The wolf staggered. For a moment the world tilted beneath him, dizziness pulling at the edges of his vision. He blinked hard, and Trail's image fractured into several — multiple figures standing in the same spot, overlapping — until finally the copies collapsed into one and Rogard found his footing.
He snarled and charged.
A single slice. Clean, decisive. One of Rogard's hands separated from his body and hit the ground before he had even registered the cut.
*He's beating me.* The thought arrived like cold water. *How is that possible. Am I getting weak?*
The hand regenerated, bone and flesh knitting back into place within seconds, and he went again. Their swords met in a shower of sparks, the clash ringing out across the battlefield. But Trail was reading him now — absorbing each attack, cataloguing the rhythm, getting faster with every exchange.
Rogard charged once more and Trail stepped aside. A clean opening. Trail's blade took one of Rogard's feet at the ankle, and before Rogard could compensate, a hard side punch landed on his left and sent him spinning off his axis. He hit the ground hard, skidding, and stayed there.
The strength was gone. He could feel its absence the way you feel a fire go out in a cold room. If he charged again, Trail would end it instantly. He knew that with complete certainty.
Trail stood over him. "Any last words, Rogard?"
Rogard looked up. "My aim was to kill the Norm before anything else. But when I saw you — my mind said to kill you instead."
Trail's expression shifted. "Norm. You mean the successor?"
"Yes." Rogard's voice dropped low. "The successor. He is dangerous. Very dangerous to us."
That was the answer Trail had been missing. Aron Norm was somewhere on this battlefield, still fighting.
"YOU WERE PRETTY USEFUL."
Zeiris's voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Rogard's eyes went wide. "What are you doing to me—"
Trail was already moving, sword raised, trying to end it before whatever was happening could take hold. But Rogard's hand shot up and grabbed the blade bare-handed, stopping it cold.
Trail pulled back. Rogard rose.
His eyes had gone black — completely, edge to edge, with nothing human left in them. His voice was gone, replaced by a low continuous growl that vibrated in the chest. He wasn't fighting with strategy anymore. He was something unleashed.
The trees around them began falling faster, sheared apart as Rogard carved through the field. Trail abandoned offense entirely and focused on survival — reading, retreating, keeping just enough space. The movements were wrong. Too fast. Too strong. Nothing like before. Every block was sharper, every attack launched from angles that shouldn't have been possible.
Then the fang came — low and sudden, driving upward for Trail's eye with a speed that left no window to respond.
A dagger struck first.
Rogard lurched. The fang stopped an inch short.
Luxorious stepped onto the battlefield, already moving, already committed. He crossed the remaining distance in a breath and finished Rogard completely, leaving nothing standing.
He straightened up and looked at Trail. "You've grown weak. That beast was far beneath you."
Trail caught his breath. "He wasn't weaker. You're just more powerful than me. That's all it is."
Luxorious made a short sound of dismissal and looked down at himself. "I'm filthy. Do you have a cloth?" Trail reached into his pocket and handed one over without comment.
Luxorious wiped his hands. "I'll go this way. You take the right. Destroy the catapults. I'll clear the rest."
---
Aron and Ernold fought side by side, pushing forward with the soldiers around them, grinding through the resistance one step at a time. They were making ground, slowly, painfully.
Then the sky delivered another fire rock.
The impact shook the earth. Soldiers scattered, throwing themselves clear as the ground split and heaved. The rumbling faded, and the fighting resumed like water rushing back into a hole.
Aron felt it clearly now — the strength bleeding out of him, faster than it should have been. The punch Locker had landed earlier was still collecting its debt, deep in his bones, in muscles that were beginning to refuse commands they had followed a hundred times already.
He drove a soldier back with a hard shove of his sword, but more came immediately, pressing from three directions, and his body slowed. Ernold was there — along with two other soldiers — cutting through the flank, buying him space.
Aron dropped to one knee for a single moment.
He looked up. Ernold looked back.
They exchanged a nod across the noise and chaos, brief and wordless, the kind that carries more than a conversation could.
Then the arrow came.
It crossed the distance silently and buried itself in Ernold's neck.
Everything slowed. The sounds of battle stretched and dimmed. Aron watched him fall the way you watch something irreversible happen — eyes wide, the understanding arriving a full second before the grief. The ground around Ernold seemed to go quiet even while the war continued screaming around him.
Aron reached him. Ernold was on his back, tears sliding from the corners of his eyes, blood moving steadily from his mouth. Aron snapped the shaft of the arrow and gripped his shoulder.
"You've got to fight, Ernold—"
But he already knew.
Ernold's eyes drifted upward, past Aron, past the smoke and the noise. "The birds," he said softly. His voice was almost peaceful. "Look at them. Flying freely. Even with all of this beneath them." A faint, fading sound that was almost a laugh. "They're just waiting to eat." He turned his eyes to Aron. "Tell me — did I do great?"
Aron couldn't speak for a moment. "You did great," he finally said. His voice broke on the last word.
Ernold closed his eyes.
The wind shifted. A flag tied to a nearby spear moved slowly in the current, its fabric dragging and releasing.
Aron sat with him until he was sure, then sat a moment longer. The ground around him was saturated — blood darkening the earth, severed limbs half-buried in mud, spears standing where they had fallen, arrows thick as reeds in a marsh. The war hadn't stopped. It hadn't even paused.
The next fire rock landed close.
The shockwave picked Aron up and threw him, separating him from Ernold's body entirely, carrying him through smoke and debris until he hit the ground and didn't get up.
He was gone. Unconscious. Somewhere far from where he had been.
---
The war went quiet in the way that means something worse is coming.
The clouds shifted. A shadow moved beneath them — vast, deliberate, wrong in the way only something ancient can be wrong. The dragon descended over the battlefield and opened its mouth, and the fire that came out was not fire the way a torch is fire. It poured across the ground and stayed there, setting the earth itself alight in long continuous sheets. Wings spread and beat downward, generating winds that knocked men from their feet and sent them tumbling. Then the fire again — indiscriminate, burning humans and dark soldiers alike, scorching everything in reach.
Then something hit the dragon from above.
He didn't see it coming. He crashed through the canopy and disappeared into the trees, the impact scattering timber and debris in every direction.
Somewhere in the settling dust, a dagger rested on the ground.
And from a few meters away, Luxorious looked at the dragon's face.