The bell's tolling grew faster, then broke into a panicked clanging.
From the ridge, Al and Arlen saw Greyfall change shape. People poured into the streets like ants from a kicked hill: mothers dragging children, men snatching spears from doorways, old folks hobbling toward the shrine.
At the western gate, figures took position on the palisade: Corin in his battered leather and iron, shield on his arm, spear in hand. Master Bren beside him, barking orders. A handful of other veterans. Not enough.
"Look at their armor," Arlen murmured. "Mixed. Some Aurelion plate bits, some Eastern lamellar. Deserters."
Al didn't answer. His heart thudded like the bell. The bandit force—dozens, maybe more than fifty—fanned out as they approached. Some on horseback. A few beastkin on lean, gray-furred mounts. And at their front, a broad-shouldered man in piecemeal armor, a dark scarf wrapped around his lower face, eyes too bright.
Even from here, Al felt…something. A prickle at his skin. Like being watched from too close.
"What is that?" he whispered.
Arlen swallowed. "Maybe he's just scary."
"No. It's…" Al shook his head. No words. Just wrong.
The raiders halted just out of bow range. Their leader raised a hand. For a moment, the world held its breath.
A voice carried up faintly from the gate. Corin, formal: "This is Greyfall, under the March of Greyreach. We have little worth taking. Turn back and live."
Arlen made a small appreciative noise. "He sounds like Bren when he's pretending to be a noble."
The bandit leader's laughter drifted up, ugly and amused. He said something Al couldn't hear, but the answer was clear when he gestured and his riders spread wider, some lapsing out of sight toward the river side.
Arlen's grip on his wooden sword whitened. "We can't just stay up here."
"Daran said—"
"Daran isn't Father." Arlen stood. "If they flank the river side and get in through the old sluice, we're done. I know a path down there faster than they do."
Al's stomach knot tightened. "Arlen—"
"You told me to think," Arlen snapped. "I'm thinking. We warn them, we help from inside, we—"
Steel glinted below as Corin raised his spear. Behind him, by the shrine, robes fluttered: Father Edran stepping out, staff in hand, the faintest golden glow haloing his shoulders. Sanctuary.
The raiders surged forward.
Arlen's face set. "I'm going."
Then he was running along the ridge, ash puffing around his boots.
"Arlen!" Al hesitated a heartbeat, then hurled after him. His legs burned. The world narrowed to his brother's back and the pounding in his ears.
They slid down a narrow goat path cut into the slope, loose stones skittering ahead of them. The path curved toward the back of the village, where the palisade thinned and the old drainage ditch cut under it. Kids used it as a secret exit. Bandits might, too.
Al glimpsed flashes of the fight as they ran: arrows arcing from the wall, one horse going down in a tumble of limbs, Bren shoving a shield line forward to plug a gap. A shout as a raider collapsed clutching his throat. Another scream—high, raw—cut short.
"Faster," Arlen gasped.
They burst from scrub into the shallow, weed-choked ditch that ran along the wall's base. Ahead, half-hidden by reeds, a crude wooden grate marked the old sluice.
And between them and it, two figures in mismatched armor turned, surprised.
One human, skinny but quick, with a notched short sword. One beastkin—wolf-headed, fur matted, eyes pale gold—gripping a hooked spear.
They'd found the sluice too.
The human bandit recovered first. "Look what the ash coughed up."
Arlen skidded to a halt, dragged his wooden sword up. "Stay behind me, Al."
The wolfkin snorted. "Little pups playing at war."
"Drop the sword and I won't gut you slow," the man said, stepping forward.
Arlen moved.
For a moment, Al forgot to be afraid. Arlen flowed into the forms Bren had drilled, but sharper, more alive. He slipped inside the man's guard with a low step and cracked his wooden blade across the bandit's wrist.
Bone or nerve gave; the man yelped, sword dropping. Arlen followed with a thrust to the ribs. Wood thumped leather. The man staggered, winded.
Then the wolfkin's spear blurred.
Arlen twisted, but not fast enough. The hook caught his side, ripping cloth and flesh. He cried out, dropped to a knee, wooden sword skidding away.
"ARLEN!" Al's vision tunneled.
The beastkin yanked his spear free lazily, eyes on the boy trying to stand again. "Brave," he said. "Stupid."
The human laughed, scooping up his sword with his off-hand. "Let's trim them both—"
Something in Al snapped.
Fear and a cold, sharp anger collided in his chest. The wrong-feeling prickle from before flared—not from the bandit leader this time, but from everywhere. The ash, the stones, the faint pressure pressing down on Greyfall since the first bell's ring.
He didn't know names like Pneuma or Essence. He just…reached.
His breath hitched. For a second, the world stretched thin. He felt Arlen's pain-hot presence, the hunters' intent, even the slow pulse in the earth underfoot where old ash lay deep.
Move.
He shoved—not his brother, not really, but something between them.
The wolfkin's foot, braced for a killing thrust, slipped on suddenly loose ash. The spear dipped an inch.
Arlen's body lurched sideways at the same instant, as if pushed by an invisible hand. The hook that should have opened his throat instead tore a bloody line along his shoulder.
At the same time, the human's sword stroke came down—and a rock, dislodged a heartbeat too early to be chance, rolled under his heel. He stumbled. The blade hacked air where Al's neck had been a moment before.
Al realized he'd thrown himself forward too, half tackled Arlen, driving them both into the ditch. The spear's tip carved a burning line along his back, shallow but hot.
For a fraction of a second, everything stuttered: sound dimmed, color dulled, the air thick around them. Then it snapped back.
"What—?" the wolfkin snarled, regaining balance.
A bellow cut through the air like a hammer. "DOWN!"
Al clamped onto Arlen and flattened. A thrown spear—a real one, heavy oak and iron—hummed above them.
It hit the wolfkin in the chest with a sickening thud.
The raider staggered, impaled, eyes wild. Another spear followed, striking the human in the shoulder and spinning him down into the ditch. Both were still.
Boots splashed through the shallow water. Corin's face loomed over them, grim and pale, another spear in hand. Blood streaked his cheek. His eyes flickered from Arlen's wound to the cut on Al's back.
"What were you thinking?" His voice shook. With rage, with fear. "I told you—"
"Father—" Arlen winced, trying to sit. "The sluice—"
"I know about the damned sluice." Corin's gaze jerked to the bodies, then back to his sons. "Can you move?"
Al nodded, throat too tight to speak.
"Then you move. Back to the shrine, now. Daran!" he shouted, looking up the slope. "Get them in! I need to get back to the gate."
Daran was already half-running, half-sliding down. "On it."
Corin squeezed Al's shoulder once—a brief, crushing grip—then turned and ran, spear in hand, back toward the main fight.
Daran hauled Arlen up with surprising gentleness, slinging his good arm over his shoulder. "You pick fine moments to be brave," he grunted.
Arlen tried to grin and hissed in pain. "Got one of them."
"And nearly got yourself two-headed," Daran said. "Move."
Al followed, every step sending a jolt up his spine. His mind replayed the last ten seconds again and again: the slip, the twist, the rock, the spear that should have killed.
He'd felt something, just before it happened. Not words. Just…threads.
The shrine's bell began to ring a different pattern—a call for Sanctuary. Father Edran's voice rose, deep and steady, chanting old Logos phrases.
And behind them, ash continued to fall in soft gray streams, as if the air itself was sifting.