he
Gnarly Roses brace themselves—heels ground into loose, chalky soil,
weapons lifted with precision born of repetition. Selene notes the
way their formation adjusts—not perfect, but practiced. Beneath
them, bones snap like dry branches, brittle under pressure. The
undead rise fast—too fast—tearing free from the dirt in twitching
jerks, as if dragged upward by rage itself. Claws scrape stone. Fangs
glisten wet.
Torchlight dances along the steel, carving frantic shadows across
the broken stonework. Selene squints through the blur of motion and
flame, cataloging the chaos.
Behind them, the Antiquarian Artifact Collective is unraveling.
Historians fumble scrolls and shout conflicting directions—one
calls for the western vault, another insists the map is inverted. A
young mage chokes on an incantation, voice cracking in terror. The
spell fizzles to sparks, swallowed by the cold, necrotic air.
They’re lost.
The fortress—a forgotten outpost within the Beast Lord’s
Domain—is collapsing into itself. Selene can feel it in the
architecture. The weight of centuries pressing down. Once proud stone
now gives way to rot and silence. Vines crawl where banners once
flew. Cracks vein through the floor like a curse trying to surface.
Wind howls through the breach in the northern wall, dragging the
scent of old blood and fresh rot in with it.
And every turn lies.
A door that should lead out leads deeper in. A corridor once
mapped now loops endlessly. Even the angles feel wrong—built to
disorient. She writes that down mentally, committing it to the
enchanted journal strapped to her side. Not now. No time. But later.
She’ll need it later.
The Guilds—miners, merchants, scholars—scatter like startled
prey. Boots thud across flagstones. Crates are abandoned mid-sprint.
One scholar is crying, openly. Mercenaries shout, but the commands
dissolve in the noise. No one's listening.
The retreat isn’t a retreat anymore. It’s a stampede.
And still they come.
Since his death, that enigmatic human, the dead have bled
from the stones. First a trickle. Now a flood.
She clenches her jaw, breath hitching tight beneath her ribs.
Another surge hits the line—harder this time.
The mercenaries brace, but it’s the Roses who hold them steady.
Ula’s voice cuts through the din like a warhorn—sharp,
commanding, impossible to ignore.
“Hold the line! Mind the gaps! Anchor left!”
Her shield slams into a skeletal knight with a crunch that Selene
feels in her teeth. Bone cracks. Rusted armor folds inward.
The wall tightens. Steel meets rot.
Blades flash—clean arcs through filth and tendon. Gore fans out
in bursts, catching torchlight like ribbons dipped in blood.
Selene doesn’t flinch. She watches. Eyes wide. Breath shallow.
Not just afraid—awed.
This is what survival looks like when it refuses
to break.
Rin moves like smoke—here, then gone. Her daggers flash once,
twice—then she’s behind the enemy line, slipping between ribs and
vertebrae like a rumor. Stripes blur. Leather whispers. Her eyes
shine—sharp, wild, calculating.
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Roaka bellows—low, guttural—shoulders lowered as she drives
into the swarm like a siege ram with a heartbeat. Her axes don’t
swing, they howl—high and savage. Bone litters the ground
in her wake.
Nia perches above—half-shadow, half-statue—bow drawn, eyes
narrowed. Her arrows hiss through the dark like questions that demand
silence. Each one lands. None miss.
And Elara—Elara is light.
No... control.
Her fingers sketch tight circles, sculpting silver shields midair.
They fracture on impact, each shatter buying seconds. Precious ones.
Selene sees the strain—the sweat along Elara’s brow, the slight
tremble at her wrist—but her expression stays still. Serene.
Unmoving.
They don’t just fight. They move. Together.
Not like a unit—like an organism. Bloody. Relentless. Terrifying
in its precision.
Selene stands behind them.
Still. Small.
A scholar with ink-stained fingers. A scribe clutching spells she
doesn't dare cast.
Her heart hammers, not from exertion, but from something colder.
Deeper. A sharp-edged truth pressing at the edge of thought:
She is not built like them.
And if this line breaks—
She exhales, low and controlled. Opens her journal. Steadies her
grip. Eyes scanning the field—not for enemies. For patterns.
Selene’s fingers twitch over her spell-scribed quill. Useless in
this fight. But her eyes—sharp, calm, calculating—track the tide,
the patterns, the reason. This isn't random. It’s too
organized.
Someone—or something—is directing them.
She feels it like pressure behind her eyes. Not magic, not quite.
Not mana. Something deeper. Older.
They’re not just being hunted.
They’re being herded.
A skeletal mage raises its hand—spindly fingers curling like a
dead spider clutching air. Sigils ignite in its hollow sockets,
pulsing green, sickly and unstable. The light churns like swamp rot
disturbed.
Selene’s breath halts—too fast, too bright, too close.
Necrotic fire coils to life. The spell spirals through the smoke,
whining as it builds—an unnatural sound that scrapes at her ears.
Then the stench rolls in: sulfur and scorched marrow, ancient death
dragged from the depths of something that should have stayed buried.
Impact.
The blast lands just beyond the barricade, and the world
convulses.
Heat folds the air—sharp, warping—bending light, bending
sound.
Wood explodes in splinters. Stone splits. The outer defenses
vanish in a rush of force and noise.
Nia hits the ground hard. Her cape smolders. She doesn’t
scream—just coughs, once, sharp, the sound punching through the
smoke.
Ula stumbles, shield dragging low, gauntlet glowing with the last
of the heat. Her fingers twitch—twice—jaw clenched tight, holding
the pain back behind her teeth.
Roaka snarls. Blood streaks her face, but she doesn’t wipe it
gently. She scrapes it away with a rough hand, eyes burning,
too wide.
Selene watches them all. Not just the pain. The process—how
they absorb the hit, how they stand again, what parts of themselves
they ignore to keep moving. She memorizes it. Files it.
Roaka breaks the silence.
“This is getting bad,” she
mutters—low, ragged. No drama in it. Just fact.
Rin says nothing. Still as a shadow. Only her tail moves—tick,
tick—then still. Her eyes sweep the field like a blade. Clinical.
Cold.
Selene shifts, inching back until she feels stone at her spine—a
shattered pillar, still warm. Her heart pounds like a drum against
her ribs, but her vision stays sharp. No shaking. Not yet.
She finds Elara.
The elf is swaying, barely upright. Her voice wavers—soft and
strained, more breath than speech. Golden light glows at her palm,
flickering. The words—old, melodic—spill from her lips in
fragments.
A radiant shield pulls into form. It flickers—thin as frost.
Already fraying.
Another fireball strikes.
Crack.
The shield fractures, veins of light spiderwebbing through it—like
glass struck by a hammer but too proud to fall.
Selene tightens her grip on her grimoire. Cold sweat beads at the
base of her neck.
She swallows, hard.
And watches.