[VELHEM EASTERN BORDER – LATE AFTERNOON]
The battlefield was chaos, mud, blood, and smoke everywhere. Velhem's soldiers had held for hours against Elyria's attacks, but barely. Swords clashed, shields broke, and explosions lit up the bloody sunset.
Then the retreat horn sounds.
Long, mournful, unmistakable.
Velhem soldiers hesitate mid-swing. Officers shout orders, voices cracking with confusion.
"Why are we pulling back?" a young spearman mutters, wiping blood from his brow. "We're still even. We can hold them."
But the horn blows again three sharp blasts. No mistake.
They retreat.
Boots suck at the mud as ranks peel away in disciplined disorder, shields locked to cover the withdrawal. Elyrian forces surge forward in pursuit, howling victory, spears leveled, cavalry thundering along the flanks. The chase is brutal, arrows rake the retreating backs, men fall screaming but the Velhem lines reach the massive eastern gate just as dusk settles. Iron portcullis crashes down behind the last stragglers. The Elyrians halt at the edge of arrow range, jeering, banners snapping in the wind.
On a low rise overlooking the carnage, a rider reins in his black stallion. Long ponytail whipping like a banner, armor dented and blood-streaked, he is unmistakably their field commander Lord Kael Vorne, third son of House Vorne, the Iron Spear of Elyria.
He turns to the woman beside him on a gray mare. Captain Seris Vale, short-cropped hair streaked with gray despite being only thirty, eyes sharp. She wears the black and gold of the Royal Vanguard, sword still drawn, edge notched from the day's work.
KAEL
(voice low, uneasy)
Why the retreat? The line held well. There were trading blows evenly. Something's wrong.
SERIS
(shrugging, wiping sweat from her face)
Maybe it finally dawned on them there can't win this one. They're pulling back to restrategize. Buy time.
KAEL
No.
(eyes narrowing at the distant gate)
That horn wasn't panic. It was deliberate. Something else is happening.
Seris follows his gaze. The eastern gate massive, rune etched, supposedly impregnable stands quiet now. Too quiet.
[WAR TENT – INSIDE THE CITY WALL – MINUTES LATER]
The tent is cramped, lit by flickering mana-lamps. Maps cover every surface. Officers stand rigid, waiting.
Yuka's voice cuts through the tension like a drawn bowstring.
YUKA
It's time, Monaki.
Monaki stands at the center, black cloak obscuring most of his face, only his eyes visible cold, steady, ancient. Taru waits beside him, twin swords already drawn, black cloth wrapped around the lower half of her face. Yuka's bow is slung low, quiver bristling with black-fletched arrows.
MONAKI
(Takes a deep breath)
Open the gate.
A captain hesitates.
CAPTAIN
Sire, there are forty thousand of them out there. Armed to the teeth. We open that gate and…
MONAKI
(turning, scales glinting faintly beneath the cloak's edge)
Open. The. Gate.
The captain swallows, nods. Horns sound again this time short, commanding blasts.
[EASTERN GATE – DUSK]
Forty thousand Elyrian soldiers arrayed in perfect formation: spearmen in the front ranks, archers behind, cavalry on the wings, siege engines rumbling at the rear. Shields locked, banners high, they wait for the inevitable sally or surrender.
Instead the gate opens.
And three figures walk out.
Three teenagers.
Black clothes, faces partially obscured by cloth and shadow. No armor. No banners. No army behind them.
A ripple of confusion rolls through the Elyrian ranks.
A soldier laughs nervously.
SOLDIER
What is this? A joke?
Another mutters.
SOLDIER 2
They sent children. They've lost their minds.
Lord Kael spurs his horse forward a few paces, hand on his sword hilt.
KAEL
(voice carrying across the field)
And you are?
Monaki stops ten paces from the gate. Taru and Yuka flank him, silent, coiled.
MONAKI
(voice calm, almost conversational)
How about we all call it a day? You go home. We go home. Nobody else has to get hurt.
Laughter erupts from the Elyrian lines.
KAEL
(raising an eyebrow)
Bold words for three kids standing in front of forty thousand swords. Who are you, really?
MONAKI
I'm the man who's about to make a lot of your children fatherless if you don't turn around right now.
The laughter dies.
Kael's expression hardens. He lifts a gauntleted hand.
KAEL
Archers. Ready.
Thousands of bows creak as strings are drawn taut. Arrowheads glint in the dying light.
Seris, still on her mare beside him, leans close.
SERIS
(quiet, almost amused)
Surely he's joking.
Kael doesn't answer. His hand drops.
KAEL
Release!
A black storm of arrows rises tens of thousands, blotting out what little sky remains. The sound is a hissing roar, like wind through dead trees.
Monaki doesn't move.
He begins to speak, voice low, almost a whisper that somehow carries to every ear on the field.
Taru steps forward. Twin swords flash as she moves—impossibly fast, a blur of steel and shadow deflecting, parrying, shattering arrows mid-flight that come too close to the trio. Sparks fly. She never breaks stride.
Monaki's incantation continues, soft, deliberate.
MONAKI
…what can make your blood harden.
It should be cold.
And painless.
Feel nothing…
Until you are dead.
He finishes the phrase like a sigh.
MONAKI
Vera Forza.
The air temperature drops twenty degrees in a heartbeat.
Frost crawls across the ground in jagged veins. Breath steams, then crystallizes into glittering shards that hang suspended.
The first screams start at the front ranks.
Soldiers look down in horror as their fingers stiffen, turn blue, then white. Veins bulge black beneath skin that cracks like porcelain. Blood in their arteries freezes solid—expands—shatters capillaries from the inside.
Panic erupts.
Men claw at their throats, at their chests. Spears drop. Shields clatter. Horses rear, throwing riders as ice forms in their lungs.
Rows collapse.
Front line falls to their knees, then forward, bodies fracturing on impact—limbs snapping like dry twigs, torsos bursting into glittering red ice-dust.
The scream becomes a chorus.
Behind them, archers fumble bows with frozen fingers. Cavalry horses bolt. Commanders shout useless orders as their own blood turns to razor slush in their veins.
Kael stares, mouth open, ponytail whipping in the sudden arctic wind.
KAEL
(hoarse)
What… what in the hells
Seris's mare shies, nearly throwing her.
SERIS
(whisper)
He wasn't joking.
Monaki lowers his hand. Frost clings to his cloak like diamonds. Taru sheathes her swords, breathing steady. Yuka nocks an arrow anyway pointless now.
The Elyrian army breaks.
Forty thousand men scatter like leaves in a gale—some running, some crawling, many simply collapsing into glittering, broken statues.
The field is silent except for the crackle of ice and the distant, fading screams.
Monaki turns back toward the gate.
MONAKI
(quiet, to no one in particular)
I told them to go home.
Inside the city walls, soldiers peer over the battlements in stunned silence.
The war isn't over.
But the eastern front just changed forever.