Aldric's laugh was sharp and bitter, cutting through the philosophical weight Liam had built.
"Words," the Commander spat, his hand tightening on his blessed sword. "Pretty words from a pretty boy playing at war." His voice rose, carrying to every paladin in the courtyard. "This is a battlefield, child. Survival takes more than a speech. It takes steel. It takes faith. It takes—"
The first arrow took the paladin beside him through the throat.
Not from ahead. From behind.
The blessed warrior dropped without a sound, blood spraying across white armor, his holy sigil still glowing even as his eyes went dark.
For one frozen heartbeat, confusion reigned.
Then the sky darkened with arrows.
They came from the walls — from positions that had seemed unmanned, from shadows that had appeared empty. Dozens of demon archers rising as one, their bows already drawn, releasing a black rain of death into the tightly packed formation.
"SHIELDS!" Aldric roared, his training overriding shock.
The paladins responded instantly, blessed shields snapping up in practiced formation, creating a wall of holy-forged steel. Arrows shattered against them, blessed light flaring with each impact.
But not all the paladins were fast enough.
Seven men fell in that first volley. Then three more as a second wave followed immediately after.
"It's from the walls!" someone screamed. "The demons were—"
The scream cut short.
Not from an arrow but from a blade.
The Shadow Claw had been standing in their ranks for the entire conversation, disguised in stolen armor, her filed horns hidden beneath a paladin's helm.
She'd listened to Liam's speech shoulder-to-shoulder with the men she was about to kill.
Now she moved.
Her blade—a thin, cruel thing designed for silence—opened the throat of the paladin beside her. Before his body hit stone, she'd already buried the knife in the kidney of another, her other hand clamping over his mouth to muffle the scream.
She wasn't alone.
All around the formation's edges, where the paladins had packed too tight, too confident in their numbers, the Shadow Claws revealed themselves.
Five became ten became fifteen—demons who'd infiltrated during Liam's distraction, using the crushed press of blessed warriors as cover.
They killed with surgical precision. Throats. Kidneys. The soft spots in armor where blessed steel didn't quite cover. Silent deaths in a loud battlefield, bodies falling and dragging down the men beside them.
"IT'S AN AMBUSH!" Aldric's voice cracked with fury and realization. "THEY'RE IN OUR RANKS! FORMA—"
The war-horn blast from the outpost gates drowned out his command.
Far different from the low, mournful sound from six nights ago. This was different—high and sharp and hungry, the sound of a beastly thing that had been waiting patiently for its prey to step into the trap.
The demon soldiers emerged from every doorway, every shadowed alcove, every position that had seemed empty. They'd been there all along, watching, waiting, letting the paladins march into the killing box of the courtyard.
Two hundred demons against three hundred paladins.
But the paladins were packed tight, their formation designed for siege warfare, not close-quarters butchery.
The demons were loose, spread out, each warrior given room to move, to strike, to dance between the blessed blades.
And they were smiling.
These weren't the desperate, broken defenders Aldric had expected. These were soldiers who'd spent six nights hunting humans in the dark, who'd tasted victory, who'd remembered what it felt like to be the predator instead of the prey.
They crashed into the paladin formation like a wave of scale and claw.
The courtyard exploded into chaos.
Blessed steel met demon-forged iron.
Holy magic flared against the deeper, darker energies of the infernal. Men screamed prayers. Demons roared challenges. Blood—red and black—began to paint the ancient stone.
Aldric spun, his blessed sword already moving, cutting down a demon who'd gotten too close. His mind raced, tactical training warring with the horror of realization.
'We walked into a slaughter.'
The courtyard wasn't a killing ground for demons. It was a killing ground for them.
The walls were archer nests. The tight space prevented formation warfare. The gates—still open behind them—were a funnel, and he could already see more demons moving to cut off that escape route.
They'd been herded here. Positioned. Lured with an apparently easy target and trapped with professional brutality.
"BREAK THROUGH THE GATES!" Aldric roared, pointing toward their only exit. "REFORM OUTSIDE! WE NEED—"
A blade of pure darkness materialized beside him, close enough that he felt the cold of its passing.
He jerked back, his blessed sword coming up in a desperate parry. The black blade—Igar's Shard—met his holy steel with a sound like reality tearing.
Liam stood before him, his grey eyes no longer human, reflecting the chaos around them with perfect, terrible calm.
"Leaving so soon, Commander?" His voice was barely audible over the battle, but Aldric heard every word. "But the performance has only just started."
Around them, the slaughter intensified.
The Shadow Claws had completed their work, vanishing back into the chaos after sowing discord in the ranks.
The demon soldiers pressed their advantage, using the courtyard's confined space to separate paladins from their formations, from their support.
A young paladin—barely twenty—found himself isolated, three demons circling.
His blessed sword blazed with holy fire, his training keeping him alive for precious seconds. But training couldn't overcome numbers.
A demon's axe hooked his shield. Another's blade found his exposed side. He went down screaming for a god who didn't answer.
An older paladin, a veteran with grey in his beard, fought back-to-back with his partner.
Their coordination was beautiful, their blessed magic flowing between them like a shield. They held. They even gained ground, cutting down demon after demon.
Until an arrow took the older warrior in the shoulder. His partner turned to help. The demons surged. Neither rose again.
All across the courtyard, the mathematical reality of warfare asserted itself. Three hundred was more than two hundred, yes. But three hundred trapped and disorganized was worth far less than two hundred prepared and positioned.
The blessed paladins of the Radiant Empire, who'd marched with righteous fury to crush desperate demons, found themselves dying in the dust of a courtyard that had become their tomb.
And through it all, like a conductor directing this symphony, Liam moved with cold precision toward the enemy commander who'd learned—too late—that some monsters wore human faces and spoke with silver tongues.
The first act of the battle had begun.
And the demons were winning.
---
[Fear Detected: 287 Entities]
[Essence Conversion: +2,340 EP]
[Collective Belief - Outpost Garrison: -18% → +12%]
The numbers flickered at the edge of Liam's vision, but he barely registered them.
His focus was singular, absolute.
The Paladin Commander stood before him, blessed sword raised, holy fire beginning to gather around the blade.
Behind Aldric, the battle raged. Screams. Steel. Death.
But here, in this small circle of chaos, there was only the two of them.
The monster who'd stopped pretending.
And the man who still believed he was righteous.
Liam's grip tightened on Igar's Shard.
"Shall we begin?" he asked softly.
The black blade came alive with Hell's Flame—not the wild conflagration of before, but a controlled, hungry fire that wrapped around the sword like a living thing.
Aldric's response was a roar and a charge, blessed steel cutting toward Liam's head with twenty years of holy warfare behind it.