The dead came like a tide without end.
They hurled themselves at the shield wall, clawing with splintered fingers, gnashing with jaws cracked open by time. Steel rang, iron split bone, but for every shade that toppled into ash, two more clawed free from the earth. Their eyes glowed like dying stars, cold, unblinking, unmerciful.
The guards strained under the assault. Spears shattered, shields groaned beneath the weight of hunger that did not bleed or feel pain. Smoke and dust choked the air, until the night itself seemed forged of ash and screams.
Leo's pulse thundered in his ears. The ropes at his wrists glowed, strands blackening, fibers crumbling under the blaze now spilling from within him. Heat coursed through his veins like liquid fire, searing marrow, burning thought. His vision blurred at the edges, bled into hues of red-gold, every heartbeat hammering brighter.
"Leo!" Owen's voice reached him through the din, thin and desperate. "Don't-!"
But the shard had already seized its moment.
It surged up from his palm with a cry of triumph, exultant, merciless. Yes. Yield. Let me drink.
A corpse lunged at the boy, skeletal fingers curled like claws. Leo's body moved before his mind caught up. His palm flared, light erupting outward, molten, blinding. The shade dissolved mid step, its parchment skin peeling away into a scatter of dust on the wind.
But the fire did not end with it.
The ash beneath the corpse blackened. The very earth hissed as heat spread in a widening ring around Leo, each breath he drew spilling more of the shard's fury. The fire line burned without flame, scorching the ground as if branding it.
The guards staggered back, faces pale, eyes wide.
"Gods preserve." one breathed.
"Hold the line!" Sofia's voice cut through, harsh and unyielding. She seized a soldier by the collar, dragging him upright. Her blade slashed in an arc that sheared through a corpse's arm. Yet for a heartbeat, even she glanced at Leo, unease flickering in her commander's steadiness.
The shard pressed harder, its voice rolling through his skull like thunder, like laughter. See how they fall. See how they tremble. You could end this with a thought. End them all.
The hills answered with more dead. Another wave shambled down the slopes, rising from the ash pits, teeth gnashing, arms clawing. The air itself thickened with the stink of dust and rot.
Leo clenched his teeth, trying to dam the flood, but the dead were magnets to his power. Their hunger dragged at his light, pulling it out of him like moths drawn to flame. The more they came, the less control he had.
A guard screamed. A corpse had hooked its claws into his neck, dragging him down.
Leo threw his hand forward. Light roared free.
The blast vaporized both corpse and man in an instant, only a smear of charred armor clattering empty to the earth.
Leo froze, horror spiking sharper than the shard's exultation. "No-"
The shard crooned. Yes.
The battle frayed at the edges. Fear spread faster than fire. Guards faltered, men broke rank. The dead pressed inward, hunger gnawing with every shriek. Sofia's blade was a silver blur, her voice ragged as she forced her fighters back into line.
Owen clung to the wagon, his lips moving in frantic prayer. No, not prayer. He scribbled symbols, jagged lines and circles, onto scraps of parchment, his ink-stained fingers trembling. One sheet flared faintly, enough to halt a lunging shade at the edge of the firelight.
Leo staggered forward, every breath a blaze. Fire seeped from his skin, each heartbeat a detonation waiting to burst. He raised his palm, and shades screamed as light seared through them, their hollow frames unraveling into clouds of drifting ash.
The night became storm. Fire and shadow collided, shrieks rising into a cacophony. Ash swirled around him in spirals, pulled by a gravity he could not see, the battlefield itself bending to the shard's will.
Until, at last-
Silence.
The Reckoning Fields lay still again.
The air stank of char. Embers glowed faintly where Leo's fire had scorched the earth black. The stumps of dead trees burned with dull orange veins, like bones heated in a forge. Smoke curled upward, vanishing into a sky still devoid of stars.
Around the wagons lay ruin. A third of the guards did not rise. Some were torn to pieces, ash filling the holes where their faces should have been. Others lay charred, their armor twisted and blackened, melted to their bodies. One man had been vaporized entirely, only fragments of his breastplate scattered like broken teeth in the dust.
The boy Leo had saved earlier rocked back and forth in silence, his blanket clutched tight. His wide eyes did not blink, did not look away from Leo. They stared at him the way one stares at something no longer human.
Sofia stood amidst the dead, her blade's edge blackened, her armor slick with ash and blood. She raised her head, sweat streaking her brow, her chest heaving.
Her eyes met Leo's. They did not waver.
"You saved us," she said.
Leo's hand trembled as he looked at the scorched palm that had slain both monster and man alike. His throat ached. "And killed one of yours."
Her jaw tightened. She did not deny it.
The guards' stares pressed against him, some filled with naked fear, others with rage. Gratitude battled terror across their faces, but terror won. Not one of them moved closer.
Leo's knees gave out. He dropped onto the ash, clutching his hand to his chest as though trying to bury the shard's heat. His whole body shook, not from fatigue alone, but from the echo of laughter still resounding in his bones.
You tasted it, the shard purred. The world knows you now. There is no turning back.
Leo closed his eyes. Mira's warning whispered in memory, her voice tight with dread, almost prayerful.
He had thought it superstition.
Now, kneeling amidst the ashes of the Reckoning Fields, he wondered if it had been prophecy.