"You know the drill," Ezra said.
"Inside the perimeter."
Evan leaned down and hooked an arm under him, then lifted with practiced care. Not gentle enough to waste time. Not rough enough to forget Ezra was small. He hauled him onto the saddle and settled him in front, one arm locked around Ezra's middle.
Ezra's fingers clamped onto the front of Evan's cuirass.
The nearest felbeasts flinched back as the Quintil surged forward from the pressure Evan carried. Even muted, his aura hit like a warning.
"Oswyn, Dynham—back to the line!" Evan called over his shoulder.
Oswyn and Dynham broke away from the snapping beasts at their heels and ran for the ward's boundary.
Evan's mount punched forward.
Hooves thundered. Armor rang. Claws scraped across with a harsh sound. A felboar clipped Evan's shield and bounced off, tumbling sideways in the dirt.
They hit a thin spot in the encirclement and drove through it before it closed.
Ezra felt the ward line before he saw anything change.
It wasn't a wall. It was a shift. Air stretched tight around the circle, then giving as Evan forced them through. Like pushing through a membrane.
The moment they crossed, Ezra's lungs unclenched.
Inside, the ground felt solid. Not safer, exactly. Just anchored. Like stepping out of a current.
"Don't go back out yet," Ezra said fast, still gripping Evan's armor. "They can't reach us in here. Let the line hold."
Evan's arm stayed tight around him. The horse kept moving, but Evan didn't turn them back out.
He listened.
Outside the ward, six knights in matte black plate fought like a single body.
Rycharde and Evered anchored the front. Hammer and mace rose and fell with brutal economy. No flourishes. Just kills.
Oswyn and Dynham worked the edges, filling gaps when the beasts pushed the line wide, then sliding back into their lanes.
Galwell moved where the pressure thinned, spear stabbing in short, precise bursts while his eyes cut beyond the firelight.
And on the rim, Deimos and Phobos worked like blades—whip and daggers in a tight rhythm, never letting a beast settle into a clean pattern.
The ward held.
Dynham, Ezra noticed, was straining more than the others. His weapon forced him close. Where Evered could end fights with a mace at controlled distance, and where Rycharde's hammer created space by existing, Dynham had to step into jaws and claws to land hits.
He did it anyway. Grim. Adaptive. Ugly.
Phobos saw Ezra in the saddle and snapped his head toward him, fury showing even through grime and blood.
"Why is there a child here?" he snarled, slitting a felhawk's belly as it swooped low. "We don't have the numbers to fight and babysit!"
"Mind your tongue," Deimos snapped, ducking under a wolf's leap and opening its belly with a backhand slash. "Unless you want those knights to gut you next."
Deimos's voice went colder.
"That is Lord Ezra of Bren."
Phobos froze for half a breath. Then he twisted to stare. Disbelief hit him hard.
"What?" he barked toward Evan. "Oi, knight! We could use your help instead of your noble's day care!"
Evan kept his voice level.
"Wait," he called. "Lord Ezra has a plan."
Phobos looked like he'd been punched.
"You can't be serious," he snapped. "I am not taking orders from a child who hasn't even seen five winters."
"Aye," Rycharde cut in without looking away from the beasts. His hammer smashed a felboar sideways. "What's the plan, Lord Ezra?"
Phobos stared at him as if the knight had lost his mind.
Rycharde's voice rang out like a banner pinned in place with nails.
"Under his command, Sir Evan defeated an Highborn mage," he said. "Ezra was not yet a year old. I was there."
Phobos barked a short, humorless laugh.
"You knights of Bren are lunatics."
Ezra bared his teeth in something that wasn't quite a smile.
"Lunatics with a plan," he said. "You two don't even have an exit strategy. Were you planning to swing until you ran out of stamina and hope the sunrise saves you? How exactly were you going to break the encirclement? Ask the animals nicely?"
Phobos's face flushed under the grime.
Ezra didn't need to read him to know the answer. Dawn. Survive the night. Bloodlust ebbs with morning. The Grove shifts. That had been their plan.
Ezra's gaze cut toward the treeline.
"These animals are too coordinated to be acting on instinct," he said. "They move like an army. When I was running here, I saw a human silhouette controlling the lines."
He looked back at Deimos.
"Are there Arcanists who can do that?" Ezra asked. "Control beasts?"
Deimos slit a wolf's throat and kicked the body back into the pack.
"Yes," he said grimly. "Whisperers. Near the border, we escorted a caravan attacked every night—beasts, always beasts. We hunted the mage. When he died, the raiding stopped."
A felboar charged him. Deimos sidestepped. His whip cracked around the foreleg and yanked. The beast crashed. He finished it with a dagger thrust without breaking cadence.
"But that was small scale," he went on. "Regular animals. Not felbeasts. This is worse."
"Felbeasts?" Ezra asked.
Evan answered automatically.
"Milord, felbeasts are variants," he said. "Bigger, stronger, faster than their normal kind. Some scholars think they channel mana, but they have no spells. Just… more."
Ezra nodded once.
"So we have a Whisperer, an army, and an encirclement," he said. He drew one slow breath. "Fine. I need to know exactly what you can all do. Spells. Range. Cast time."
Rycharde didn't hesitate, even while he moved.
"Milord," he said, hammer rising to crush another wolf mid-leap, "first circle [Stone Bullet]—all of us can throw it. Second circle [Fire Ball] is clean enough to cast while fighting. [Flame Blaze] is fourth. I can do it, but not in this crush unless you buy me space."
"Lord Ezra," Evered said between blows, "second circle earth—[Earth Wall] and [Stone Gauntlet]. I can push thicker walls if I'm not being pressed."
Galwell drove his spear through a felcougar's throat and wrenched it free.
"Sire—quick work is [Water Ball], [Freeze]. [Ice Cannon] takes forty seconds to set up proper. Bad bargain in this crush unless you buy me time."
"Lord Ezra!" Oswyn grunted, parrying tusks with the flat of his blade. "Same as Sir Evered's, but my [Earth Wall] isn't as sturdy."
Dynham spat blood and barked without turning his head. "Milord—[Rock Bullet]'s third, [Fire Ball]'s second. There's other third-circle earth in me, but I'm not standin' there singin' it with teeth at my knees."
The Demon Hunters didn't offer spells. Their weapons were their answer.
"Good," Ezra said. "Thank you."
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat.
Mana flowed out in a thin, controlled wave. Just enough to brush each knight and taste the shape of their cores—capacity, purity, flow under strain.
Then he pushed further, careful.
Out into the treeline.
The forest answered with jagged signatures everywhere. Felbeasts burned like crude torches—mana rough and indistinct.
There was no singular spike. No clean signal that said Whisperer.
Ezra pulled back, jaw tight.
Fine. No easy radar.
He watched the line instead. Hammer arcs. Spear thrusts. Whip timing. The micro-pauses before commitment. The strain in Evered's shoulders each time he chose to block. Dynham's footwork tightening as fatigue threatened to make him overreach.
AMP hummed at the edge of Ezra's vision—faint overlays, vectors, force estimates, the rhythm of coordinated charges.
Ezra filed it away, then asked, blunt and practical:
"Did anyone bring oil?"
A wolf slammed into the line and died under Rycharde's hammer.
"Fat. Grease," Ezra continued. "Did you keep the bear fat?"
"Yes, Lord Ezra," Rycharde said. "Plenty. We were going to use it for bait."
Ezra's eyes sharpened.
"Good. Oswyn, can you handle a lance?"
"Yes, Milord!"
"Then Evan will borrow your halberd."
Oswyn didn't hesitate. He tossed the halberd toward Evan and snatched a spare lance from one of the pack horses inside the circle.
Ezra pointed past the boundary.
Three trees just beyond the ward—old trunks with angles that would betray them if cut right. Ezra traced a quick V in the air.
"Evan, those three," he said. "Wedge the cuts like this so they fall inward. Smear bear fat along the wounds and trunks."
Evan nodded once.
"Yes, Lord."
Ezra raised his voice so the whole ring could hear.
"And give fat to the others. Coat the beasts instead of killing them whenever you can. Smear it across their fur. The more the better."
Phobos's head snapped up.
"What?" he blurted, ducking a felhawk. "You want us to—"
"Just do it," Rycharde snapped. "You heard him."
Evan burst out of the circle, halberd in hand.
A few felbeasts darted after him. He outran most and disabled the rest with short, precise strikes that barely broke stride. He hacked the first tree at an angle, then the second, then the third—each cut placed to make the trunks betray their own weight.
Between swings, he smeared thick globs of bear fat along exposed wood.
Inside the ward, the knights adjusted their rhythm.
Evered slapped fat across a wolf's flank instead of crushing its skull. Dynham let a boar's charge glance off his shield, then raked greasy fingers along its back as it passed. Oswyn dragged fat along a cougar's side with the butt of his lance.
The beasts barely reacted. Bloodlust didn't distinguish between struck and smeared.
Minutes stretched.
By the time Evan sprinted back, dozens of felbeasts glistened in firelight, fur matted with oil.
Evan vaulted the ward and slid back in beside Ezra, chest heaving.
"Done," he said.
Ezra didn't hesitate.
"Now!" he shouted. "Rycharde, Dynham—[Fire Ball] on the trees. Then on the beasts. Evered, Oswyn—[Earth Wall], there and there. Hunters, cover them while they chant!"
Rycharde bought space with a brutal shoulder-check and thrust his free hand forward.
"[Fire Ball]!"
A sphere of flame slammed into the nearest marked trunk.
Fat-soaked wood caught with a hungry whoomph.
Dynham mirrored him. The second trunk ignited with a roar. The third followed half a heartbeat later.
The wedge cuts did their work.
With deep cracking groans, the burning trees toppled inward, falling into a rough V that pointed back toward the route they'd come in. Flaming branches crashed down. Sparks sprayed.
The forest floor caught instantly.
Bear fat turned flame into a starving thing.
Heat washed over the circle.
Felbeasts caught in the fall path howled as fire ate their fur. They bolted, smashed into each other. Those they brushed against staggered—then caught too.
The encirclement buckled.
The coordinated ring broke into chaotic knots.
"[Earth Wall] now!" Ezra shouted.
Evered slammed his mace-head into the ground. Oswyn followed with the butt of his lance, chanting under his breath.
Stone surged up in two thick ridges—low, angular barriers that linked with the burning trunks, forming a crude funnel. It shielded the ward's interior from the worst of the stampede while leaving one path relatively open.
Deimos and Phobos moved at the breaks, batting away any beast that tried to leap the forming barricade before the walls settled.
Outside, the forest devolved into panic.
Felbeasts fled fire and smoke, trampling each other. The ordered pressure on the ward dissolved as instinct finally overrode command.
Ezra tilted his head back, eyes scanning the smoke.
"Hawks," he muttered.
As if on cue, the felhawks shrieked and beat their wings hard, climbing away from heat and thick smoke. For the first time since Evan arrived, the air above the circle cleared.
Ezra didn't waste the window.
"Throw me," he said.
Evan didn't ask where.
He cupped his hands. Ezra stepped into them brace and Evan heaved.
Mana reinforced the motion just enough to make it clean. Ezra shot up like a thrown spear.
AMP flared full-force.
Golden grids slammed over his vision as his perspective widened. The battlefield snapped into sharp relief—firelines, beast clusters, stampede vectors, gaps forming where coordination cracked.
Beyond the chaos, on a slight rise outside the worst of the smoke, he saw it.
A lone figure standing unnaturally still. Staff in hand. Cloak barely moving despite turbulent air. Around him, the beasts left a small ring of clear ground—untouched.
"There," Ezra breathed.
AMP pinned it.
[Bearing: 60° NE. Distance: 142 m.]
He hit the top of his arc.
"Evan!" he shouted down. "Sixty degrees northeast! Same drill as Catalyna—now!"
Evan was already turning. Galwell tossed him his bow without being asked, switching fully to spear. Evan caught the bow, notched an arrow, and aligned to Ezra's call as the boy began to fall.
They'd practiced this. Ezra calling angles. Evan trusting numbers.
Evan drew to his cheek.
"Higher," Ezra called as he dropped. "Two fingers. Good. Loose!"
Evan released.
The arrow arced up and out through heat haze. AMP tracked it as a thin golden line.
The Whisperer started to turn.
Too late.
The arrow hit him in the chest.
The figure staggered, shock plain in the posture. Hands scrabbled at the shaft like it couldn't accept it.
Then fire reached him.
A burning branch dropped, showering sparks. Flame raced through brush and leapt.
In moments the Arcanist was framed in fire—then swallowed.
His body collapsed into the inferno.