The moment of control didn’t last.

  Ren saw it in their movements—the abyssals were no longer blindly charging in. They slowed, watching, calculating. Adapting.

  And then, they changed their approach.

  The abyssals at the front suddenly stopped attacking.

  Instead, they stepped back.

  The soldiers hesitated. Confusion spread through the ranks. Why weren’t they pressing forward?

  Then Ren saw it—their mistake.

  They weren’t trying to win through brute force anymore.

  They were waiting.

  For exhaustion. For fear. For doubt.

  The battlefield had gone silent except for the heavy breaths of the men around him. The only sound was the howling wind cutting through the ridge.

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  Ren clenched his teeth. They were being hunted.

  “Stay together! No one breaks formation!” he commanded.

  A soldier next to him—a young man barely older than a boy—was shaking. Sweat dripped down his dirt-covered face. “W-why aren’t they attacking?”

  “Because they know they don’t have to,” Ren muttered. He already saw how this would end if they didn’t act now.

  And then, as if on cue—a single abyssal moved.

  Not forward.

  Up.

  It scaled the jagged ridge wall with terrifying ease, its black claws digging into the stone like it was paper.

  And then another.

  Then another.

  They weren’t going to fight head-on anymore.

  They were going to come from above.

  Ren’s blood ran cold.

  “Break formation! Run! Get to open ground!”

  It was the worst possible order. It would make them vulnerable. But staying here was worse.

  They ran.

  The moment they moved, the abyssals descended from the cliffs like shadows with teeth.

  Screams tore through the air as men were pulled upward, their bodies vanishing into the darkness above.

  Ren didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

  He was sprinting now, dodging the grasping claws, the black blades that cut through the wind like whispers.

  A soldier ahead of him tripped. Ren lunged to grab him—

  Too late.

  The abyssals were already there.

  The man barely had time to scream before they ripped him apart.

  Ren didn’t stop to look.

  He couldn’t afford to.

  Because this wasn’t a battle anymore.

  It was a massacre.