She was laughing.
Not the bitter kind that echoed in shattered ruins or battlefields, but the soft, effortless joy of a girl who still believed the world was hers to know, to shape, to love. The sky above Malvin City stretched wide and blue, a curtain of light over towers of glinting stone and white-glass rooftops. The scent of citrus and sea-salt floated on the breeze, mingling with the tang of sun-warmed steel from the nearby barracks and the hum of horse carriages that wound between the terraced neighborhoods of the upper ring.
"Elira," came her father's voice, rich and patient, "slow down. The sun won't wait, but this old man's knees certainly will."
She turned, boots scuffing the polished stone of the walkway, her long dark braid swinging behind her like a banner. "You're not old," she teased, hands on her hips. "You just hate stairs."
General Rhael Vaelora, former prince of the Vaelorian Empire, now Defense Minister, grinned beneath his mustache, the creases at his eyes deepening. His uniform was brushed silver trimmed with blue, the sigil of the Rising Sea embroidered across his breast. The sword at his hip was ceremonial today, though the ten knights in black and silver armor flanking them bore real steel.
"This ship of yours better be worth the climb," she said, bounding back to his side.
He offered his arm. "It's not just a ship, Elira. It's our promise. Our shield. We call her the Sungrave."
"Elira!" someone called from the market lane. A vendor waved at her from a stall piled high with bright fruit, sun-apples, blood figs, veined citrus with tough rinds peeled into wild spirals. She waved back.
The city bustled around them like a living symphony. Balconies spilled flowering vines down the sides of apartments sculpted from smooth, pale concrete. Banners danced overhead, strung between buildings: azure and gold, the colors of the Vaelorian Republic. Children played with mechanical toys in the square, tiny wyverns and clockwork foxes powered by sun-cells. Everywhere, people laughed and shouted and bartered. A woman sang in a high, clear voice near a fountain where glistening statues turned slowly with the breeze, water flowing down their wings.
Malvin City was alive.
And Elira had never loved it more.
The mist clung to the lower towers and piers of Malvin City's Grand Port, slowly unveiling the glittering sprawl of the Vaelorian fleet. Solar sails shimmered in the morning light, stretched like golden wings against the pale blue sky. Metal hulls gleamed, rows of them, immaculate and massive, anchored with geometric precision along the wharf. Runes lined their sides, etched in sapphire and silver, humming faintly with latent energy. Thirty-two warships of the Armada, polished and ready, their hulls sleek and painted with blue runes that pulsed faintly with harnessed solar energy.
Rows of solar sails, reinforced with Vaelorian crystal plating, lined their backs like spines. The ships had no need of wind. At their cores, belowdecks, burned the modified sun-cells bought years ago from the Drokaran Empire; repurposed, refined, and perfected by Vaelorian engineers. Rhael called them "sun hearts," and they glowed like caged stars.
It was said a single ship could raze a city. Thirty-two could defend a continent.
"How did we get this lucky?" Elira asked, voice low, almost reverent.
Rhael Vaelora stood beside her on the overlook, arms folded behind his back, cloak rippling in the breeze. For a moment, he didn't respond.
"We didn't get lucky," he said softly. "We built lucky. Piece by piece. Ship by ship."
Elira turned to him, a slight smile on her lips.
"And now we have to protect it and they will protect us in return," she murmured, finishing the thought.
He nodded. "With everything we have."
They stood there a moment longer, watching the bustle of activity below. Docks creaked with the weight of cargo. Engineers in black-and-gold uniforms darted between scaffolding and control towers. Beyond them, the great capital of Malvin rose in terraces, white stone buildings, massive green domes, towering spires of glass and polished brass. The city had no kings now, but it still carried the weight of empire in its bones.
"Do you remember when I brought you here the first time?" Rhael asked.
Elira chuckled. "You carried me on your shoulders. I remember mostly the smell, salt, grease, and smoked fish."
"That's the Navy," he said with a grin.
She glanced sideways at him. "I thought I'd never come back. At least not like this."
"You earned it." His tone was warm. Proud. "You've made every instructor at the Academy nervous. Even the sword masters."
"I made them better," she corrected, with the hint of a smirk.
Rhael's gaze lingered on her, this woman grown from fire and steel, calm under pressure, precise in movement, capable of grace and sudden force. Her dark hair was tied back in a soldier's knot, and the blue and silver threads of her sash marked her as one of the youngest military tacticians ever promoted to First Lieutenant.
He turned his eyes back to the ships.
"This fleet... it's not just for war," he said. "These vessels, this energy, we're finally in a place where we can reach beyond. Not just defend our borders, but see what lies past them. The Veiled Strait. The forgotten shores. Maybe even Thrygond's frozen coast."
Elira exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing toward the sunlit horizon. "You're talking about expeditions."
"I'm talking about the future," Rhael said. "Your future."
A beat passed.
She tilted her head toward him. "You'll be there too."
He hesitated, then nodded once. "If fortune holds. But it's your generation that will inherit this, everything we've built. The best minds, the best engineers, the cleanest power we've ever harnessed. We've come farther in thirty years than most civilizations do in three hundred."
Elira smiled again, quieter this time. "That's because you held the line."
He gave her a long look, then reached out and clasped her shoulder. "Stay close. We'll go down to the flagship berth. I want you to see the Solstice Dawn with your own eyes."
They began descending the spiraling path that wound from the cliffside citadel to the docks below. The sea widened ahead of them, an endless, glittering sheet. The ships sat proud in their slips, solar cores humming faintly beneath their decks.
And then it began.
"Father?" Elira's voice cut through the harbor's rhythmic hum. She'd stopped walking, head tilted, not at any sound, but at a sudden absence. The gentle thrum of the fleet's solar cores… it had shifted. A discordant note beneath the familiar harmony.
The knights halted instantly, hands dropping to sword hilts. Rhael froze mid-stride, his proud gaze snapping from the fleet to his daughter. "What is it? What happened?"
Before she could articulate the unease coiling in her gut, one of the escort captains raised a gauntleted hand to his ear. A thin glass communicator flared with frantic crimson light. His face, visible beneath his helm, went slack with disbelief. "Commander… the Solstice Dawn… her core readings… something's…"
The first ship didn't explode. It unmade itself.
A silent, shimmering wave erupted from the flagship's hull, not fire, but pure, annihilating heat. It rippled outwards like a mirage given form. The nearest crane-towers didn't just melt; their colossal steel skeletons flowed, twisting inwards like wax figures before vanishing into a rain of incandescent droplets that hissed and steamed as they hit the water. The air above the ship warped violently.
Then the sound hit.
It wasn't thunder. It was the sky itself tearing apart. A physical blow that slammed into Elira's chest, knocking the breath from her lungs. She staggered. Around her, knights braced, helmets ringing. Half a mile away, along the cliff face, windows exploded outwards in glittering, deadly showers. Birds fell from the sky like stones. Down in the lower quarter, distant screams of horses mingled with the sickening crunch of panicked animals bolting into walls.
Confusion reigned. Engineers on the docks below froze, tools dropping from numb fingers, staring upwards not at an enemy fleet, but at their own. Who was attacking? Where was the enemy?
Then the fleet awoke.
Ship after magnificent ship, the pride of Vaelorian Empire, lit up with an unnatural, searing internal light. Their solar cores, usually a cool, steady blue, flared into blinding, unstable white. Turrets, sleek, rune-etched instruments of distant defense, whirred with terrifying speed. Not outward, towards the open sea, but inward. Targeting runes flared crimson, locking onto the heart of Malvin City itself.
The self-destruction began.
One warship, its hull gleaming under the traitorous sun, fired its primary cannon. Not at the docks, but inland. The energy bolt screamed over the wharves, a streak of malevolent light. It struck the ornate clock tower anchoring the eastern market square. The ancient stone structure didn't just shatter; it vaporized mid-section, the top half collapsing in a rain of molten debris. The bolt continued, burying itself deep within the crowded square.
The detonation was a sun being born on earth. A silent, expanding sphere of pure incineration. Bodies simply ceased to exist. Stall awnings, carts laden with sun-apples and blood figs, children's toys, all flashed into ash. A shockwave rolled outwards, flinging people like discarded dolls, smashing them against the shattered facades of buildings, turning vibrant market lanes into charnel alleys slick with blood and burning oil. Elira saw, for a horrifying instant, a woman clutching a child, both silhouetted against the expanding fireball before being consumed. The screams that followed were swallowed by the roar, but the smell, charred meat, ozone, and burning citrus, hit like a physical blow even from the overlook.
Before the horror could fully register, a second ship, its runes now pulsing a deep, bloody crimson, rotated with chilling precision. Its target, the soaring crystal dome of the High Council. A lance of concentrated solar fire struck the ancient artifact. It didn't crack; it sublimated, vanishing in a shower of superheated crystal dust. The bolt plunged into the chamber below. The resultant implosion sucked in the surrounding air for a split second before erupting outwards. A visible wave of dust, flame, and shattered masonry flattened entire city blocks around the council complex. Centuries of history, law, and governance reduced to a spreading cloud of ruin.
Screaming. It rose from the city below, a raw, animal sound of terror and agony, merging into a single, overwhelming wall of sound that washed over the overlook.
"No!" Rhael's voice was a ragged scrape, stripped of its authority, filled with raw disbelief. He took a step forward, hand outstretched towards the impossible carnage. "This isn't... it can't be! The failsafes! The command codes!" His mind, the mind of a general and strategist, scrabbled for logic in the face of suicidal betrayal. Who? How? His own fleet!
Knights shouted orders that dissolved into confusion. They drew blades, forming a defensive half-circle, but their eyes darted wildly, up at the ships, down at the burning city, searching for an enemy that wasn't there, only their own weapons turned against them. Panic erupted on the overlook itself. Tourists, dock supervisors, engineers who had come to admire the fleet, now fled in blind terror. A child, face blistered from flying sparks, wailed beside a woman dragging a man with a leg bent at an unnatural angle. The air filled with the acrid tang of burning hair and fabric.
The ground beneath Elira's boots bucked violently. A jagged fissure tore open across the overlook's promenade mere yards ahead, swallowing ornate railings and decorative planters, opening a direct view to the carnage and the sea far below. Chunks of the path tilted and slid into the abyss.
"MOVE! NOW!" Rhael's roar was pure command, cutting through the din. He seized Elira's arm, yanking her backwards just as the stone where she'd stood split and fell away into the fiery chaos below. The ground bucked like a living thing.
Sir Calven didn't hesitate. He twisted his body, reaching over his shoulder in one fluid motion. He grasped the worn leather grip of the massive shield strapped to his back, a thick, layered slab of Drakkon Scale steel, etched with the Vaelorian crest, its surface scarred from countless drills and skirmishes. It was heavy craftsmanship, the kind that could stop a charging bull or deflect crossbow bolts, but never this.
He planted his boots wide, bracing against the shuddering cliff face. "DOWN!" he bellowed, his voice raw. With a powerful heave, he swung the shield around, slamming its bottom edge into the fractured stone path. He crouched behind it, angling its broad surface towards the incoming storm of superheated air and fist-sized rocks hurtling up from the turrent's impact zone below.
The shield met the onslaught. Not with a hum, but with a terrifying cacophony. Rocks thudded against the thick steel like hammer blows, each impact jarring Calven's arms. Sparks flew where white-hot debris struck, leaving glowing scorch marks. The wave of superheated air washed over the shield like furnace breath, making the metal sing and shimmer, radiating intense heat that forced the knights huddled behind him to flinch back, raising arms to protect their faces. Calven gritted his teeth, muscles straining, boots scraping for purchase as the force tried to drive him back. Sweat poured down his face, instantly evaporating on the shield's rapidly heating surface. The Drakkon steel held, but it glowed dull red at the edges where the hottest fragments struck. Smoke curled from the leather grip.
For two heartbeats, it held. A desperate, physical barrier against annihilation. Elira, pressed low beside her father behind the bulk of Calven and other knights, saw the knight's shoulders trembling with the strain. This wasn't effortless energy deflection; this was raw strength and endurance pushed to its absolute limit against forces it was never meant to withstand.
Then, from the smoke and chaos above the burning docks, a turret on a mid-sized cruiser swiveled. Smooth. Relentless. Mechanically precise. Its crimson targeting rune flickered, scanning the chaos, then locked not on the cliff, but on the radiant heat signature of Calven's superheated shield, a beacon in the thermal chaos.
There was no charging whine, no visible beam building. Only the sudden, suffocating pressure drop, the air screaming inwards, and then the howling vacuum of light and force that was the blast itself.
It struck ten meters to their right. The world didn't go white. It went void. A sensory obliteration. Sight, sound, balance, all vanished in an instant of pure, concussive negation.
Then sensation returned in a brutal flood.
RED. Pain. Fire licking at the edge of vision. The metallic taste of blood flooding Elira's mouth. A deafening ringing that drowned all other sound.
BLACK. Spots dancing, consciousness threatening to flee.
The force of the near-miss was a giant's fist. Half the knightly escort simply vanished, hurled screaming over the crumbling edge into the fiery bay below. Sir Calven's shield detonated inwards, shards of solidified energy ripping across his armor, scoring deep grooves, sending him sprawling, smoke rising from his pauldron. Two knights closer to the blast point ceased to exist, one pulped against the shuddering rock wall in a burst of crimson mist and shattered plate, the other simply disintegrated, armor and all, in the heart of the energy flare.
Elira felt weightless. Airborne. The world a tumbling, burning blur. Then the unforgiving stone of the overlook rushed up to meet her. She hit back-first, the impact driving the air from her lungs with a sickening whump. Agony lanced up her spine. Her head cracked against the stone, filling her vision with sparks. Blood, warm and thick, coated her tongue. Above her, streaks of energy fire crisscrossed the smoke-choked sky like hellish lightning.
Through the ringing in her ears, faint, desperate: "Elira! ELIRA!" Her father's voice, raw with fear, cutting through the fog.
She blinked, trying to force the world into focus. Everything tilted. Stone. Sky. Fire. Ruin. She tried to push herself up, arms trembling violently.
And the nightmare, vast, incomprehensible, and born of their own hands, thundered on. Ships continued to turn, firing inland, shattering districts, collapsing bridges, turning manicured parks into craters. The fountain in the central square where the woman had sung, a delicate structure of winged marble figures, took a direct hit from a frigate's pulse cannon. The statues vaporized, the basin erupted in a geyser of steam and shattered stone, and the singer's clear voice was silenced forever in the cataclysm. Roads buckled and vanished under sustained fire, cutting off escape routes, trapping the fleeing in dead ends that became slaughter pens. The proud armada, built as a shield, had become a self-inflicted apocalypse, and no one knew why.
"Elira..."
Her father's voice. She turned. He was lying beside her; his leg twisted beneath a slab of rock. His sword was gone. Blood poured from his temple.
"No. No, no..." She tried to lift it. "I can get this off...don't move..."
"Elira," he said, quieter now. "Listen. You must survive. You are a Vaelora. You are more than blood and title. You... you must find out who did this. Save other."
"Father...!"
The cannon boomed again. The path behind them erupted.
The last remaining knights, Sir Calven, Sir Morien, Lady Thessa, and young Correl, surrounded them, shields raised. "We must go!" Thessa shouted.
Rhael reached up, hand trembling, trying to cup his daughter precious cheek. "Find the truth," he whispered. "Promise me."
"I promise," she choked.
He smiled, and then shoved her, hard, into Calven's arms. "GO!"
The next explosion swallowed him whole.
They ran.
Down the broken cliffside. Through fire and falling stone. Past the crumpled towers and the corpses of their own kin. Ships screamed above them, flame pouring from their bellies. One crashed into the Market of Banners. Another spiraled into the northern keep, tearing a hole in the sea wall.
And behind them, the ship Sun-devil, the pride of the Republic, turned its guns on the harbor and fired.
They reached the portside ledge just as the ground gave out.
No choice.
"Jump!" Calven roared.
They leapt, all four knights dragging Elira with them. The sea rushed up like a black wall. The heat from the blast chased them down, chasing, always chasing.
And as the water closed around her, tearing the breath from her lungs...
*****
She woke screaming.
Gasping. Soaked with sweat. Elira bolted upright beneath the canopy of twisted trees and dripping moss, heart hammering, throat raw.
She was not in Malvin City.
She was not in the past.
The forest pressed close, ancient, rain-drenched, wild. Above, the broken moon filtered through leaves like a silent witness.
The nightmare still clung to her like oil.
She held her hands in front of her face. Trembling.
Alive.
Elira Vaelora was alive.
And somewhere, buried deep in this new, green world, was the reason that caused her father to die.
And the weapon that had destroyed her world.
The scream that tore from Elira's throat echoed through the trees like a wounded animal. Rain drummed lightly on the thick canopy above, and mist curled along the forest floor like ghost-breath. She sat upright, trembling, clutching her knees to her chest, trying to forget the vision of Malvin's destruction, but the smoke still choked her, the heat still licked her skin.
"Elira!" a voice barked.
Sir Calven rushed to her side; sword half-drawn. Behind him, Sir Morien and Lady Thessa sprang up from beneath their cloaks, groggy and wide-eyed.
"What happened?" Thessa snapped, eyes scanning the shadows.
"A dream," Elira rasped. "A... no. A memory."
She tried to steady her breath, but her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Morien knelt beside her. "You were screaming like you were burning alive."
"I... I was," she whispered.
They all fell into a brief silence, broken only by the gentle patter of rain. The makeshift camp, tucked between the roots of a colossal tree, its gnarled trunk big enough to hide ten horses, was nothing but a hollow stitched with tired cloth and damp cloaks. The scent of wet earth, decay, and sweat lingered thick.
Sir Calven straightened slowly. "Where is Correl?"
Heads turned. The youngest knight, barely twenty, brave and eager, had taken first watch. His cloak, once draped across a high branch, was gone.
"Correl?" Calven called.
No answer.
"Damn it," Thessa muttered, rising and buckling on her sword. "He wouldn't leave his post."
"Not without waking us," Morien added. His broad frame moved with surprising speed as he grabbed a small torch and flint.
Calven glanced at Elira. "Stay close. No sudden moves. Something's wrong."
Elira swallowed her dread and nodded, rising to her feet with effort. Her muscles ached from days of endless travel. Ten days they'd wandered, hunted like prey by creatures they didn't understand. Her robes were torn. Her knees were bruised. Her boots, once polished leather, were caked in mud.
But this forest, their supposed haven, was not peace.
It was darker than she remembered. Dusk fell early in Sylvaran country, cloaked in storm clouds and dense foliage. Shafts of light filtered through the treetops like distant prayers. Fog thickened. Sounds changed. The constant dripping of water echoed louder than footsteps. Even the birds had gone silent.
Calven gestured ahead. "Torch up."
Flame bloomed, painting the trunks in orange and gold. They moved slowly now, blades drawn, eyes scanning every bush and hollow. The Lethwood Forest was a living maze. Trees grew so wide a man could sleep inside one. Moss climbed everything. Thorned vines curled in spirals, gripping branches like skeletal fingers.
"He's not far," Morien muttered.
"He wouldn't wander," Thessa agreed.
The scent hit them first.
Metal. Blood.
They rounded a cluster of ferns, and froze.
A clearing opened ahead, haloed in mist. The earth was churned mud. A body lay at the center.
Correl.
Skewered to a tree trunk, his limbs twitching. His armor was completely detroyed. One of his eyes was missing. His sword, snapped in half, was jammed through his stomach and nailed into the bark behind him. He had been alive when they did it.
Elira staggered. "No..."
Calven stepped forward, and a whisper of steel sliced past his ear.
"AMBUSH!" Morien roared.
Figures emerged from the fog, cloaked in silver and black, visors down, crests of the Vaelorian sigil on their pauldrons. Knights. Twenty-five at least, armored and organized. Their eyes shone through their helms with eerie clarity, as if lit from within.
"Vaelorian colors," Thessa breathed, staggering backward.
"No," Calven growled. "That's impossible."
One knight, the one who had thrown the blade, stepped over Correl's corpse like stepping over kindling. His face was hidden behind a porcelain mask. He was a man but he spoke like an old lady. "Surrender yourselves and we will kill you swiftly."
Elira's heart pounded. "Who are you?"
The masked knight ignored her. "Vaelorians. You are to be silenced."
Calven lunged before the man finished speaking.
The clearing exploded.
Steel clashed in a blur of light and noise. Calven's greatsword met the enemy's pike with a ringing cry that echoed for miles. Thessa spun into two knights at once, slashing low to cripple one before burying her blade in the throat of another. Morien, slower but stronger, took three on at once, deflecting their strikes with raw force.
Elira stood frozen.
They were her people.
Vaelorian knights.
But these men moved like strangers.
No hesitation. No honor. No recognition in their eyes, only cold, mechanical violence. Not a word spoken, not a banner raised. Their blades sang without mercy.
One of them sprinted straight for her.
Instinct took over.
Elira's fingers closed around the hilt of her sword before she even thought to reach for it. The familiar leather grip, the one her father had wrapped himself and placed in her hands on her sixteenth birthday, felt foreign now, heavier than memory.
The knight raised his blade to strike.
She ducked low, feet slipping on the wet leaves and churned earth, rolled sideways. Her sword lashed out on reflex, an upward arc of steel slicing through the plated abdomen of the attacker. A scream tore from his throat, raw and human, before he crumpled to the ground.
No time.
Another knight surged in from her right. He moved with practiced precision, training she recognized, mirrored in her own body. She blocked his first swing, but it rattled her bones. Slipped in the muck. He came in for the killing blow.
She kicked out hard, his knee gave way with a crunch.
As he fell, she stepped in, teeth gritted, and drove her sword into the soft place beneath his chin, just under the helmet rim. His hands clawed at her arms for a second. Then they stopped.
And he sagged, his body limp against hers, still heavy with life moments ago.
Her breath came in sharp, shallow gasps. The ringing in her ears drowned out the shouts around her.
The weight of what she had done crashed over her like a wave.
Elira staggered back, her boots slipping in mud now slicked with blood, his blood. Her sword dropped to her side, red and trembling in her grip. She looked down at the man she'd killed. Not just a man. A knight. A Vaelorian knight. A brother-in-arms. A defender of their people.
A human face beneath the helm. Brown eyes, young. Maybe younger than her.
She couldn't breathe.
Her hands shook. Her stomach churned. She tasted bile at the back of her throat.
"I didn't..." she whispered, the words barely escaping her lips. "I didn't mean to..."
But her blade had meant it. Her body had meant it.
The training drilled into her since childhood, the mock duels, the forms, the silent pressure to uphold the Vaelorian legacy, all of it had answered before her mind could. And now two lives lay still at her feet.
She backed away slowly, like the dead might rise and demand an explanation. Her eyes blurred with moisture. Not tears, not yet, but the burn was there. A sting behind her eyelids that refused to pass.
Around her, the glade had turned to chaos.
The remaining knights clashed in the darkening forest, blades flashing under the faint, flickering light that slipped through the canopy. Shouts. Steel. Mud. Blood. It was hard to tell who was winning, harder still to tell who should be winning.
These attackers wore the same armor. Spoke the same tongue. They were her people.
And she had just killed them.
The storm hadn't started falling yet, but she felt the first raindrops on her face like the slow tears of the sky, gentle at first, then heavier, colder. Dusk was falling fast, the forest dimming into shadow. The trees seemed to lean closer, dark and watching, as though even they did not understand what was happening.
Elira turned away from the bodies.
Her feet began to move without thought.
Not a retreat. Not an escape.
A flight.
From the battle.
From what she'd done.
From the realization that she didn't know what side she was even on anymore.
"MOVE! RUN!" Calven shouted, cutting down another attacker. "They're surrounding us!"
They were outnumbered. Still, the remaining three knights fought like demons. Seven enemies lay dead in the mud.
Elira was already running.
She didn't remember making that decision.
She just knew that her hands were wet with blood. Her people's blood.
She ran blindly through the mist, deeper into the woods. Her lungs burned. Her tears blurred everything. Branches whipped her face. Vines caught at her ankles. She didn't know where she was going.
Behind her, the knights cursed.
"Elira!" Calven bellowed. "Slow down! We must stay together!"
But it was too late.
The enemy was behind them again.
They came silently this time, gray shadows in the gloom. Ten. Then fifteen. Then more. They were hunting now.
One of them lunged from the trees, blade aimed for her back.
Morien intercepted him mid-strike, throwing the attacker into a boulder and slamming his mace down on his skull.
Thessa grabbed Elira's hand. "Run!"
The four of them fled together, panting, bleeding, staggering. Rain fell harder. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating their faces: fear, disbelief, betrayal.
"These are our own!" Elira cried. "Why? why are they doing this?!"
"They're not themselves," Calven growled. "Or something's poisoned them. That's not Vaelorian combat. That's murder."
"Where do we go?" Thessa shouted, her voice ragged with exhaustion. The knights' shouts were closer now, the crashing through the undergrowth relentless. They were being herded, cornered against a steep, vine-choked slope.
"We can't outrun them!" Morien bellowed, spinning, his sword trembling in his grip. He planted himself, shoulders heaving, ready to make a final, futile stand. Elira stumbled beside him, her own blade feeling like lead. The knights burst from the dripping trees ahead, silver armor smeared with mud, faces grim beneath their helms. Their blades were raised, death closing in a tightening circle. Despair, cold and final, washed over Elira. This is it.
Then, the forest exploded inwards.
Not with sound, but with silent, terrifying speed. From the fog-shrouded trees flanking the trapped group and their pursuers, figures erupted. Not scattered, but formed. A solid wall slammed down between the exhausted fugitives and the charging knights.
Ash-gray cloaks whipped in the sudden motion. Layered leather armor, boiled hard and studded, absorbed the rain that sizzled where it struck. The air filled with the sharp thud of heavy shields, rectangular slabs of dark, iron-bound wood, being driven edge-first into the sodden earth, forming an instant, bristling barricade. The Vaelorian knights, mid-charge, recoiled in shock, stumbling back, their momentum shattered against the unexpected fortress. Swords clattered against shield rims uselessly.
Before the Vaelorians could even comprehend the ambush, glimmering crossbows from the nearby trees slid through narrow gaps in the shield-wall. A few bolts, cold and sharp, leveled unwaveringly at the knights' throats and the vulnerable points of their mounts. Behind the shields, faces streaked with mountain soot and shadow peered out, eyes hard as flint. Men with spear held low, ready to dart forward like striking snakes the moment the wall parted. They moved with the chilling synchronicity of a wolf pack encircling prey, utterly silent save for the hiss of rain on leather and metal.
And at the precise center of this sudden, living wall, where it had split the chase clean in half, stood a figure wrapped head-to-toe in charcoal-black leather and boiled wool. He was taller than the rest, broader in the shoulder. A strange helmet, forged from dark iron and fitted with a narrow, T-shaped visor that revealed nothing but shadow, hid his face. He stood utterly still amidst the sudden chaos, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of a long, straight blade at his hip, the other hanging loose. Rain streamed down his dark armor, pooling at his boots. He didn't shout, didn't gesture. His mere presence was a command. An immovable stone in the raging stream.
Kael Thorne.
The masked one.
The mountain men did not wait for introductions. They didn't parley. They had arrived for war.
A guttural cry ripped through the rain, "Huu!" torn from the throat of a warrior near Kael's left flank. A command. A trigger.
The shield-wall surged. As one grinding mass, they slammed forward, boots churning mud. Shields smashed into the disoriented Vaelorian line with brutal force. Knights staggered. The sheer weight of the impact crumpled the front rank.
Before the knights could recover, the cry came again: "Huu!"
The shield-wall breathed. Where there had been solid wood and iron, narrow gaps snapped open between shields, precise slits barely wider than a man's hand. Through these openings, iron spearpoints lanced forward like striking vipers. Aimed thrusts punched into visor slits, gorget joints, and unarmored thighs. A knight screamed as a spearpoint found his eye-slit. Another clutched at a shaft buried deep in his hip joint.
"Huu!" The third cry snapped like a whip.
The gaps vanished. Shields slammed shut, forming the wall again. Simultaneously, the Thrygond warriors took another grinding step forward, shields pressing hard.
The battle had begun.
*****