The river stank of blood.
Rowan's arms shook as he swung, ice flashing from his harpoon in jagged bursts. The water was red around him, churned with mud and corpses, but still the raiders came. One lunged from the left, blade slashing. Rowan ducked, but another was already at his back. A third waded in, teeth bared, and suddenly he was surrounded—four blades closing in at once. The river that had been his ally now felt like a trap, sucking at his legs, slowing every desperate step. His chest heaved. His ice had kept them back for so long, but now he had nothing left to give.
He tightened his grip. If this was the end, he would drag them into the depths with him.
---
On the rise, Ari's bowstring snapped across her bleeding fingers. She hissed and forced another arrow to the string anyway, ignoring the sting, ignoring the rawness where the skin had torn. She loosed, and another raider fell. She reached back—and felt nothing. Empty.
Her quiver was bare.
She stared at it, disbelief striking harder than the battle cries below. For hours she had loosed, volley after volley, keeping the tide thin, making ten archers sound like a hundred. Now her hands hung empty, her bow useless.
Shouts rose below. Raiders were breaking through the line, climbing the slope toward her and the others. Ari grabbed the nearest villager, a trembling woman with nothing but a kitchen knife.
"Knives, stones—whatever you've got. Don't wait for them to reach you. Throw. Cut. Fight."
It wasn't hope. It was survival.
The villagers obeyed, desperate hands grabbing at knives, broken tools, rocks. They hurled stones down the hill, stabbed at raiders clawing up the rise. The clash was ugly, clumsy, but it bought them moments.
Ari clenched her jaw, bow dangling uselessly at her side. For the first time, her arrows had run out before the enemy did.
---
Nyx roared, Pan bursting from shadow beside her. The panther tore a man down, claws sinking through armor, as the freed captain swung his sword in wide arcs, rallying what remained of their line. For a moment, they pushed the raiders back, hope sparking in their chests.
But momentum dies faster than fire.
The enemy simply shifted, pouring more soldiers into the gap. Nyx leapt again, shadows dragging her forward—but a blade caught her side. She gasped as the world spun, slammed to the dirt, a boot pressing her shoulder down. She snarled, shadows clawing upward, but they bent weakly. Too many. Too much.
The captain roared, cutting a man down to free her. But Nyx felt the truth as she coughed blood onto the ground. Their surge had failed.
---
Lyra staggered through the mud, her shield flickering faintly around a knot of wounded. Her mule strained at the cart, endless bags carrying endless weight—but even its enchanted burden bowed now.
Everywhere she looked, men and women bled. Some still fought. Some begged for aid. Some had already gone still, eyes glassy in the firelight.
"I can't…" she whispered, pressing trembling hands to a dying man's chest. The shield cracked above her, arrows hissing down. She shoved more power into it, veins burning, throat raw. The barrier held for another volley—but at the edges, it was splintering.
The wounded cried out. Lyra bit her lip until she tasted blood. No matter how many she saved, more fell. For the first time, despair clawed her throat.
There were simply too many.
---
Farther back in the treeline, Tamsin crouched among the youngest and weakest. She had led them away just as Lyra had asked, keeping them hidden, safe. But the screams from the battle carried even here. The clash of steel, the cries of the dying, the horn blasts—each sound was a knife in her chest.
She wrapped her arms around two terrified children, whispering comfort, but her eyes burned with guilt. While they bleed, I hide.
Her healing light could be saving lives out there. Instead, she was here, protecting those who couldn't run or fight. She told herself it was necessary—that without her, these innocents would already be dead. But the guilt gnawed all the same.
She pressed her forehead to her knees and whispered a promise. "If the line breaks… I'll go back. I swear it."
---
Steel rang on steel.
Brennar's axe rose and fell, each swing slower than the last. Beside him, Toren's sword flashed white-gold, his aura pulsing faintly as he fought like a man twice his age. They stood back-to-back, the last two pillars in a storm that had crushed everyone else.
Brennar spat blood. "Still with me, boy?"
"Always," Toren grunted, his blade cleaving through a raider's helm.
Two nameless swordsmen already lay still in the mud. The third had crawled behind the log, his lifeblood soaking the earth. It was just them now. Berserker and swordsman. And the tide pressed closer, endless, endless.
Brennar's knees shook. His axe felt like iron shackles. He swung anyway, his roar cracking the night. Toren mirrored him, teeth bared. But both of them knew—they could not last.
---
And at the flank, Ashwyn's wall was gone.
Blackened stumps jutted where the Thornwall had stood, smoke coiling upward in greasy pillars. The last brambles smoldered at his feet, ash sticking to his robe.
Ten soldiers advanced, steel glinting. Behind them, two Firebound stalked forward, their bodies ringed in unnatural flame. The heat singed the air, curling the edges of Ashwyn's beard.
He lifted his staff, shoulders trembling. He could still raise roots, still skewer a few before they reached him. But not ten. Not two Firebound. Not this tide.
The battlefield was breaking. Rowan drowning in the river. Ari weaponless. Nyx bloodied in the dirt. Lyra buckling under despair. Brennar and Toren back-to-back, one swing from death.
The plan had carried them this far, but now it was ash.
Ashwyn closed his eyes. He heard the forest weeping—the hiss of burning bark, the cries of roots dying in the soil. He pressed his palms to the staff, then lifted both arms to the sky.
His voice thundered, raw and ancient.
"Spirits of the forest! Answer me!"
The ground rumbled, deep and hungry. Trees shivered, branches bowing as though in reverence. From somewhere far, far below, a roar rose—not beast, not man, but earth itself.
Ashwyn's eyes burned. His scream carried over the battlefield.
And the world held its breath.