The ground seemed to hum beneath their boots.
Marcel stood silently atop a ridge overlooking the Burnscar Gully, his eyes not on the looming enemy columns, but somewhere distant—inside himself. The shard pulsed at his palm again, but this time the visions were not so overwhelming. They were familiar now. Repetitions. Echoes of a truth just out of reach.
His siblings—Tarin and Lira—stood nearby with Veyla and Emberjaw, watching him from the corner of their eyes. They didn't see what he saw. They never had. But they knew. Marcel had spoken of it often enough—the glimpses of chained figures, the burning dais, the faceless Nine who had buried some ancient, bloody truth.
Tarin tightened his grip on his axe. "Another vision?" he asked quietly.
Marcel only nodded once, his jaw tight. The shard's throbbing rhythm was different tonight—measured, almost expectant. As if it, too, was waiting for something to be revealed.
Below them, on the battlefield, the first lines of the beast army gathered.
Three great columns of creatures darkened the horizon—one winged, one armored, and one of monstrous, earthbound brutes. The ground units dug shallow trenches and crude defenses with frightening speed, while the winged beasts circled overhead in predatory sweeps. Fires were lit, casting strange, unsettling shadows.
And at their center, towering above the others, loomed Breakmaw—its obsidian skin gleaming under the half-moon, six monstrous legs grinding trenches into the earth with every ponderous step.
Beside it slithered the Broodhorn Commander, its mimicry abilities twisting its form into different false beast shapes, sending ripples of unease even across the human lines.
High above, distant but ever-present, circled the Bleak Flame Wyvern, its pale fire trailing smoke across the stars.
Closer to the front, Mireholt's vanguard waited. Their camp was disciplined but tense. Fighters checked and rechecked armor straps, whispered mantras under their breath, and cast wary glances at the enemy formations.
General Caelis Blackmane stood like a bastion among them, his chained greatblade driven into the dirt before him, emanating steady kinetic pulses to calm the troops.
Captain Velka Renn, her windbound spear crackling faintly with suppressed energy, moved through the ranks like a living current—stopping briefly to offer words of grim encouragement.
Hunter Jael Krinn, bow slung over her shoulder, knelt atop a rocky outcrop, eyes sharp and predatory, already marking the battlefield for targets.
Commander Halrix barked final orders to the midline teams, while General Varek coordinated the reserve flanks, eyes cold and calculating.
Elder Vess, standing apart from the others, surveyed the field with narrowed eyes. He would not be staying. His role was not that of a soldier today. As soon as the initial engagement began, he would return to Mireholt to reinforce its ancient barriers—preserving strength for when, not if, the walls themselves were threatened.
The first clash began with no fanfare. No grand signal.
A low rumbling sound rolled across the field—the vanguard lines of both sides slowly advancing.
Weak creatures, scouts and expendable foot soldiers, surged forward from the beast army's columns. Chitinous beasts with razor talons. Hounds frothing mana venom. Crawlers and broken-winged scavengers.
From the human lines, D-rank hunters, auxiliary shield bearers, and junior casters moved to meet them.
The first collision was brutal, chaotic.
A dozen beasts were felled within seconds—but so were five young hunters, caught unready by the savagery of the initial rush. Magic flared, arrows sang, and the smell of burning blood fouled the wind.
Marcel gripped his weapon tighter as he watched. His shard pulsed harder, resonating faintly with the violence, but he shoved the sensation down. Not yet.
"Hold," he murmured under his breath, though he wasn't sure if he was speaking to himself—or to something deeper within the shard.
Veyla and Emberjaw stood ready at his side. Emberjaw's mane flickered with suppressed flame, nostrils flaring as it sensed the bloodshed ahead.
"We wait for the second wave," Veyla said, voice sharp and steady. "This is only the test."
All around them, the warriors of Mireholt braced.
The enemy's strength was not yet fully revealed. The true monsters—the Hollow Rider, Breakmaw, the Bleak Flame Wyvern—they remained still, observing. Calculating.
Both armies measured each other through this brutal sacrifice of the weak.
The tension was suffocating, the screams of the dying a grim orchestra to the waiting storm.
And above it all, somewhere just out of sight, the shard inside Marcel pulsed a single, cold thought through his veins:
This is only the beginning.
...
The ground quaked before the second wave arrived.
The first clash had been brutal—but it had only been a whisper compared to what now roared toward them.
From the burning gully, the beast army surged anew—hundreds strong. This time not just weaklings, but battle-hardened predators and brutal warbeasts. Black-scaled raptors bounded across the rocks. Hound packs dripped venom. Hulking, furred juggernauts slammed into the Mireholt front lines like battering rams.
Their roars tore the air apart, each cry a drumbeat of savagery.
General Caelis Blackmane shouted across the defensive lines, voice a sharp crack through the madness.
"Hold the line! Shields together! Spear points forward!"
Captain Velka Renn spun her wind-forged spear overhead, unleashing a gale that knocked back a charging beast just before it gutted a young shield bearer.
"Cover the casters! No gaps!" she barked, already moving to reinforce another faltering position.
Magic and steel clashed in a tide of blood.
Marcel fought shoulder to shoulder with his siblings and Veyla. Emberjaw tore into the beast hounds with savage glee, its fire-touched jaws crushing bone and hide alike.
Marcel's shard pulsed stronger with every heartbeat. His strikes were sharper, his footwork alien—guided not by training but by instincts older than memory. He felt himself slipping sometimes, becoming something less... human. But he gritted his teeth and fought it back.
I am still me. He clung to the thought like a shield. Not yet. Not yet.
Beside him, Tarin's axe sang through the air, severing a raptor's head in a single blow. Lira unleashed volleys of mana-etched arrows, her face calm but her hands moving like quicksilver.
The second wave pushed harder.
Cries echoed through the mist—both human and beast alike. Warriors fell, dragged screaming into the dust. Some were crushed under the beasts' weight, others ripped apart in flashes of claws and fangs.
Yet the warriors of Mireholt stood firm.
Broken shields were cast aside. Injured comrades were pulled back under a canopy of defensive spells, where healers knelt in rows, hands glowing with frantic magic. Cries of pain tore from the wounded as shattered bones were mended, blood forced back into broken bodies. Supplies were dwindling already—potions poured like water, bandages soaked dark.
Marcel saw it through the corner of his eye: two teenage shieldbearers, barely past their first campaigns, struggling to drag a wounded lancer back to the triage lines. Another hunter stumbled past, arm dangling uselessly, too stunned to scream.
The beasts felt the growing desperation.
They howled and shrieked, some taking terrible wounds but still charging blindly into the Mireholt lines. A massive scaled bull slammed into the front, tossing three soldiers like dolls before a line of halberdiers brought it down in a storm of blades.
Above it all, the Hollow Rider watched—silent, still astride his eyeless beast. Breakmaw shifted its weight but did not yet charge. The Bleak Flame Wyvern circled high overhead, dark fire smoldering at the edges of its wings.
The strongest of both armies—the generals, the A-ranks, the true monsters—still held their places, waiting for something more.
Marcel felt it building in his bones—the inevitable, rising crescendo of violence yet to come.
He ducked a sweeping claw, slashed across a beast's neck, and turned just in time to block another strike. His muscles screamed. His shard burned.
(Marcel's perspective)
"The shard pulls harder now, like a chain around my soul. Every time I move, I feel it trying to guide me — sharper, faster, deadlier. And every time I resist, it pulls harder.
This is how it will be.
This is the war inside the war."
Nearby, Veyla bellowed a command as Emberjaw hurled itself into another pack of beasts, flame bursting in a savage arc that turned night into false dawn for a heartbeat.
The tension didn't break after the second wave retreated. It deepened.
The night was not quiet.
Wounded soldiers moaned under rough tents, their cries muffled by stained cloth. Healers moved like ghosts between them, sleeves rolled up, arms coated in blood. Some warriors slept with weapons still clutched in white-knuckled fists. Others stared up at the burning horizon, faces hollow.
The beast army had fallen back to regroup, but their roars still echoed across the valley. They set up their camps crudely, monstrous shapes moving in the smoke and firelight, their howls sharpening into a symphony of rage.
Scouts whispered of monstrous new forms joining the enemy camp.
Jael Krinn returned before midnight, her face bloodied, one arm bound tight with cloth. She threw herself down beside Marcel's group, panting, and reported:
"They're shifting. Moving in threes. Groups of three beasts, running triangular formations. They're probing for weaknesses."
Marcel nodded grimly. His shard throbbed again, but this time it wasn't out of aggression—it was warning.
They are learning. Evolving.
In the healer's camp, a young D-rank moaned as his leg was amputated with fire to stop the spread of a venom curse. His screams cut through the darkness, but no one flinched. They couldn't afford to.
In the far distance, the Hollow Rider still sat unmoving atop his beast, torchlight flickering across his hollow armor.
Tomorrow, the blood would run deeper.