The column advanced, and Eldric couldn't shake the feeling that something, very far back in his nape, was whispering that he was walking toward a place he didn't know how to return from.
Two hundred men.
Armor that captured the evening light and returned it in blind flashes—beautiful, useless. Banners that danced above their heads like birds trained to die. And the sound of boots against the road, that dull, rhythmic murmur that for three months had been the only constant in his life.
Eldric walked alone at the front.
Not because he wanted to. Because he had to.
A hero doesn't ride a horse. A hero doesn't hide behind his men. A hero advances first, dies last, and in between makes everyone believe that winning is possible.
His white armor was engraved with runes he didn't understand but had learned to venerate. Dawn's Edge rested on his back with the exact weight of a promise he wasn't yet sure he could keep.
A hero.
An Invoked.
A living weapon forged by the gods to protect this world.
Or so they had told him.
"Lord Eldric."
The captain's voice came from behind, dragging him back to the present. The man had scars on his neck that wrinkled whenever he spoke, like old navigation charts.
"We'll reach Dreisburg before nightfall."
Eldric nodded. He didn't turn.
"Good. Units in standard siege formation."
"Siege, sir?" The captain hesitated. It was a small hesitation, almost imperceptible, but Eldric felt it like a tug at his nape. "Reports say it's only a village..."
"The reports," Eldric cut in, and his voice came out flatter than he intended, "also said it was irrelevant. And yet, here we are."
The captain closed his mouth.
The sound of boots on the road filled the silence that followed.
This doesn't make sense.
Three months had passed since he opened his eyes in a room that smelled of incense and lies. Three months of banquets where he was served first, ceremonies where he was named first, training where he was placed at the front of everything because, they said, that was what he was born for.
They had given him a title.
An army.
A "heroic" mission.
But never a reason.
"Save the kingdom from darkness," they told him on the first day, with smiles that didn't reach their eyes.
What darkness?
A handful of peasants who had stopped paying taxes? A rebel leader with delusions of grandeur? Was that a darkness worthy of a hero?
Eldric clenched his fist. His armor creaked.
No. There's something else. There has to be.
Because if this was just an act of intimidation against people who already had nothing left to lose...
Then what the hell was he?
---
The sun was dying when Dreisburg appeared on the horizon.
It wasn't what Eldric had imagined.
He frowned.
The houses were intact. The roofs, repaired. The streets, swept. Smoke rose from chimneys in orderly columns—domestic, almost welcoming.
"That doesn't look like a rebel village," someone in the ranks murmured.
"Silence in the formation," the captain ordered.
But Eldric had already heard it.
Rebels don't repair roofs. Bandits don't organize cooking shifts.
He stopped.
The entire column stopped with him, two hundred bodies obeying a pause that hadn't even been an order.
"Captain."
"Sir?"
"Scouts. Three groups. North, east, west. I want to know if there are ambushes on the perimeter."
The captain blinked.
"You think...?"
"Do as I say."
"Yes, sir!"
Nine men dispersed toward the flanks like seeds in the wind.
Eldric observed Dreisburg in silence.
Something is wrong.
The air was too still. Too dense. Too... expectant.
As if the village itself was holding its breath.
---
The scouts returned twenty minutes later. Twenty minutes that had felt like twenty hours to Eldric.
"Nothing, sir." The man was panting, but not from running. It was something else. Something Eldric couldn't name. "No visible traps. No barricades."
He paused. Swallowed.
"The gates are... open."
Eldric narrowed his eyes.
"Open?"
"Yes, sir. As if... they were expecting us."
A murmur rippled through the ranks. Not fear, not yet. It was that uncomfortable tingle that precedes fear, when the body knows something the mind isn't ready to accept.
The captain stepped closer. His voice was lower now, more careful.
"Lord Eldric... do we advance?"
Eldric didn't respond immediately.
His instinct—that same instinct that had kept him alive through three months of hellish training, that had made him dodge blows before he saw them coming—was screaming.
This is a trap.
But he couldn't retreat.
Not in front of two hundred men who looked at him as if he were invincible. Not in front of the banners waving above their heads with Avernor's golden eagle. Not in front of himself.
"We advance," he said, and his own voice sounded like cold iron to him. "Close formation. Shields forward. Archers in the rear. No one separates from the group."
"Understood!"
The column reorganized. Shields finding shields. Spears seeking angles. The two-headed monster reconfiguring its jaws.
They began to enter.
---
Dreisburg received them in silence.
There were no war cries. No arrows from the rooftops. No barricades, no traps, no visible ambushes.
Only silence.
The windows were closed. The doors, ajar. The streets, empty. But Eldric could feel them.
They're watching us.
Each step echoed too loudly in that motionless air. Boots against cobblestones sounded like funeral drums. Armor clinked with every movement—treacherous, noisy.
"Sir..." whispered a young soldier. He must have been seventeen, maybe eighteen. His voice hadn't finished changing. "I don't like this."
"Neither do I," Eldric replied.
His hand found Dawn's Edge's hilt. The metal was hot.
Suddenly—
CRASH.
A window on the second floor of a house to the right exploded outward.
The soldiers turned as one body. Shields up. Spears forward. Hearts galloping.
No one emerged.
Only smoke.
"What the hell...?"
CRASH. CRASH. CRASH.
Three more windows. Four. Six.
Smoke began to pour through the broken frames like water from a breached dam—dense, gray, alive. It slid down walls. Swirled at corners. Began to fill the main street.
"Formation!" The captain's voice cracked. "Maintain formation!"
But it was too late.
The smoke spread like a predator that had been waiting for the exact moment. It swallowed entire soldiers. Erased faces. Devoured distances.
"I can't see anything!"
"Captain! Captain, where are you?!"
"Stay calm, damn it!"
Eldric closed his eyes.
No. This is exactly what they want.
He inhaled. Deep. The smoke burned his throat.
And he activated his ability.
"Clarity Aura"
White light erupted from his chest—expansive, furious, hungry for darkness. The smoke retreated ten meters in all directions, recoiling like a whipped beast.
The soldiers around him breathed.
"Group around me!" Eldric ordered. "Now!"
The men began to move toward him, toward the light, toward the only certainty in that fog of hell.
Then—
From the rooftops.
Fffft. Fffft. Fffft.
Arrows.
Not many. Barely a dozen. But precise. Surgical.
Three soldiers fell. Their screams tore the air. They weren't dead—the arrows had sought legs, shoulders, hands—but they were out of combat.
"Above!" The captain's voice was a howl. "They're on the rooftops!"
Avernor's archers raised their bows. Fired blindly into the fog.
No one fell.
The smoke kept moving. Shifting shape. As if someone were breathing it.
Eldric clenched his teeth so hard he felt his molars crack.
They're dismantling us.
Not with force.
With patience.
---
On Raven Hill, Kaito observed.
The spyglass swept across the battlefield with the slowness of a surgeon seeking the exact point to cut.
Adelheid stood at his side, her silhouette outlined against the dying sky. She didn't need to ask what he saw. She knew. She felt it in the air, in that electric tension that always preceded Kaito's orders.
"Beta Group performed perfectly," she reported, and her voice was a thread of contained satisfaction. "The hero dispersed the smoke, but they've already lost cohesion."
Kaito nodded.
"Alpha Group. Second level. Distraction attack."
Adelheid raised the red flag.
In the distance, on Dreisburg's rooftops, the shadows moved.
---
The scream came from the rear.
"HELP! THEY'VE GOT ME! THEY'—"
The sound cut off as if someone had closed a door.
"Squad three! With him!" the captain ordered.
Five men peeled away from the formation. Their boots thundered against the cobblestones as they launched themselves toward the dark mouth of an alley.
Eldric extended his arm.
"NO!" His voice was thunder. "It's a trap, don't—!"
Too late.
The five entered the alley.
A metallic sound. Short. Definitive.
Then nothing.
"Squad three?" The captain's voice had lost all authority. It was just the voice of an old man suddenly too afraid. "Squad three, report?"
Silence.
The captain looked at him. His eyes—forty years of battles, of deaths, of surviving everything—were empty.
"Lord Eldric..." he whispered. "This isn't a rebel village."
Eldric held his gaze.
"No," he replied, and as he spoke he drew Dawn's Edge. The steel sang as it freed itself from the sheath—a pure, ancient lament. "This is a mousetrap."
And they had walked straight into it.
---
From his elevated position, Kaito watched the hero draw his sword.
The light emanating from the weapon was beautiful. Powerful. A beacon in the midst of the fog.
Completely useless.
"Phase one complete," he said, and his voice was as flat as always. "Casualties?"
Adelheid consulted her tablet.
"Eight wounded on the enemy side. Three demoralized." A pause. A small, almost imperceptible smile. "Zero casualties on our side."
"Good."
Kaito observed the hero.
The man stood at the center of his broken formation, sword raised, light pouring from his chest like a second heart. He was imposing. He was exactly what Avernor had wanted to create.
But the light couldn't reach what it couldn't see.
And Dreisburg...
Dreisburg was no longer a place.
Dreisburg was a living organism, and every alley was an artery, every rooftop a nerve ending, every shadow a cell waiting for the order to attack.
And Kaito was its brain.
He extended his hand.
The black gloves gleamed under the last light of dusk. Inside them, the cards trembled.
One in particular... burned.
Red like spilled blood.
Gold like the crowns Avernor had used to oppress.
"I think," Kaito said, and his voice was as calm as ever, as measured, as precise, "it's time to introduce them to someone else."
Adelheid tilted her head. Her silver hair slid over her shoulder.
"You'll summon her now?"
Kaito closed his eyes.
If they want a villain...
His fingers found the edge of the card. The paper was cold, almost icy, as if it had spent centuries buried somewhere the sun never reached.
He drew it.
On its surface, engraved with letters that seemed written in mist, in forgotten dreams, in broken promises:
«Lilith: The Poisoner of Faith»
She did not destroy kingdoms with swords.
She destroyed them by making them forget why they existed.
Kaito opened his eyes.
"...I'll give them a nightmare."
The card ignited.
The air grew dense, thick, almost liquid. The temperature dropped several degrees in a matter of seconds. Adelheid exhaled and her breath became mist.
And over Dreisburg, like a shroud of death woven by invisible hands, the white fog began to descend.
---
Eldric felt the change before he saw it.
It was a tingle at the nape of his neck—that same instinct that had saved his life dozens of times in training. Something new was entering the battlefield. Something that hadn't been there a minute ago.
He looked up.
The fog was falling.
It wasn't the same fog as before, that dense gray smoke that had poured from the windows. This was different. This was white, almost luminous, and it fell with the slowness of feathers.
It was beautiful.
And that was what frightened him most.
"Defensive formation!" he shouted, his voice tearing through the air. "Everyone around me, now!"
The soldiers obeyed. They pressed against him, against the light of his aura, against the only safety they had left.
The white fog kept falling.
And then, from somewhere very deep within Dreisburg, from some corner where Eldric's light couldn't reach, a voice whispered:
"What a lovely army you've brought me."
The sound was soft, almost maternal. Like a grandmother receiving her grandchildren for dinner.
But Eldric felt ice crawling up his spine.
"Who are you?" he asked, and he hated the tremor in his own voice.
The laugh that answered didn't come from a specific place. It came from everywhere. From the fog. From the walls. From the shadows lengthened by twilight.
"Me?"
A pause. Long. Deliberate.
"I am the reason your gods don't answer your prayers, little hero."
Eldric gripped his sword hilt.
The light of his aura flickered.
---
On Raven Hill, Kaito watched the white fog swallow Dreisburg.
Adelheid had moved closer. Her shoulder almost touched his.
"Do you think she can take him?" she asked.
"Lilith?" Kaito shook his head. "No. Eldric is too strong. Too pure. She can't defeat him."
He paused.
"But she doesn't need to."
Adelheid looked at him. Her gray eyes searched his face for something—a crack, an emotion she could catch.
"What does she need to do?"
Kaito watched the hero down there, surrounded by soldiers who depended on him, trapped in a battle he couldn't win with a sword.
"Only make him doubt," he replied. "Once."
The wind blew.
The white fog closed over Dreisburg like a shroud.
And at the center of the gorge, surrounded by shadows and men who were beginning to forget why they followed him, Eldric raised his sword toward an enemy he couldn't see.
Dawn's Edge shone.
But the light, for the first time in three months, did not seem enough.
---