The Grand Frontlines did not fall quietly.
They screamed.
Steel groaned beneath impossible strain. Stone ruptured as if the ground itself were recoiling from what crawled across it. Fires burned in colors that should not exist—sick blues, corrupted violets—fed not by fuel, but by flesh and stolen Axiom.
At the southern districts, where the Blight had broken containment, General Ignis stood unmoving amid chaos.
He was bloodied.
Burned.
Still standing.
A grotesque mass lunged from the wreckage—too many limbs, too many mouths, its torso swollen with faces frozen mid-scream. Ignis did not retreat.
"Roseanne!" he roared.
"I'm with you," came the reply, calm even now.
Madam Roseanne raised her staff, Axiom spiraling around it in layered glyphs. She did not chant. She commanded. The spell collapsed inward, compressing—then fed directly into Ignis's blade.
The sword ignited.
Not with flame, but with purifying heat so intense the air around it warped, reality bending like glass held over a forge.
Ignis surged forward.
Every swing carved a clean arc through hell itself. Where the blade passed, Blight did not rot—it ceased. Monsters split apart into ash, their screams cut short as the flame devoured corruption down to its definition.
"FALL BACK IN SECTORS!" Ignis shouted. "WOUNDED FIRST! NO HEROICS!"
Despite the carnage, the command structure held.
Officers relayed orders through broken comm-lines. Signal flares burst above ruined streets, marking evacuation routes. Bastion Grace units dragged survivors through fire and rubble, shields layered thick enough to crack under impact yet hold long enough to save lives.
A communications mage staggered beside Roseanne, bleeding from the scalp.
"General—we managed to alert Mythril Bastion," he gasped. "Reinforcements expected… by sunrise."
Ignis's jaw tightened.
"…Shit."
That was hours.
Hours they did not have.
"Then we stall," Ignis said. "Whatever it costs."
—
ARCANUM SPIRAL — YNA
Yna's boots skidded across shattered stone as the street buckled beneath her.
A detonation ripped through the block to her left—windows imploding inward, masonry exploding outward. The upper floors of a watchtower collapsed in a slow, terrible cascade.
"GET DOWN!" someone screamed.
A lance of condensed Axiom tore through the space they had occupied seconds earlier. The beam did not merely strike the building—it deleted it. Stone turned to vapor. Bone followed. Blight matter screamed as it was unmade, leaving a hollowed corridor of smoking absence in the air.
When the shockwave passed, the street was revealed again.
Bodies lay everywhere.
Some still moved.
Most did not.
Too many.
Yna's breath caught hard in her chest. For a fraction of a second, the noise of the battlefield dulled—replaced by ringing silence and the weight of lives she could no longer count.
"Ynara!" one of her squad called, voice hoarse. "Orders!"
She turned.
Her people stood where they could, leaning on shattered spears and half-formed shields. Mana channels flickered visibly beneath skin—overdrawn, fraying, close to collapse. One cadet's hands shook so badly his casting circle kept warping. Another had blood running freely from her ears.
They had obeyed every order.
Shielded civilians.
Held corridors.
Pulled back when commanded.
And still the Blight kept coming.
Yna inhaled.
Deep.
"Cease offensive casting," she said, voice snapping into command clarity. "Fall back per General Ignis's directive. Defensive formation only."
Relief flickered across a few faces.
Then confusion.
"What about you?" a cadet shouted over the din. "Ynara—!"
Yna met his eyes.
"I'll hold."
"No—wait—!"
She was already moving.
Each step forward felt like walking into a rising tide. The Blight reacted instantly—as if recognizing her presence on a fundamental level.
It always did.
From alleys and ruptured streets, things emerged.
Once-human silhouettes bloated with stolen Axiom. Limbs bent the wrong way. Mouths split open along torsos and throats, glowing from within as energy condensed for discharge. Some crawled. Some dragged themselves forward on fused limbs. Others skipped, joints snapping and reforming with wet sounds.
Their mouths began to glow.
Charging.
Yna stopped.
She closed her eyes.
The battlefield roared around her, but inside her—
Quiet.
...
"As long as your feet touch the ground,"
Elrin's voice echoed in memory, steady and unwavering,
"...you're human."
...
Her boots pressed into the stone.
She felt the ground's vibration. The fractures. The impurities in the Axiom flow beneath the city. She felt her own limitations—this fragile body, this broken divinity.
Her eyes opened.
"I'll show you," she whispered—not to the monsters, but to herself—voice trembling only at the edges, "what remains of a chieftain god."
She did not chant.
She did not draw a rune.
She exhaled.
Her Pure Axiom erupted from her core.
The air screamed as magic circles tore themselves into existence—dozens, then hundreds—layered in impossible depth. They did not form a clean array. They spiraled. Collided. Repositioned themselves mid-creation, like a living system rewriting its own geometry.
They looked less like spells—
And more like a sky falling apart.
The first beams fired.
Then the second wave.
Then everything moved at once.
Light did not travel straight.
It curved.
Adjusted.
Hunted.
Bolts bent around debris, split mid-flight, recombined, and pierced through Blight matter with surgical cruelty. Monsters died mid-leap, bodies unraveling into ash and static before they could finish screaming. Those that tried to shield themselves were struck from behind, above, inside.
Yna screamed.
Not in fear.
In defiance.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Her arms shook violently as she poured output beyond safe thresholds. Blood spilled freely from her nose, streaking down her lips and chin. Her vision fractured—double, triple—but she did not stop.
Every discharge carved the street cleaner.
Every pulse burned corruption down to its stolen definition.
The monsters tried to adapt.
They always did.
It didn't matter.
One by one, they vanished.
Until—
Silence.
The street ahead lay empty.
No movement.
No corruption.
Only drifting ash and glowing scars burned into stone.
Yna staggered.
Her knees buckled.
She would have fallen—
Hands caught her.
Firm.
Steady.
Her squad surrounded her, casting stabilizers and healing magic without hesitation. Warmth flooded her limbs, grounding her again in flesh and breath.
"You don't have to do it alone," one whispered, voice breaking.
Yna looked at them.
Really looked.
She believed it.
She wasn't a god anymore.
But she wasn't alone either.
—
The battle did not end.
Purification mages held the front like surgeons fighting a malignant spread—burning corridors clean only to abandon them minutes later as counterpressure surged. Every spell was calculated, every retreat deliberate, yet the Blight adapted faster than doctrine could.
Positions advanced.
Then collapsed.
Then collapsed again.
Commanders stopped naming locations and began numbering minutes.
Some civilians escaped by rail, packed into armored carriages that screamed away under protective wards. Others rose into the sky aboard evacuation airships, shields flaring as corrupted projectiles burst against them like diseased rain.
And some—
Some chose to stay.
Not because they were ordered.
But because someone had to buy time.
Thunder Foundry artillery roared from elevated platforms, their cannons hammering Blight clusters with clockwork precision. Each impact turned streets into molten craters—but the Blight learned. It absorbed force, redistributed mass, and answered with suicidal counter-detonations that brought buildings down on both rescuer and rescued alike.
The night stretched.
Longer than it should have.
Longer than anyone thought possible.
By the time the eastern sky began to pale—
General Ignis stood atop a mound of bodies.
Blight.
Human.
So interwoven that even trained eyes could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
His sword flickered weakly now, flame guttering as its Axiom supply ran thin. Each breath dragged smoke and ash into his lungs. His armor was cracked in a dozen places, scorched black, still hot.
Madam Roseanne leaned heavily on her staff nearby, shoulders shaking as she forced air into burned lungs. Her mana reserves were nearly empty. Her spellcasting had degraded into brute force.
Then—
The sky fractured.
Magic circles unfolded overhead—vast, geometric constructs spanning entire districts. Their runes glowed with ancient authority, rotating in synchronized layers that bent the clouds themselves.
Transportation arrays.
Not one.
Not a few.
Hundreds.
The air screamed as space folded.
Airships poured through in disciplined waves—war carriers, purification barges, medical platforms—each bearing the unmistakable sigil of the crown. Their hulls gleamed with layered wards, runes etched deep enough to scar the metal itself.
The battlefield froze.
Even the Blight recoiled, its surface rippling as if recognizing something greater than itself.
Then a voice descended.
Not shouted.
Not amplified.
Commanded.
"WITH THE AUTHORITY GRANTED UPON ME—THE KING, I ORDER EVERYONE TO FALL BACK. NOW."
King Eeza.
The words struck like law given form.
Purification barriers slammed into existence—vast domes of radiant force layered atop one another, driven by hundreds of synchronized mages who had spent days charging a single casting. Where the light touched, corruption screamed and unraveled, reduced to inert ash.
Blight masses shrank.
Receded.
Burned away in screaming swathes.
The sky brightened.
The sun crested the horizon at last.
The Blight weakened.
But the fortress—
Half of it was gone.
The other half still breathed.
Barely.
And no one standing there mistook survival for victory.
—
Survivors drifted toward the purification zones in broken clusters—some walking, some dragged, some carried on improvised stretchers made from shields and cloaks. Med-magi moved among them in grim silence, hands glowing as they sealed wounds that should have been fatal. Others could do nothing but cover bodies with tarps and mark names on slates already overflowing.
Above, the King's airships continued their work.
Great arcs of purification magic were discharged in measured intervals, each one the culmination of days—weeks—of preparation by hundreds of magi. The light rolled across the ruined districts like a cleansing tide, forcing the Blight to retreat inch by screaming inch. Smaller craft hovered low, winches dropping rescue teams into streets still steaming with corruption. Thunder Foundry platforms repositioned, cannons swiveling to intercept any last surges.
The war had pulled back.
Not ended.
At the center of the makeshift command zone, General Ignis stood braced against his sword, its flame finally guttered out. His armor was barely holding together; his breath rasped with every inhale. Yet his eyes were sharp—too sharp for a man who should have collapsed an hour ago.
"Report," he said.
Officers approached one by one, voices hoarse.
"Evacuation corridor secured."
"Southern purification holding."
"Survivors extraction at seventy percent and climbing."
Ignis nodded to each, absorbing the numbers without comment.
Then his gaze swept the crowd.
He frowned.
"Elrin," he said suddenly. His voice cut through the noise. "Where is Cadet Elrin Mornye?"
Silence answered him.
A lieutenant swallowed and stepped forward. "Sir… Cadet Squad Twenty-Eight was separated during the projectile rain. Heavy losses. We lost visual."
Ignis's jaw tightened.
"One of ours, Cadet Tairi Enon, is currently missing as well, sir. Last seen with Squad Twenty-Eight, squad of Elrin Mornye, lead by Captain Renia."
Yna, standing a short distance away while medics wrapped her arms in glowing bands, stiffened.
"What?" she said sharply. "What do you mean missing?"
"No confirmed location," the lieutenant replied. "The area they were in was—" he hesitated. "—overrun."
Color drained from Yna's face.
"I'll search," she said immediately, taking a step forward. "I can—"
Her knees buckled.
Madam Roseanne caught her before she hit the ground, gripping her shoulders with surprising strength.
"No," Roseanne said firmly. "You've exceeded safe output twice already. One more large-scale cast and your Axiom channels may rupture permanently."
Yna trembled. "Elrin is out there."
"I know," Roseanne said, softer now. "And if you die looking for him, you won't save anyone."
She straightened and lifted her staff.
"I'll do it."
The runes along the shaft began to glow—
Then—
BANG.
Not magic.
Not steel.
A crude, violent crack that echoed across the ruins like a broken oath.
Everyone froze.
Another second passed.
Then shouts.
"There!""SIR—THIS WAY!"
Ignis was already moving.
—
They found him at the edge of a shattered plaza.
Elrin stood alone.
Blood soaked his uniform, dried and fresh mixed together. One side of his face was matted crimson with blood gushing out from his head; one eye swollen shut. The other stared forward, unfocused, as if looking through the world rather than at it.
His arm was raised.
In his hand—
A firearm.
Smoke curled from the barrel.
At his feet lay Captain Renia.
What remained of her.
Still.
Too still.
Tairi Enon was on his knees beside the body, fists dug into the ash and rubble. His scream tore through the dawn—raw, broken, delayed, as if his soul had only just caught up with what his eyes were seeing.
"AAAAAH—!"
The sound made hardened soldiers flinch.
Yna stopped dead.
"E-Elrin…" she whispered.
She took a step forward. Then another.
"Elrin," she said louder. "What is—?"
He didn't respond.
Didn't blink.
Didn't seem to hear her at all.
Ignis arrived behind her, taking in the scene in a single glance—the gun, the body, the state of the cadet.
He closed his eyes.
Just for a moment.
"…So this," he said quietly, voice heavy with something like grief, "is your answer, kid."
No one spoke.
The air itself seemed afraid to move.
Around them, the remains of Cadet Squad Twenty-Eight were scattered—burned silhouettes, shattered armor, fragments too small to name. A squad that had laughed together, trained together, survived drills and punishments and impossible expectations—
Gone.
Simple.
Final.
Some of the onlookers saw murder.
Others saw mercy.
A few saw betrayal.
Elrin saw nothing.
Reinforcement medics approached slowly, hands raised, voices low. One carefully wrapped fingers around the barrel of the gun, easing it downward. Elrin did not resist. His grip slackened as if he had forgotten he was holding it.
When they guided him to sit, his legs folded without strength.
The sun rose fully over the horizon.
Golden light spilled across ruins, catching on broken glass and bloodstains alike. Above, the airships continued to purge the sky, their shadows passing silently over the survivors.
The Blight receded.
The Grand Frontlines had endured.
Rescue teams moved in earnest now—lifting the wounded, cataloging the dead, sealing off contaminated zones.
Elrin was placed on a stretcher, his body unresponsive, eyes still open and empty as he was carried past the remains of his squad.
Tairi's screams faded into hoarse sobbing.
Yna stood frozen, hands clenched at her sides, unable to follow.
This was survival.
And this—
This was the price.
Cadet Squad Twenty-Eight was gone.
And nothing—no purification, no reinforcement, no sunrise—
Would ever bring them back.