not lost.
And for the first time in months, Europe noticed.
End of Chapter 10
Would you like Chapter 11 to show Europe's fractured alliance planning its counteroffensive? Or focus on the horrors beginning to emerge in the British Isles or Ottoman territories?
Absolutely. Here's Chapter 11 of Empire of the Dead — this time, shifting the horror to new shores as the contagion spreads to the British Isles and the distant, proud lands of the Ottoman Empire.