Ezra's gaze cut across the square, hunting for anything that moved wrong—anything that didn't move like a man, walking over curiously. There was some distance between the line and the center of command. As he moved, he would pick up stones, here and there.
Evan eyed Ezra and checked for anything that might endanger him.
Observing Shadow Walkers was trying to look for negative space. Especially in darkness, it was hard to track, plus their mana signatures were also masked; if you didn't probe with intent, it was hard to notice. They just appeared where the light failed; it was like hunting a distortion or an emptiness.
Meanwhile, Galwell gathered every cauldron Anticourt had in stock.
Ezra didn't wait long.
Galwell appeared from an inner corridor with a few Anticourt Guard soldiers bearing what Ezra had asked for: heavy cauldrons and barrels dragged on short sleds—the kind used for lamp oil and wagon work. Metal clanged against stone as they set them down under the hall's Gemlamp.
Galwell's bandage was fresh and tight. He moved like himself anyway. Breathing controlled. Jaw clenched. Eyes sharp.
"Are we going to use this for lighting, sire?" Galwell asked.
"No," Ezra said. "Just wait and see. Let's head out."
They stepped into the courtyard.
The Anticourt Guard defensive line was taking a beating.
Orst had split it once already; now the line kept trying to knit back together, failing every time a Gemlamp went dark. Men were getting pulled into the wrong places—dim gaps between light pools, narrow lanes where the Shadow Walkers could grab and the bandits could stab.
Orst surfaced again—earth plating rippling over his torso—killed a regular soldier with one hit, then drove another man backward into a wedge of shadow.
Ezra didn't flinch at the blood. He flinched at the pattern.
He tracked lamp angles and the spacing between surviving pools of light. He watched how Orst moved from bright to dim, how he forced the line to choose between holding position and defending lamps.
Orst wasn't just killing people. He was deleting options.
Ezra's eyes flicked to Evan's bow.
The obvious counter to a terramancer wasn't "hit him harder." It was "hit him where he's blind."
"Evan," Ezra said, pointing. "Over there. Forty-three degrees and fifty minutes. The arc won't give him a clear read in this lighting."
Evan didn't ask what the numbers meant. He moved exactly where Ezra indicated, feet setting into a practiced stance that didn't waste motion. He drew and loosed.
The arrow cut through smoke and uneven light and brushed Orst's cheek.
It wasn't lethal. It didn't need to be.
Orst stopped.
That half-second of surprise mattered. It bought the defenders a breath. It made Orst think instead of just advance.
Ezra turned to Galwell immediately.
"Galwell, you're good with a bow too, right?"
"Yes, milord."
"Go with the archers to the rooftop," Ezra said. "Fire arrows at the shadows. Their bodies are tangible. If we can mark the dark, the odds of killing one rise. That will hinder them."
He held Galwell's eyes until Galwell's expression tightened into understanding.
"Your job is to direct them. Don't waste arrows on guesses—pick targets. Anticourt should have enough arrows."
Galwell nodded once and moved. An Anticourt Guard soldier reached as if to steady him; Galwell waved him off without slowing.
Ezra turned back to Rycharde.
"Rycharde," Ezra said, "get the specifics on the Anticourt knights. Abilities, circle levels, elemental coverage, counts. Ask their Captain."
"Yes, milord," Rycharde answered. He snapped at a runner to bring the Captain and a report.
Orst kept rampaging through regular soldiers. Lances and spears didn't bite through the earth plating. Men kept dying when they tried to make it a fair melee.
Then the first fire arrows came down from the rooftops.
They landed on pooled darkness and moving cloaks. A Shadow Walker screamed—high and raw—and staggered out of the dark with flame licking along his shoulder.
Anticourt Guard soldiers stabbed him twice. He went still.
That was the first clean kill of a Shadow Walker that night.
A shout rose from the defenders. Not triumph. Relief—proof that something worked.
More fire arrows rained. Bandits flinched back. Enemy mages on the far edge of the formation backed away under the pressure.
Even Orst backed away.
He took two heavy steps, then dropped into the earth again.
Ezra saw the moment the cobbles settled. The ripples vanished.
Underground travel.
Ezra lifted a hand.
"Evan," he said, "get those cauldrons. Rycharde with me."
Evan grabbed a huge black cauldron by its handles. Oil sloshed inside. Two Anticourt Guard soldiers took another. Rycharde moved with Ezra, bellowing at the rooftop to hold fire for a breath so men could reposition without friendly shafts.
Evan glanced at the cauldron. "I thought we were going to use it for lighting?" he said.
"No," Ezra said. "We're going to pour it into the holes that brute is making."
He looked out at the ground and forced his mind into a narrow channel. AMP came up—thin golden lines and angles over cobbles, small shifts in dust highlighted like warnings. Subtle bulges. Tiny tremors that didn't match footfalls.
"Their Water mages will put it out if we use it like a torch," Ezra added. "So we don't make a torch. We make a trap."
Orst surfaced in the distance—a tank built of stone and muscle—then vanished again. A ripple tracked toward the edge of the courtyard.
Ezra pointed at a fresh hole.
Evan tipped the cauldron and poured.
Oil spilled into the gap and soaked down into the earth tunnel.
Ezra didn't hesitate.
"Rycharde," he said. "[Fire Ball]. Now."
Rycharde's palm flashed forward. Fire punched into the oil-dark hole.
The earth exhaled smoke—thick, nauseating, black. It didn't rise like normal flame smoke. It pushed out in a heavy rolling wave that crawled over boots and shields.
A roar echoed from inside the ground.
Then Orst erupted a few meters from them, coughing and roaring in rage.
His left hand was charred. The earth plating on it had sloughed off in broken flakes. Beneath, skin was blistered—raw and angry.
Ezra's tone stayed flat, because he needed everyone calm enough to obey. AMP saw the mini distortions in the ground; he could track where the brute was travelling to, how fast he was travelling, if he stopped. With the darkness compounded, other people couldn't see it clearly, but with AMP, it became obvious.
"He can't cover the holes he makes as he goes up," Ezra said, "because that would suffocate him."
Cheers rose from the Anticourt Guard. For the first time, they had the terrifying Terramancer. They had a rule. Rules meant plans.
Orst's eyes found Ezra.
He charged.
Ezra didn't run like a toddler. He moved like a commander who understood distance.
"Back," Ezra snapped, and the knights around him backed away in a tight knot as Orst tried to close distance without giving the rooftop archers a clean line.
Ezra's voice cut through the noise.
"Rycharde," Ezra said, "flood the vicinity. Now."
Rycharde didn't question it. He threw mana into his voice and shouted the order so hard it carried over steel and screaming.
"Water mages—flood the ground! Now!"
Orst tried to launch [Stone Bullet] at them. Ezra watched shoulders and finger timing through AMP's overlay, the minute pre-motion that preceded the cast.
"Left," Ezra said. "Now right. Down."
They dodged by inches.
Fire arrows continued to land near Orst's path, forcing him to keep his head down and his charge angled. Normally, a volley of normal archers shouldn't damage him, but with Knight ranks in the mix, some of the arrows had enough draw weight to pierce his skull if he didn't use any magic armor. Each hit would sap on his mana reserves. In a fight of mages, attrition was one of the tactics that could be employed.
Water surged into the courtyard as the Anticourt mages complied—fast, crude flooding. It spread over cobbles and pooled in low spots. Boots started slipping. Shields shifted. People swore.
Ezra raised his voice with mana amplifying it.
"Freeze it."
Rycharde didn't even need to relay the command anymore. It was strange to watch Anticourt knights take orders indirectly from a toddler while their lives were on the line. But effectiveness was a language soldiers understood.
The water turned to ice in a blink. More mages equated to a faster activation time. A wide radius locked solid—slick, reflective, brutal. It didn't just slow Orst. It forced him to commit to every step.
Ezra's eyes stayed on Orst.
"Jump when I tell you to," Ezra said to the knights around him. "I can sense when the activation will happen."
He needed strong bodies for this. Not regular soldiers.
"Oswyn. Dynham," Ezra called. "At the ready."
Orst slowed, reading the ground. Anger tightened his face—humiliation that knights had forced him back, that fire and light and a child's voice had made him retreat.
He couldn't charge fully without losing footing. He couldn't stand still without taking arrows.
Ezra watched the commitment: weight shift, foot placement, the swell of mana as Orst prepared to surge. There was enough delay such that Ezra could anticipate Orst's next move via a combination of AMP, minor fluctuations in his aura.
"Jump now," Ezra commanded. "As high as you can."
Oswyn and Dynham launched.
They went up absurdly high—twenty meters in the air, armor and capes snapping.
Ezra jumped too.
He went higher than both of them.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't graceful. It was Reinforcement turning a small body into a spring under full compression. Ezra's head reached near their shoulders at the peak.
Below, Orst jumped as well—trying to clear the slick zone. He surmised that their objective was to freeze him, but that was just his conjecture.
Ezra knew in advance that any orders they would shout would also be heard by the enemy. He had foreseen this in advance. This was a chess, and the move was obviouos. Dictate the battlefield and control how the enemy reacts.
The courtyard within the frozen radius was a single sheet of ice—no traction, no grit, nothing to bite.
At the peak, Ezra's fingers flicked.
He threw a small stone that he had gathered earlier.
The stone hit the ice and skidded.
Not much. Just enough.
It slid into Orst's landing path, just enough to seem like an accident.
Orst came down.
His boot hit the stone.
He didn't see it. He didn't have time. His mind was still thinking that he was victorious; after all, he had timed the jump successfully enough that he had cleared a significant margin from the ground, but that mentality cost him. You couldn't control the direction of your fall.
His balance snapped sideways. His huge frame tilted, tried to correct, failed.
Orst went down hard.
And Galwell's voice, from above, hit the square like a hammer. It was like his mind had connected with Ezra's. He didn't even need the command to know what he needed to tell his archers next.
"Loose! Fire arrows—now!"
A hail of burning shafts came down on Orst's earth-armored torso. Some bounced. Some stuck in seams. Flame crawled along oil residue still clinging from the earlier trap and found purchase where the plating had cracked.
Orst roared on the ice, trying to rise without traction, trying to dig fingers into a surface that gave him nothing.
Ezra landed in a controlled crouch, boots scraping for grip. His lungs burned. His head pulsed from AMP's sustained overlay.
He didn't celebrate.
He watched and waited for the next constraint.
Orst was not dead.
But for the first time tonight, he was at a disadvantage. They now took control of the battlefield. Knowing their objective was their weakness. If they didn't need to destroy anything else, then the answer was easy: protect the king.
And that was enough to shift the battle.
The Anticourt Guard's line surged forward under the roof's fire support—spears out, shields braced, voices rising—not with victory, but with the simple brutal relief of a plan that worked.