Bunny dropped to her knees.
The sound coming from Lisbeth did not sound real.
Not at first.
It was too distant to be immediate, too loud to be ignored, and too full of pain to be mistaken for anything else.
The wails carried over the open land in waves.
Beneath them came the deeper sounds.
Explosions.
Collapsing buildings.
Crackling flame.
Bunny's chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.
"Tarin."
Her twin brother stepped beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
Whether Bunny realized it or not, being one of the Vixens meant something now.
People watched her.
Soldiers watched her.
Children knew her name. In places all across the United Kingdoms, they swung wooden hammers and shouted things they had heard Bunny shout.
And now those same eyes were turning toward her.
Tarin's voice was steady, but not unkind.
"I fear the need for tears is only beginning today," he said. "We will have time to weep tomorrow. Please stand. The troops are looking to you."
His armor caught the light as he spoke—well-fitted, practical, and strong.
Brannic's work.
Jax had tried to buy it for full price, but Brannic had refused. Anyone willing to stand against the Empire had been offered protection at cost.
Jax had accepted only because he wanted Bunny's brother protected.
Bunny's hands clenched.
Her body felt heavy.
But she rose.
Around her, Elven soldiers, Beastkin volunteers, mages, and Shadows remained in the positions they had spent nearly two weeks preparing.
None of them had been struck.
None of them had fallen.
Yet every one of them felt the sting of defeat all the same.
Because they were close enough to hear it.
Close enough to believe they should have stopped it.
And still too far away to do anything.
Bunny stared toward the column of smoke rising in the distance.
"We could go after them."
Tarin didn't answer immediately.
Bunny turned toward him.
"We could still catch them."
"And then?"
Her ears flattened.
"What?"
"Where do we fight them?"
Bunny looked back toward Lisbeth.
Tarin continued.
"Our traps are here. Our defensive positions are here. Our mages know their ranges. The Elves know their firing lanes. The Beastkin know the terrain. Jax's Shadows are positioned here."
His hand tightened around the hilt of his sword.
"We spent nearly two weeks preparing to fight thousands of soldiers here."
"People are dying."
"I know."
For the first time, Tarin's voice cracked.
Only slightly.
Then the soldier returned.
"If we chase them across open ground, we surrender every advantage we have. We become the attacking army. They choose where we meet them. They choose the terrain."
Bunny looked at World Breaker.
She could imagine it.
Jax appearing beside her.
Dante descending from the sky.
One of his enormous Shadows tearing through the Imperial line.
Maybe then they could chase them.
Maybe then ten thousand soldiers wouldn't matter.
But Jax wasn't here.
Dante wasn't here.
And power wasn't a plan.
Llandra had made that clear when they prepared these defenses.
Every trap.
Every firing lane.
Every unit.
Every Shadow.
Everything had been chosen because it belonged here.
Tarin looked toward the smoke.
"Getting everyone here killed won't save them."
Bunny closed her eyes.
Another distant explosion rolled across the countryside.
Then she opened them.
"Okay."
Tarin raised the Tele-Stone.
His voice changed at once.
Brother disappeared.
Soldier remained.
"They didn't come to Campbell. Repeat—they didn't come to Campbell. They went to Lisbeth. Outcome catastrophic."
He lowered the stone.
No one around him spoke.
No one needed to.
They could all hear what catastrophic meant.
The War Room had gone cold.
Not in temperature.
In spirit.
A few minutes earlier it had been a chamber of strategy, momentum, adjustments, and numbers.
Now it felt like a place where everyone was waiting for someone to explain a nightmare into something reasonable.
"Why Lisbeth?" one of the commanders demanded. "It makes no sense."
Vaelrith Moonshadow stared at the map.
"Perhaps because it makes no sense."
Another commander shook his head.
"But those were their own people. Lisbeth supported the Empire."
King Thalorien's response came hard and immediate.
"They have done this before."
The room quieted.
"Remember Main Street."
Nobody needed the rest explained.
Everyone knew what happened after Crescent Moon Canyon.
More than a thousand Imperial soldiers had survived.
Their survival had not saved them.
The Empire had given what followed its own name.
Across much of Alexandria, another had taken hold.
The Massacre On Main Street.
Soren Nightclaw looked toward the Tele-Stone resting on the table.
"We can ask why later."
Several faces turned toward him.
His expression remained hard.
"We still have four Imperial armies in the field."
That brought the room back.
Not completely.
Nothing could do that.
But enough.
Reports began moving again.
Numbers.
Positions.
Casualties.
Movement.
Soren looked toward one of the communication officers.
"Prominence?"
The Tele-Stone pulsed.
Prominence was no longer a battle of plans.
It was a battle of exhaustion.
Jax stood beside Peacemaker with one hand resting on its hilt.
The dragon-forged double blade stood six feet six inches from end to end.
Even buried point-first into the churned earth, it still rose above him.
Around it, the battlefield had become something ugly.
Broken wagons.
Splintered shields.
Bodies.
Mud.
Smoke.
Shadows moved among living soldiers while arrows passed overhead and magic tore across the field.
The Empire was still fighting.
Jax had to give them that.
He wasn't entirely sure he would have.
Everyone knew about Main Street now.
Even inside the Empire.
The official stories called what happened something else.
But soldiers talked.
Families talked.
Survivors talked.
More than a thousand men had escaped Crescent Moon Canyon alive.
Then they came home.
And died anyway.
So the soldiers fighting at Prominence understood something that didn't need to be written into their orders.
Defeat might kill them.
Retreat might kill them.
Surrender might kill them.
Even surviving might not be enough.
Their best chance of going home was victory.
So they fought like their lives depended on it.
Because they did.
An Imperial officer raised his sword.
"Advance!"
The formation surged.
Then the screaming started again.
Locusts descended over the Imperial mage corps in a glittering cloud.
'Lucy was working.
The Crystal Locust Queen herself was somewhere farther down the battlefield, but her children were everywhere.
Imperial mages had spent hours trying to deal with them.
Fire.
Wind.
Boots.
Blades.
Anything that could kill enough of the insects to give them room to cast.
It wasn't working.
A mage managed to gather fire between his hands.
The spell flickered.
Locusts swarmed around him.
The flame collapsed.
Another mage raised both arms.
"Barrier!"
Light shimmered in front of an Imperial formation.
Then dimmed.
Then vanished.
An Elven volley struck seconds later.
Men screamed.
The UK mages had noticed the same thing.
So had everyone else.
A bolt of lightning ripped through an Imperial formation.
Nothing stopped it.
A fireball followed.
No barrier rose.
Then another.
Then another.
Imperial magic had not disappeared entirely.
But it had stopped controlling the battlefield.
No reliable barriers.
No sustained magical artillery.
No constant fireballs tearing apart coalition formations.
And most importantly—
No steady rhythm of Dispel destroying Jax's Shadows.
A Shadow Knight charged directly into an Imperial shield wall.
The soldiers braced.
The Knight hit them.
This time, no mage erased it.
The line folded.
Wolfkin poured through.
An Imperial soldier stumbled backward, staring at the black figure cutting through the formation.
"Fight with honor!" someone shouted.
Jax actually laughed.
They had marched toward towns full of civilians.
And now they were complaining about honor.
A spell exploded somewhere behind him.
UK magic.
Imperial soldiers scattered.
Warden stood fifty yards away, directing Shadows through the openings.
He didn't waste them.
That was something Jax had learned to appreciate.
Warden understood what his soldiers were.
They could be destroyed and summoned again.
The people fighting beside them couldn't.
A Shadow Wolf threw itself between an Imperial spear and a Beastkin soldier.
The spear punched through its chest.
The Beastkin soldier buried an axe in the Imperial soldier's shoulder.
The Wolf dissolved.
Another Shadow took its place.
The Beastkin soldier stared at the fading darkness for half a second.
"Thank you."
Then he kept fighting.
Jax looked across the field.
The Empire wasn't winning anymore.
That much was obvious.
But they weren't breaking either.
Every time the coalition pushed, another Imperial formation locked together.
Every time the UK mages shattered a position, soldiers filled the gap.
Every time Shadows broke through, officers pushed more men forward.
Desperate men were dangerous men.
Warden turned his helmet toward Jax.
Jax saw the look.
He glanced across the battlefield.
The Empire had pulled its remaining heavy infantry together around the center. Shields overlapped. Spears extended outward. Archers and the remnants of the mage corps sheltered behind them.
A last hard point.
A place where breaking them would still cost living soldiers.
Jax looked back at Warden.
"You think it's time?"
Warden lowered his head.
"Yes, My Liege."
Jax grinned.
"Yeah."
He pulled Peacemaker from the ground and rested the enormous blade against his shoulder.
"Me too."
The earth moved.
At first, neither side understood what was happening.
Soldiers staggered.
A horse reared.
Someone shouted about an earthquake.
Then the ground fifty yards from the Imperial formation split open.
Roots erupted through the soil.
Not small roots.
Not vines.
Things as thick as tree trunks ripped through the earth and hurled dirt into the air.
Elven soldiers stopped firing.
Beastkin backed away.
One of the UK commanders spun toward the disturbance.
"FORM!"
Warden raised one hand.
The commander froze.
Something enormous rose from beneath the battlefield.
Black roots.
A colossal body.
Wings formed from tangled wood and darkness.
A dragon's head lifted above the smoke.
Two burning eyes opened.
For several seconds, even the United Kingdoms forgot there was an enemy in front of them.
"What the hell is that?" someone whispered.
Jax smiled.
"Rootzilla."
The Ancient Root Dragon roared.
Imperial soldiers stared upward.
So did the Elves.
So did the Beastkin.
A Wolfkin soldier slowly lowered his sword.
"That's ours?"
The soldier beside him swallowed.
"I really hope so."
Rootzilla charged.
The Imperial formation braced.
It didn't matter.
Roots tore through the ground beneath the shield wall.
Men flew.
The front rank disappeared under the Ancient Root Dragon's weight.
A wagon vanished beneath one claw.
Spears snapped against his body.
Arrows struck and disappeared into darkness.
Rootzilla drove straight through the hardest position remaining on the battlefield.
The Empire broke.
Not all at once.
Not cleanly.
But the center collapsed.
Men ran.
Others threw down weapons.
Some kept fighting because they believed surrender was death.
The United Kingdoms surged forward.
Jax didn't.
He watched.
Elves advanced.
Beastkin moved through the shattered formation.
UK mages hammered the positions where Imperial soldiers tried to regroup.
Shadows protected the flanks.
Warden reorganized his forces without being told.
Rootzilla drove farther into the Imperial position.
Jax smiled.
They had it.
A Shadow Ninja appeared beside him and dropped to one knee.
Jax looked down.
"Where?"
The Shadow pointed.
Jax understood.
Another battlefield.
Another problem.
He looked at Warden.
"You good?"
Warden lowered his head.
"We will finish this, My Liege."
Jax looked toward Rootzilla.
The Ancient Root Dragon smashed through another formation as UK soldiers followed behind him.
Rootzilla wasn't finished.
Pulling him away now would only make the people here finish the job the hard way.
Jax nodded.
"Keep him."
Warden's eyes burned beneath his helmet.
"As you command."
Jax rested Peacemaker across his shoulder.
"Try not to destroy Prominence."
Warden looked toward Rootzilla.
Then back toward Jax.
Jax sighed.
"Fine. Try not to destroy too much of Prominence."
He reached for the Shadow connection.
Then disappeared.
The Imperial army approaching Greenhaven could see its enemy.
For once.
That alone improved morale.
No invisible attackers.
No army disappearing into forests.
No bridge collapsing beneath them.
No monsters striking from darkness and vanishing before retaliation.
Ahead stretched rolling farmland broken by low ridges, old stone walls, orchards, scattered stands of trees, and shallow creeks.
And standing between them and Greenhaven—
An army.
Elven banners moved in the wind.
Beastkin stood among them.
Mages waited behind the front ranks.
And scattered throughout the formation were Jax Darquebane's Shadows.
The Imperial general smiled.
"Finally."
Crown Prince Heiron Silverthorne watched them approach from the opposite ridge.
He had spent most of his life preparing for responsibilities he had not yet inherited.
One day, Etherealvis would be his.
His father had made certain he understood what that meant.
A crown was not the right to command.
It was the obligation to be worth following.
Heiron looked across his army.
Elves.
Beastkin.
Mages.
Shadows.
Different kingdoms.
Different fighting styles.
Different reasons for standing there.
All of them between ten thousand Imperial soldiers and Greenhaven.
One of the Beastkin commanders stepped beside him.
"They look happy."
Heiron smiled faintly.
"They can see us."
"That does seem to make them happy."
"They wanted a battlefield."
The Beastkin commander drew his sword.
"How generous of us."
The Imperial army advanced.
Their scouts had done their jobs.
They had identified the Elven archers positioned near the tree lines.
They had found the Beastkin formations waiting behind the low stone walls.
They had seen the UK mages.
They had counted the Shadows.
They knew where the enemy was.
What they had failed to understand was why Heiron had allowed them to see so much.
The first Imperial formation entered range.
Heiron waited.
The second followed.
Still he waited.
The Imperial general raised his sword.
His army accelerated.
Heiron lowered his hand.
The sky lit up.
UK mages opened fire.
Fireballs arced over the field.
Lightning followed.
Bolts of concentrated magic slammed into the Imperial formations.
The soldiers waited for barriers.
None appeared.
One Imperial mage tried.
His hands rose.
Light formed.
Then flickered.
The remaining locusts descended.
The mage screamed and swatted at them as the spell collapsed.
Lucy's swarm had followed the Imperial army for miles.
The soldiers had killed thousands.
Maybe tens of thousands.
It hadn't mattered.
Every mage had spent the march fighting insects that wanted one thing.
Mana.
Those who still had enough power to cast were exhausted.
Those who weren't exhausted couldn't hold a spell long enough to matter.
And the United Kingdoms had mages of its own.
Another volley of magic struck.
The Imperial formation buckled.
"Archers," Heiron said.
Thousands of bowstrings snapped.
Arrows darkened the sky.
Normally, Imperial barriers would have absorbed the worst of it.
There were no barriers.
Arrows fell among the soldiers.
"Again."
Another volley.
The Empire kept coming.
Heiron had expected that.
Everyone knew Main Street.
The Empire could give it whatever official name it wanted.
Its soldiers knew what happened to men who came home after losing.
That made them dangerous.
It also made them predictable.
They had to advance.
Heiron let them.
The battlefield narrowed naturally between an orchard and a shallow creek.
Beastkin moved along both sides, using the broken ground and scattered trees to remain difficult targets.
The Empire pushed toward the center.
Exactly where Heiron wanted them.
An Imperial officer screamed an order.
The front ranks lowered spears.
Elven soldiers raised shields.
Shadows moved between them.
For the first time that day, the two armies crashed together.
Steel met steel.
Elves held.
Beastkin struck the flanks.
Shadows absorbed attacks meant for living soldiers.
An Imperial spear pierced a Shadow Wolf.
The Wolf vanished.
The soldier behind it barely had time to understand what had happened before an Elven blade found his throat.
Another Shadow went down.
Another took its place.
The Imperial line pushed.
Heiron watched.
Waited.
Waited.
The Beastkin commander beside him glanced over.
"Any time now."
Heiron smiled.
"Patience."
"I hate Elves."
"No, you don't."
"I hate this Elf."
"Better."
Then the ground moved.
The Beastkin commander's ears twitched.
He looked down.
"Oh."
Heiron drew his sword.
"Now."
Charlotte erupted beneath the Imperial line.
The enormous Shadow spider tore through the earth in a shower of dirt, roots, and screaming soldiers.
For half a second, the Imperial army froze.
Then the ground around her came alive.
Spiders poured upward.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
They swarmed boots.
Climbed armor.
Slipped through gaps in greaves and breastplates.
Men screamed and kicked at the ground.
Others slapped desperately at their own bodies.
Then the venom began working.
One soldier collapsed.
Then another.
A man tried to lift his sword and discovered his arm no longer obeyed him.
A cavalryman went rigid in the saddle.
His horse threw him.
Another soldier stumbled into the man beside him, both falling as spiders crawled across their armor.
The Imperial formation didn't collapse because everyone died.
It collapsed because suddenly nobody knew who could still move.
And Heiron's army did.
The Beastkin commander stared at the spreading chaos.
"Thank the gods for those Shadows."
Heiron watched Charlotte disappear beneath a knot of soldiers and erupt again farther down the line.
"They're not going to make this easy."
"No."
The Beastkin commander bared his teeth.
"But they're making it manageable."
Heiron lifted his sword.
"Then let's do our part."
He brought the blade down.
The Elves advanced.
Not alone.
Beastkin surged with them.
The tree lines erupted as hidden archers stepped into firing positions.
UK mages unleashed everything they had been holding back.
Fire rolled across Imperial formations.
Lightning struck officers.
Stone erupted beneath cavalry.
No barriers answered.
No Imperial fireballs returned.
No voice shouted Dispel and erased the Shadows opening paths through the enemy.
For the first time in the battle, the Empire had to face everything the United Kingdoms could do—
Without its magic protecting it.
The result was devastating.
Beastkin hit the broken formations first.
They moved faster than the Imperial infantry could reorganize, striking exposed flanks before disappearing behind Elven shields and Shadows.
Elven archers changed targets constantly.
Officers.
Standards.
Messengers.
Anyone trying to restore order.
The mages hammered concentrations of soldiers too large to scatter.
Charlotte's brood made standing still dangerous.
The Shadows made advancing dangerous.
The Elves made exposure dangerous.
The Beastkin made retreat dangerous.
The Imperial general shouted himself hoarse.
His officers tried.
The soldiers tried.
They fought because they believed they had to.
They fought because they were afraid.
They fought because they wanted to live.
It wasn't enough.
The United Kingdoms were too organized.
Too versatile.
Too prepared.
And for every problem the Empire managed to solve, something completely different replaced it.
An Imperial unit forced Charlotte's spiders back with torches.
Elven arrows fell on them.
Soldiers formed shields against the arrows.
Beastkin hit their flank.
They turned toward the Beastkin.
UK magic exploded among them.
They scattered from the magic.
Shadows attacked the gaps.
The Empire had spent generations building an army designed to overwhelm its enemies.
Heiron's army wasn't trying to overwhelm them with one thing.
It was making them answer everything.
At once.
The Imperial center finally broke.
Heiron saw it before anyone said a word.
A standard went down.
Then another.
Soldiers began moving backward.
Not retreating.
Not yet.
Just giving ground.
Then someone ran.
One man.
Then five.
Then fifty.
The Beastkin commander laughed.
"There it is."
Heiron raised his sword.
"Forward!"
The United Kingdoms advanced.
Elves.
Beastkin.
Mages.
Shadows.
Together.
Charlotte's brood spread through the retreating Imperial formations, but Heiron's soldiers delivered the blow.
They pushed.
They surrounded.
They broke units apart.
And when Imperial soldiers began throwing down their weapons, Heiron did something the Empire had taught them not to expect.
He raised his sword.
"Take prisoners!"
The order spread.
"PRISONERS!"
"WEAPONS DOWN!"
"ON YOUR KNEES!"
"YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED!"
Some Imperial soldiers didn't believe it.
They fought anyway.
Others stared at the Elves advancing toward them.
At the Beastkin.
At the Shadows.
At Charlotte.
Then at the weapons in their hands.
A sword hit the ground.
Then another.
Then dozens.
The Beastkin commander watched them surrender.
"Think they'll believe us?"
"Eventually."
"And if they don't?"
Heiron looked across the battlefield.
"Then we keep proving it."
Behind them, Greenhaven remained untouched.
No fires.
No screaming civilians.
No Imperial banners in its streets.
Heiron lowered his sword.
The Beastkin commander looked toward Charlotte as the enormous spider emerged again, surrounded by thousands of her children.
"Still glad she's on our side."
Heiron nodded.
"Very."
A Tele-Stone began to pulse.
Heiron reached for it.
Across five fronts, the war was changing.
Lisbeth burned.
Campbell still stood.
Prominence was breaking beneath Rootzilla.
Greenhaven had held.
And elsewhere, two Imperial armies were still fighting.
One in the forest.
One beside the broken bridge leading toward Riverside.
The War of Five Fronts wasn't over.
But for the first time—
The end was in sight.