A soldier's voice cut through the chaos, raw with terror:
"THE SUPREME COMMANDER HAS FALLEN!"
The effect was instantaneous.
Soldiers froze mid-swing. Formations shattered. Eyes went wide with animal panic as the reality sank in—their leader was gone. The wall was breached. They were going to die here.
The Orcs didn't hesitate.
They poured through the gaping holes in the wall like a green flood, howling in triumph. What had been a disciplined defense became a slaughter. Soldiers fled screaming. Those who tried to stand and fight were torn apart, dragged down by sheer numbers, their screams lost in the roar of the horde.
The casualties mounted by the second.
Miyako heard the cry.
Something inside her broke.
Her precision vanished. Her discipline shattered. What remained was pure, unadulterated fury.
She carved into the Orc horde like a force of nature, her blade moving too fast to follow. Limbs flew. Blood sprayed. She didn't dodge—she walked through them, her sword aura flaring white-hot as it bisected everything in her path.
Her face was carved from ice.
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
She didn't feel them.
She carved a straight, bloody line toward the collapsed rampart, toward where he'd fallen, toward where she would find him alive or die trying.
On the opposite flank, Maximus saw the breach—and the chaos spreading like wildfire.
His expression darkened. He turned to his men, voice cold and flat:
"We're pulling back. Now."
The Golden Pike began their retreat. Disciplined. Professional. Survivors.
They hadn't come here to die for a foreign prince.
Hilowat saw Miyako advancing—alone, blind with rage, cutting toward certain death.
He cursed under his breath.
"Imperial Knights! Bloodfrost! On me—we're moving to the Saintess!"
His formation wheeled, driving toward Miyako's position. The Northern warriors roared their approval, axes rising and falling in brutal rhythm as they carved through the Orc tide.
Miyako was thirty meters from the breach when a hand locked around her wrist from behind.
She spun, blade rising to strike—
—and stopped, breathing hard, eyes wild.
Hilowat stood there, his grip like iron. Behind him, the Imperial Knights and Bloodfrost warriors had formed a shield wall, holding back the green tide in a desperate half-circle.
"Let. Go." Her voice was barely human.
"No." Hilowat's tone was flat, unyielding. "It's death ahead, Saintess. You know this."
"I don't care." Her voice cracked, tears cutting tracks through the blood on her face. "If he's dead, then I die with him! Let me GO—"
Hilowat yanked her back, forcing her to meet his eyes.
"If we lose you as well, we're all dead. Every man here. Every soul in this city." His voice dropped, iron-hard. "And my Lord will kill me himself if I let something happen to you. So you're staying alive, even if I have to drag you back myself."
Miyako's breath came in ragged gasps. Her sword arm trembled.
She opened her mouth to scream, to fight, to—
Movement.
In the rubble ahead, something moved.
A section of debris shifted. Stones tumbled aside.
A hand emerged—bloodied, shaking—and gripped the edge of a broken slab.
Then another.
Mikhail dragged himself out of the collapsed wall, inch by agonizing inch. His armor was cracked, his face a mask of blood and dirt. His left arm hung limp at his side.
In his right hand, he gripped his sword.
In his left, he dragged the unconscious Telepath by the collar, the mage's robes torn and bloodied.
Mikhail staggered upright, swaying, eyes blazing with defiant fury. He spat blood and raised his sword toward the advancing Orcs.
His voice rang out, hoarse but unbroken:
"I'll be damned if I die here!"