The forest held its breath.
Juniper stood before them, pallid in the moon's fractured light—expression blank, eyes unblinking, posture eerily still. Nothing in her face reflected fear, annoyance, or even curiosity. She simply was, and that stillness felt louder than a scream.
Zayn and Chauncey felt it: pressure tightening around their ribs, like the night itself was bracing.
Juniper's head tilted—slowly, as though her neck joints were rusted—until her gaze locked directly onto Zayn.
"You,"
she said. Her tone did not rise or fall.
"The spiritual force emanating from you… matches the one we were sent to capture."
Chauncey flinched. Zayn's fists tightened.
Juniper continued, monotone, "Your existence disrupts equilibrium. You will be retrie—"
A whip-crack of air cut her off. Chauncey had already thrown a dagger.
It spiraled through moonlight like a shard of liquid silver—straight for her heart.
She shifted one inch, no more.
Her hand rose—a pale blur—and caught the dagger mid-flight.
The blade buried itself into her palm.
Blood welled, ran down her wrist, pattered onto the leaves.
She didn't blink.
With that, Zayn moved.
He was a streak—earth exploding where his foot launched. His blade came down in a silver arc, so fast it scraped air into sparks.
Juniper turned her dagger sideways—
TINK.
Metal kissed metal with perfect timing.
She redirected his slash with only her wrist, letting the force pass along her body like water over stone. Zayn spun, reversed his grip, struck again with a backhand slash—faster, heavier.
She dipped her head beneath it, her hair swaying like dark ink.
Zayn thrusted a knee at her ribs.
She twisted—her body light—and his knee passed through where she had been.
Before he recovered, she pressed her palm against his elbow joint to break his stance—
—but he wrenched his arm back just in time, pivoted, and aimed a rising cut at her throat.
She leaned backward, spine bending almost unnaturally, the blade humming over her face by a hair. Zayn's attacks continued, the warrior adamant on ceasing every chance to recover or an opening to use her cursed scream. The woman retreated back slightly with each brutal attack-- the pressure becoming physically unbearable. Zayn's assault was forcing her heel to skid through mud, but her expression never changed. Fear and frustration was absent.
That's when Chauncey barreled in.
Feet barely touching the ground, he lunged with a hook knife, aiming for her exposed shoulder. His movements were sharp, efficient—soldier's brutality.
Juniper planted her heel, rotated, and slid under his strike, sweeping her leg.
Chauncey jumped the sweep—
She twisted her ankle, redirected momentum, and performed a second sweep at a different angle—
he didn't expect it.
His foot clipped.
He staggered.
Zayn was on her again.
A rapid chain of slashes—
overhead
diagonal
thrust
reverse grip
twist
stab
low cut
feint
high cut—
each blow faster than the last, a blinding storm of metal and precision.
Juniper parried them all.
Not with brute strength—
with perfect economy.
Her dagger moved like an extension of geometry: rotating circles, half-steps, subtle angle changes. Every time Zayn shifted weight, she adjusted by a fraction, always one step ahead.
Chauncey recovered and dove back in.
He swung his hook knife from below.
Juniper knocked it aside with the hilt of her dagger, pivoted on her right foot, and delivered a palm strike to his sternum—
THUD.
Chauncey flew backward three feet, boots carving trenches in the dirt as he fought not to fall.
Zayn attacked again, flipping forward, blade dragging a burning arc through the air—
Juniper stepped inside the arc, pressed her elbow against his forearm, and halted his momentum entirely with one brutal, shockingly grounded motion.
Her knee shot for his gut—
Zayn blocked with his free arm—
Yet the sheer impact still rattled his ribs.
They collided in a clash of survival instinct versus unnatural stillness—
Zayn's blade scraping against her dagger in a shower of sparks,
The recovered Chauncey flanking and swinging downward,
Juniper twisting away from both,
her coat fluttering like a shadow with intention.
They pressed harder.
Chauncey's boots slammed the ground—he spun, bringing a roundhouse kick aimed at her jaw.
Juniper ducked, but Zayn anticipated her movement and swept his blade horizontally.
She bent backward again, palms touching the earth this time, her body folding like water avoiding the cut. She kicked upward from the ground—heel snapping toward Zayn's jaw.
He blocked with his forearm—pain shot up to his shoulder.
Chauncey seized the moment, plunging toward her with a thrust aimed for her spine—
She vanished.
A ripple of air, a tremor in the leaves—
then Juniper was suddenly behind them.
They barely turned before—
BOOM.
A shockwave erupted from her center, invisible but violent, blasting both boys apart like rag dolls.
Chauncey crashed through bushes, branches snapping around him.
Zayn soared—
but he twisted midair, his feet planted against the tree trunk of an oak.
The bark cracked under his foot.
He crouched low, arm pulled back, blade alive with flashing silver reflecting muted light.
He wasted no time. In a singular motion, his body stabilized as he crouched against the trunk, breath hissing through his teeth. Smoke curled from his blade. His eyes sharpened—not with fear, but with something far more dangerous.
Resolve.
Silver fire erupted around the weapon, then fissured—
Veins of metallic gold pulsed along the blade like molten lines of a living rune. Deep blue energy curled around his limbs, swirling like liquid starlight guiding his momentum.
The tree groaned under the pressure as he pushed off.
Zayn became a comet, alive with power.
Juniper looked up, eyes widening just barely—the closest thing to surprise she had shown yet—as Zayn descended toward her with the full force of resolve, metal, and his codex eminence coiling around him like a divine executioner.
Gold veins flickered, the deep blue currents around him pulsing with each beat of his heart. His blade cut through the air with a whistle that cracked the silence.
And with that, Juniper finally breathed in.
It was the smallest motion—her shoulders rising a fraction, her chest expanding. But something about the way she did it made the entire forest seem to pause. Like reality itself braced.
Chauncey, half-buried in a bush and struggling to suck in a full breath, forced his eyes open just in time to see it.
His pupils dilated.
"No—ZAYN!!!" his voice cracked.
Juniper's lips parted.
And the cursed scream was unleashed.
The distortion in the air was visible as a sudden, violent compression of sound and force ensued, one so intense it seemed to collapse the space between them.
It hit Zayn mid-descent.
WHUMMMMM—
His codex flared in response but sputtered, flickering violently like a candle under a storm. The blue light warped. The gold veins fractured.
The shockwave punched through him.
His body jerked in the air like someone had grabbed his spine and twisted.
His ears ruptured instantly—blood streamed down his jaw. The earplugs snapped deeper from the pressure. His nose burst as well, a thin crimson arc trailing behind him. Pain ripped through every muscle, crushing, suffocating, like his bones might fold inward.
For a split second his grip slipped—
—but then the fingers tightened again.
His jaw clenched.
His eyes sharpened.
The codex's flicker steadied—not fully, not cleanly, but enough.
Juniper's expression did not change, but something in her stance shifted—an infinitesimal dip of her head, as though registering the anomaly.
Zayn did not fall back.
He did not stop.
He cut through the scream's dying echo and came down on her in a brutal, lightning-fast strike aimed straight for her clavicle.
Juniper was forced to move.
Her dagger snapped upward to intercept, metal screaming against metal as the impact jolted up both their arms. The ground beneath her feet cracked from the force of Zayn's descent.
Before she could redirect his blade, Zayn twisted his wrist, following up with a second slash that cut across her midline.
She bent back with inhuman control, the blade missing her torso by a hair. Zayn landed and immediately pressed forward, foot sliding through mud as he transitioned into a low driving thrust aimed at her abdomen.
She rotated, meeting it with a perfectly angled parry that sent the blade skidding aside—but her arm trembled faintly from the residual force.
Her eyes finally lifted to meet his.
Her voice came soft, flat, utterly neutral.
"…fascinating."
Zayn's blade whirled for another strike.
She pivoted, blocking it with the spine of her dagger.
"The one who shan't be named grants you an indomitable spirit."
There was no awe in her tone, only observation.
Zayn felt blood drip from his earlobes to his collar—but he didn't stop.
He pushed forward, body screaming, codex flaring in uneven pulses—
—and Juniper was forced into close quarters again, both moving so fast the air between them split with the force of their clashes.
Their blades locked.
Their feet ground trenches into the dirt.
The scream's aftershock still crawled through Zayn's bones, but he refused to buckle.
Juniper tilted her head at him—
—the smallest sign that she was recalculating.
And the clearing once again vibrated with the tension of something catastrophic about to happen next.
....
The battlefield stretched from horizon to horizon—mud, shattered shields, broken arrows, and smoke drifting in low, ghostly bands. Bodies moved like shadows within the haze, steel clashing in violent flashes of light. The roar of battle was a constant, grinding thunder.
And yet, amid all of it, Charolette's mind drifted.
Her eyes were unfocused, following nothing in particular, her thoughts spiraling. For one long, dangerous second, her spirit seemed elsewhere—caught by a sudden, chilling sensation crawling up her spine like a cold hand dragging its fingers along every vertebra.
Something wrong.
Her breath stuttered.
Before she could even turn her head—
CLANG—!
A blade meant for her skull was stopped mid-swing.
Jasmijn stood in front of her, wind coiling around her forearms like a living barrier, the intercepted Plugish soldier's sword rattling against the invisible force.
"Get your head in the game, Charolette! Do you want to die!?" Jasmijn snapped, shoving the soldier backward with a burst of compressed air.
Charolette blinked hard, snapping back into the present as the battlefield's chaos slammed into her senses. She rubbed her forehead, breath shaky, eyes distant—trapped between fear and focus.
Around them, the reclaimed banners of Mornstead, Brackenlight, and Riverfall fluttered in the smoky wind. The cheers from those villages had barely faded before Solas had driven them toward this new front—and Valdyr 6 had fought like a storm given human form. Their momentum had cracked the Plugish line.
Now the unified forces—what remained of Valdyr's soldiers, the island's great 6, the newly freed villagers, and Jasmijn's twelve hardened fighters—pushed the invaders back inch by bloody inch.
The difference was clear:
The Plugish soldiers were struggling to keep their momentum against Valdyr's newfound strength.
Jasmijn's troops moved like a single organism—precise, disciplined, lethal.
Wind blurred as Jasmijn pivoted, slicing a Plugish soldier cleanly across his breastplate, her gale-sharpened strike cutting through armor as if it were wet cloth.
Charolette jerked—almost in reflex—her body snapping into combat without her mind catching up. She lunged, catching a Plugish soldier off-guard, and her blade slid cleanly into his neck. He collapsed into the mud with a thud, blood mixing with rainwater.
But even as she fought, her thoughts were not here.
Her voice trembled.
"I have a bad feeling about Zayn and Chauncey. What if they…?"
"That simply won't happen,"
Jasmijn cut in, moving beside her in seamless rhythm, two fighters breathing in the same pattern. She spun, heel striking a soldier's leg before finishing him with a gust-enhanced stab.
"They're tough," Jasmijn said, her tone firm, unwavering even in the chaos. "All you have to do is carry out your duty while they carry out theirs."
Charolette exhaled shakily—but a small smile curved her lips.
She tightened her grip.
Another Plugish soldier charged, mud splashing beneath his boots.
Charolette lunged to meet him.
Her blade found his chest with effortless precision.
His momentum died in front of her as he slumped into the earth.
She pulled her dagger free, breath steadying.
The feeling along her spine had not faded. However, her hope and resolved sharpened as the battle raged on around them.
Smoke crawled low across the trampled earth, swallowing shapes into silhouettes. The sky—gray and swollen—hung oppressively over the chaos like a watching god. Iron rang on iron. Men and women screamed through blood-filled throats. Mud and rain mixed with crimson into a thick slurry that clung to boots and bodies alike.
And still—
Valdyr's thin line of fighters pushed forward.
They were not breaking.
Not even close.
She stood at the center of a swirl of fighting Plugish soldiers, her usually steady breaths turning shallow as a cold realization dawned on her.
Valdyr wasn't yielding.
Even with seventy-five percent of the island supposedly taken…
No, no...That number was wrong now.
Her eyes narrowed, vision sharpening.
Sixty percent.
Fifty-nine.
Fifty-eight.
Her heartbeat turned to a hollow thud in her ears.
Valdyr wasn't just surviving—
They were advancing.
And every step they gained was a direct indictment of her failures.
Valdyr's Six.
It had to be them.
"They should have been killed when we had the chance…"she whispered, voice trembling with equal parts rage and guilt.
Juniper wasn't here.
No one else was equipped to counter them.
Which meant—
"It's my fault."
Something in her posture shifted.
A subtle tightening of her shoulders.
A slow exhale that chilled the air around her.
The Codex in her bones stirred.
Her skin prickled as invisible ripples pulsed outward, and she began walking forward with deliberate, almost ritualistic slowness. As she moved, the world seemed to bend around her—distorted, refracted like heat off metal.
A villager rushed her from the left, spear raised.
Elara didn't even turn her head.
She raised her hand and the stored kinetic imprint from an axe strike she'd blocked earlier detonated outward as a sideways blast—
BOOM—!
A shockwave struck the villager, contorted mid-air, and hurled him spinning into another soldier.
She had redirected the imprint's angle by ninety degrees.
Another came at her from behind.
Elara stepped just slightly—barely a shift of weight.
The kinetic echo of a sword strike she'd taken an hour ago burst from her back in a delayed eruption, amplified far beyond its original strength. It hit the attacker as a concussive burst, snapping bone and launching him into a group of Plugish soldiers.
Her own men.
They screamed as they fell.
Elara didn't flinch.
She was no longer fighting.
She was hunting.
Every movement she made—no matter how small—sent unpredictable ricocheting shockwaves between bodies, armor, stone, and trees. Many were delayed, firing seconds after her motions stopped, making the battlefield feel possessed by invisible predators stalking through the air.
Villagers were thrown.
Jasmijn's soldiers staggered, disoriented, trying to track attacks coming from impossible angles.
One soldier attempted to flank her.
Elara crouched—
Echoes detonated upward like vertical blades of compressed force—
The man was lifted off his feet, then slammed into the ground with a horrible crack.
Another villager tried to shield injured fighters.
Elara pivoted—
A stored kick's force was released but multiplied, erupting sideways into the cluster—
Bodies flew like ragdolls, arcs of mud and blood trailing behind them.
She was losing control fast.
And she didn't care.
Wind spiraled into a violent helix around the commander's ankles as Jasmijn launched herself across the battlefield, the air cracking in her wake. She moved like a streak of silvered pressure—hair snapping behind her, boots barely touching the ground as she surged toward the incoming disaster.
The shockwave Elara had unknowingly unleashed was barreling toward three wounded villagers—broken, crawling, helpless targets who would never outrun what was coming.
She didn't even think.
She thrust her palm forward—
WHOOOOOM—!
Her air pressure slammed into the kinetic blast, two raw forces colliding like clashing gods.
THOOM—!!
The impact tore a distortion ripple across the battlefield.
Mud lifted.
Rocks tumbled upward.
Dust mushroomed into a choking pillar around her.
The echo of it rattled bones.
Jasmijn skidded back hard, heels gouging trenches through the dirt as she fought the recoil. Her knees buckled—nearly—but she forced her stance wide, face twisting with strain.
Her soldiers shouted her name, their voices jagged with fear.
"COMMANDER!!"
She didn't answer them.
She couldn't.
Her eyes were locked on the source of the chaos.
Elara had turned slowly, like a machine pivoting onto its next target.
Their eyes met.
Elara's face was emotionless.
A dead calm.
Hollow as a corpse. Even so, her jaw was tight enough to crack teeth.
Beneath the blank mask was something festering:
Frustration.
Self-disgust.
And beneath it all—
her desperate desire to make Edgar proud.
Her Codex responded before she consciously did.
A pulse shivered through her veins—
a low hum—
like a predator waking inside her.
Wind coiled tighter around Jasmijn, tense, frenzied, bracing. She lowered her stance, resisting the pull of fear that crawled up her spine.
"Come on then…" she muttered under her breath.
But Elara didn't lift a hand.
Didn't swing.
Didn't even shift her weight.
She simply inhaled.
The breath was soft.
Barely perceptible.
But reality buckled around her.
A kinetic imprint—buried deep, recorded from the bone-cracking hammer strike she'd endured days earlier—flared awake at her command.
Time snapped.
A shockwave detonated beneath the commander's feet. It was released like a curse pried loose from the earth.
KRAKOOOOOM—!!
The dirt under Jasmijn erupted into a violent, churning explosion of mud and force. Instinct took over—she twisted her body, flipping back into a wind-assisted somersault to avoid being obliterated.
But the soldiers behind her—
They weren't fast enough.
The blast caught them mid-breath.
They went airborne—
arms flailing—
eyes widening—
their screams swallowed by the roar of displaced air—
—and when they came back down,
they didn't land whole.
Mud.
Blood.
Armor fragments.
Jasmijn hit the ground, sliding to a stop as her lungs seized with horror.
Her eyes widened.
Her breath stuttered.
"Gods…" she whispered, voice trembling with disbelief as her eyes flickered to the dead.
But Elara wasn't looking at the mangled bodies.
She was staring at Jasmijn with a cold, hollow intensity—
as if none of this mattered unless Edgar saw it.
As if every life taken was simply a tally toward her value.
And her Codex pulsed again.
Hungry.
Ready.
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!
A low, distant warhorn rolled across the horizon. Elara was forced to snap out of her frenzy.
It wasnt the sound of a Plugish horn, to the surprise of some.
Nor anything Valdyr's soldiers recognized.
Its tone was deeper.
Carved from tradition, not tyranny.
The note cut through the air like a blade of salvation.
Every head turned.
Even Elara paused mid-step, the kinetic energy gathering at her fingertips stuttering like a failing heartbeat. The battlefield—muddy, bloody, broken—fell under a sudden, unnatural stillness.
Wind died.
Breath held.
Eyes strained toward the coast
Another horn bellowed—this time louder, closer, shaking the ground beneath them.
Charolette froze.
Her pupils dilated.
Her lips parted.
Then—
A smile—wide, bright, disbelieving—spread across her face.
"Holy shit…"
Her voice cracked with pure relief.
Jasmijn's breath hitched.
Her fingers slipped open, wind faltering around her.
"...It can't be…" she whispered. "That's—"
The mist over the coastline began to tear apart under the force of something colossal moving beneath it.
Shadows emerged first—
the towering silhouettes of ships cutting through fog like leviathans awakening.
Then it struck them.
Drenmarch steel.
Drenmarch sails.
Drenmarch colors.
One ship became two.
Two became five.
Then the curved, majestic hull of the fixed, new and improved Aurelia carved through the seafoam, her golden insignia shimmering like dawn splitting night.
The villagers gasped.
The Plugish soldiers cursed, stumbling back.
Even Elara's deadened eyes widened a fraction—uncertainty flickering through her stoic mask.
The ship leading the charge trailed luminous white water behind her prow—
and standing tall upon the main deck was a figure carved from legend.
A blue admiral coat billowed behind him, its fabric snapping like thunder in the coastal wind. Its draping folds cleverly hid the absence of his severed arm, but nothing could hide the authority radiating from the man wearing it.
His remaining hand rested calmly…
deliberately…
on the hilt of his saber.
Jasmijn felt her heartbeat hammer against her ribs. Her grandfather stood at the bow, unwavering, like a mountain rising from the sea.
A stern expression sharpened his features—
steel-eyed, unbroken, carved by storms and wars no ordinary man could have survived.
"...Grandfather,"
Jasmijn breathed—
not in disbelief now,
but in awe.
Behind him, his officers stood at attention.
Cannons aligned.
Flags lifted with renewed wind.
The Drenmarch fleet emerged in full, triumphant formation—
a wall of warships barreling toward Valdyr's shore.
Hope surged through the battlefield like lightning.
Soldiers who moments ago were crawling through mud now rose to their feet.
Villagers sobbed.
Charolette clutched her chest, laughter and relief spilling together.
Even Solas—bloodstained, exhausted in the distance—straightened, recognizing the insignia.
And Elara…
for the first time,
took a single step back.
The calvary had arrived.
And the tide of war had just changed.