He had one moment – one crystal-clear instant – to see the demon ahead turn, no longer limping, its eyes meeting his with something that looked almost like pity.
Then the ground opened beneath them.
Not collapsed. Opened. Deliberately, precisely, a pit concealed with cloth and dust that tore away to reveal sharpened stakes pointing upward like teeth.
Marcus's blessed reflexes saved him—barely.
He threw himself sideways, slamming into the ridge wall, watching Thomas drop into the pit with a scream that turned wet and gurgling.
The screaming didn't stop.
"AMBUSH!" Marcus roared, but his voice was drowned by more sounds—the crunch of breaking earth, more screams, and then, from above, a sound like thunder.
He looked up.
On the crest of the eastern ridge, a single point of light appeared. Not the white-gold of holy magic. Black and crimson, like a wound in reality, small as a sparrow but visible for miles.
Then the mountain came down.
The rockfall wasn't natural.
It was surgical, precise, a cascading avalanche of stone and death that slammed into the path behind them, cutting off retreat, crushing paladins beneath tons of ancient rock.
The screaming multiplied.
Marcus stood against the wall, his holy light guttering, watching his brothers-in-arms die not in glorious combat but in darkness and terror and traps.
A demon emerged from the shadow in front of him. Just standing there, silent, watching him with eyes that reflected his failing light.
Then it stepped backward into darkness and was gone.
Behind Marcus, someone was crying. Someone else was praying. Someone was screaming for help that wouldn't come.
The darkness had teeth, and they'd walked right into its mouth.
---
From his position on the outpost wall, Liam watched the distant hellfire signal fade.
The first scream had been audible even from here—a high, thin sound carried on the night wind. Then more. Then the deep thunder of the rockfall.
Then silence.
[Fear Detected: 34 Entities]
[Essence Conversion: +680 EP]
[Collective Belief - Outpost Garrison: -24% → -18%]
Around him, demons stood frozen, staring toward the ridge where paladins had been moments ago. Where now there was only darkness and the fading echo of screams.
"Did we..." someone whispered. "Did that actually..."
Koth stood beside Liam, his scarred face unreadable. But when he spoke, his voice carried something new.
"How many?"
"Thirty-seven paladins entered the ridge path," Liam said quietly. "Sixteen made it out. The rest are dead or dying."
"And our losses?"
"None. Squad Seven is already back inside the perimeter. The Shadow Claws..." Liam paused, watching five dark shapes materialize at the outpost gate like smoke taking form. "...are retrieving the traps for reuse."
The silence on the wall was absolute.
Then a demon—a young soldier with a bandaged arm—let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob.
"We... we actually hurt them. We..."
It spread like wildfire.
They weren't cheering, and it wasn't quite celebration, but something broke. The brittle shell of hopelessness cracking to reveal something raw and dangerous underneath.
Belief.
Varg appeared on the wall, his face twisted with complicated emotions.
"The ridge traps worked. Grish is already resetting them." He stared at Liam, and for the first time, the hostility in his eyes was mixed with something else. "That was... effective."
"That was the opening act," Liam said, his voice carrying across the wall with quiet certainty. "Tomorrow night, we do it again. And the night after that. Until their commander learns to fear the dark more than he trusts the light."
He looked at Koth. The Commander met his gaze, and in those molten eyes, something fundamental had shifted.
[Koth - Belief: 1% → 10%]
"The Shadow Claws will need new routes," Koth said, his tone no longer questioning but planning. "The paladins will adjust their patrols."
"As expected," Liam replied. "Every adjustment is a reaction. Every reaction means we're dictating the terms."
He turned back to the darkness, where somewhere, a Paladin commander was counting his dead and realizing the rules had changed.
The horror story had begun.
And the demons were no longer the victims.
---
In the Radiant Empire's forward camp, Commander-Paladin Aldric Thorne stood over a map, his jaw clenched so tight it ached.
Seventeen survivors from the ridge path.
Seventeen broken men babbling about demons that moved like smoke, about the darkness eating their brothers, about traps and screams and a hell that waited in the black.
His adjutant, Serath, stood at attention, his face pale. "Sir, the survivors are... they're requesting we cease night patrols. They're saying the demons have—"
"The demons," Aldric interrupted, his voice cold as blessed steel, "are desperate and dying. This was a lucky strike, nothing more."
But even as he said it, he stared at the map, at the ridge he'd thought was secure, at the routes he'd thought were safe.
One of the survivors had said something before the medics sedated him. Something about eyes in the darkness. About a fire that wasn't fire, black and red, like a signal.
Like a message.
Aldric's hand unconsciously moved to his holy symbol.
For the first time in his twenty-year career, he found himself dreading the fall of night.