deep, guttural roar tears across the sky.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
The ground convulses beneath her boots—violent, bone-deep. Not trembling. Seizing.
Selene’s breath catches, fingers curling reflexively around cold metal as the juggernaut emerges from the smoke.
A monument of bone and rust. Towering, stitched together by fractured skeletons and blackened iron braces. Its joints leak a dark vapor that makes her eyes sting, like staring into a forge too long. Hate radiates from it—not emotion, but a purpose so focused it becomes a pressure in her skull.
Three death knights flank it. Silent. Synchronized. Their armor is ink-black steel carved with old runes. Their swords burn—not with flame, but with something colder than absence.
The juggernaut's flail swings wide.
Air howls.
Space bends.
Instinct screams.
"Gravitas!"
Nia’s voice slices through the noise.
Selene turns—catches the flash of silver hair, the flutter of a hunter’s cloak. Nia leaps skyward, gliding weightless, the wind bending around her like it knows her name.
The bow lights up—sigils flaring violet along the limbs.
Hail of Arrows.
The sky hisses as a storm of arcane bolts slams toward the juggernaut’s ribs.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
Harmless.
Like rain tapping old stone.
Selene winces. Not enough.
"Wild Stance!"
Roaka charges next—a blur of orange stripes and rage. Her twin axes flash, colliding with cursed iron in a whirlwind of sparks. Each strike lands hard, furious, but barely scratches the plating.
Selene sees the fury crack, just beneath Roaka’s snarl. The frustration. The hopelessness.
“Damn it!” the orc growls, already spinning, looking for another angle. Her arms tremble—more from the recoil than fatigue.
"Threatening Stance!"
Ula takes the frontline like a glacier moved by will alone. Her shield slams down. Dust spirals up. The death knights react as one—no delay, no error.
They do not hesitate.
They do not breathe.
“Fortification. Bastion. Shield Stance!”
Selene feels the impact from across the battlefield. One greatsword. Then another. Then another.
Each one strikes like a cathedral bell being shattered under force.
“Fortification! Quick Heal! Rejuvenation!”
Elara’s chants thread through the chaos like golden wire. Spirals of healing light wrap around Roaka’s ribs, slide across Ula’s bruised arms, bloom against Nia’s pale cheeks.
Their stances recover. Their breath steadies.
“Assassination!”
A flicker. Fast. Sharp.
The death knight jerks mid-swing. Its eyes dim like fading embers. It stumbles, spasms once, and collapses into itself—nothing but smoke and chainmail crashing to the stone.
Rin stands behind it, breath steady, blades aglow with ghostlight. Not a hair out of place.
“Thirty seconds. Rinse and repeat,” she mutters, already vanishing into the next shadow.
But Selene doesn’t cast.
She can’t.
Her fingers are trembling. Too fast.
The mana stone slips. Wet with sweat. Grease. Maybe blood. She fumbles it—almost drops it.
She stares down at her hands.
Are they mine?
When did I…
Mana stone?
The question doesn’t have a start or an end. It just exists.
A turret beside her stutters, confused. Its runes dim, flickering.
"Why isn’t it working?" someone asks.
Selene turns.
Lyra.
The warlock’s face is tight, eyes narrowed with quiet irritation. The antlers above her brow shimmer faintly—less light, more intent.
“What?” Selene blurts.
But Lyra doesn’t answer. Her focus is absolute. She doesn't blink, doesn't frown. Her stylus moves with impossible grace, carving fresh runes into the turret’s frame. Sparks dance like lightning trapped in glass.
Selene swallows, rage bubbling low and sharp.
She slams the mana stone into its socket. Not gentle. Not careful. Just done.
It clicks. Half a glow. Not enough.
“This would be easier if I weren’t trying to do this while—NOT DYING!” she snaps. At the turret. At herself. At the world.
Lyra doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even breathe differently.
Selene hears her mutter something. A spell? A joke? She can’t tell. Her focus narrows again—on the engraving, on the lines of power sliding into place like clockwork.
Then—
Selene looks up.
The juggernaut’s flail rises.
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High. Higher.
The sun vanishes in its shadow.
She stares into the darkness beneath it. Sees her reflection in polished bone.
Time slows.
She hears a ticking sound.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Odd, she thinks.
My heart isn’t ticking.
So what is?
CLANG.
CLING.
CLANG.
CLING.
The rhythm is wrong.
Selene frowns. Gorik and Tibbins move in perfect sync, their tools rising and falling with mechanical precision. But the sound—it's late. Offbeat. Metal strikes, then echoes, dulled and lagging. Reality hiccups. A blur of motion overlays itself: a dozen ghost-images, each version of the pair caught in mid-swing, mid-step, mid-fix. Like light bent around a crack in time.
Something’s breaking. Not just the machines.
She blinks hard. Her thoughts fuzz, unfocused.
Adrenaline? A trick of the mind? This must be what people mean when they say time slows down.
But it’s not slower. It’s staggered. Out of sync.
Like the battlefield is glitching.
She exhales—sharp, fast—and drags herself back to the present.
The turret waits in front of her.
Dwarven steel. Gnomish rune-tech nerves.
A fusion of brutal symmetry and chaotic energy. Wires pulse like veins beneath its plated surface. The gears twitch, jittering, sparks crackling between them as raw mana seethes through the chassis. Arcane glyphs slither in response—fluid, luminous, language made instinct—mirroring her breath, her heartbeat, her fear.
Too fast. Too unstable.
“War Stomp!” Gru’s voice splits the air like thunder.
The earth convulses.
Selene stumbles, boots skidding a few inches. Dust shivers in ripples. Skeletons flail as balance abandons them. A zombie face-plants with a hollow grunt. Gru crashes forward like a collapsing mountain, club sweeping wide—bone and rot erupt in showers beneath its weight.
“Ha! Ha!” Gru roars, teeth bared, eyes wild. “Fickle little bones!”
Selene doesn’t respond. She’s already turned.
The turret lights up.
One rune.
Two.
Three.
The structure hums. Mana floods its circuits. The glyphs flare.
Please. Come on. Her breath knots in her throat.
FIRE.
A concussive burst detonates from the turret's core. Cold slams outward, the temperature plummeting in an instant. Frost blooms across the battlefield. The juggernaut freezes mid-swing, its bone-spiked flail halting a whisper from her face.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t breathe. Just watches the weapon linger in the air—suspended in a moment stolen from death—her breath fogging against the sudden cold.
Then—tug.
Her cloak jerks back. Lyra’s hellhound snarls, dragging her out of reach. Its teeth grip firm but precise, hauling her away from the killing zone. She stumbles once, then finds her footing.
Behind her, Gru doesn’t hesitate.
Her club comes down with a roar and a crack like the splitting of mountains. The impact fractures the frozen monstrosity—webs of glowing blue split across bone and flame and dead muscle. Magic locks it all in ice.
Then—
BOOM.
The second turret activates.
A bolt of molten mana punches through the frozen shell. No windup. No delay. Just velocity. Precision.
The impact shatters everything.
Heat and cold collide in an explosion of steam and bone. Pressure blasts outward, slapping against her skin. Selene flinches. Her ears ring. Her throat burns with the scent of ash and ozone.
She blinks—hard.
The world lurches sideways. Not vertigo. Not quite. It’s deeper—like the ground beneath her boots is sliding out of sync with time itself.
Smoke curls in her lungs. Mana discharge buzzes in her ears, a high-pitched whine that sets her teeth on edge. Her boots scrape against scorched stone, footing uncertain. The taste of iron clings to the back of her tongue, metallic and wrong.
Then—
Hum.
A turret stirs. Low. Measured. Like the breath of some ancient machine waking up.
Hum.
Another joins it. Then a third. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
Each one adds to the resonance, stacking into a low, vibrating chorus. It thrums up through her soles, through her bones. A rhythm. A pattern. Mechanical, magical—flawless.
They pulse in harmony, barrels rotating with practiced grace. Arcane glyphs light the steel in soft blue pulses. Gears tick forward.
And then—
Everything shifts.
The battlefield snaps like overstretched cord.
Undead halt mid-charge. Some stumble. Some collapse entirely, as though the raw pressure of the turrets flickers out whatever soul-fragments were keeping them upright. The air thickens. Her skin prickles.
The turrets lock into place.
Then—
BOOM.
The first volley lands.
A cluster of skeletal archers shatter on impact, their ribcages turning inside out, bone fragments spinning through the smoke like glass. Wind howls past her face, ripped from the collapse of pressure, hot and sharp and dry.
But something’s wrong again.
The explosions come in echoes—delayed, doubled, rippling outward like a pond struck by too many stones at once. Selene sees the same moment unfold again and again—like the world’s caught in a feedback loop, every frame stuttering across her vision.
Crackle.
A firebolt rips the air. Red light streaks overhead, painting the smoke crimson. A pack of ghouls vanishes in the blaze, bones bursting under the force.
Then lightning—bright and brutal—forks from the sky. It arcs down like judgment, lighting up the battlefield in stark white as it tears through the earth and the dead alike. Ghouls convulse where they stand, smoked from the inside out.
Selene narrows her eyes. The light is too harsh. Her throat burns. The back of her skull throbs. Hot and cold wrestle in the space between seconds, smoke coiling in shapes she can’t name.
She tilts her gaze upward.
The sky doesn’t look right.
The color bleeds around the edges. Light fractures through the clouds, too dim, too pale. Something in the air feels off—thicker, heavier. The kind of pressure that presses in around the lungs. Not enough to suffocate, just enough to warn.
Above her, the mana stones flicker.
They’re dimming. No—flashing. Glowing, then fading, then glowing again. Candlelight in a storm.
She watches as fractures spider across their surfaces. The latticework of gemstone veins glows erratic, leaking heat in waves that shimmer the air.
Too much output. Not enough recharge.
Selene swallows, chest tight.
They’re burning out.
No. They burned out.
Or—they’re reigniting?
Her thoughts snag. The logic doesn’t line up. The world moves like it’s remembering itself wrong.
This isn’t real.
It feels real—but it isn’t.
Her breathing slows. One beat. Then another.
Too vivid. Too sharp. But—
Could this be a dream?