Orst kept his forearms up, fists clenched inside the earthen gauntlets, letting his [Stone Gauntlets] take the punishment.
Arrows hammered his guard. A few slipped through the tiny cracks where his plating flexed—sharp stings against skin, it bordered near dangerous, while the magical armor held, that meant channelling enough so that the damage would not reach to him. He rolled on the broken ice before the next volley could pin him, came up on a knee, then to his feet with a grunt that was more anger than pain.
He had walked into this thinking it would be simple.
A handful of Knights. Some Demon Hunters with whips. A square full of frightened Anticourt men. He'd assumed he could pick them off at a distance, casual, the way nobles talked about hunting—slow, clean, controlled. He'd never been allowed to hunt as a boy. Bastards didn't get that kind of leisure. Only the highborn did.
What started as a routine chore changed to interest. Now it changed to something more.
These are prey. I am the hand that ends them.
Now he was being forced to work for it, and that humiliation sat in his chest like a hot coal.
He shifted his weight, preparing to surge—another stone skittered across the ice toward his heel.
Orst caught it in his peripheral vision and snapped his foot aside, adjusting before it could bite him. He kept his balance, kept his guard, kept moving.
Across the light line, Ezra stood among the defenders with a small pouch at his waist and his eyes lit gold. The child's face was calm in a way it shouldn't have been.
Ezra flicked another stone, not thrown hard—placed.
Orst didn't fall for it.
Ezra didn't look disappointed. He just kept going.
He threw a second stone so it clipped the first and redirected. Then a third, aimed to bounce off the second. Then a fourth.
Ezra used the grounds slippery surface to make each stone ricochet against another. His mind simulated the trajectories of the stones, getting numbers and goldlines crossing in his mind's eye. His mana reserves draining as he ran the simulation in his mind.
Within seconds, stones were skidding everywhere, low and quiet, hard to notice under screaming men and cracking spells. The ice already punished mistakes. Ezra was turning the whole zone into a trap.
Orst's boot came down on one of the small stones he hadn't seen—an innocent little thing buried in motion.
His heel slipped.
For half a second, his weight shifted wrong.
That was all Ezra needed.
"Now!" Ezra's voice cut across the square. "Close on him!"
Deimos and Phobos were already there, Demon Hunters moving in fast. The Blackfyre Guard tightened too, stepping into the space Ezra had shaped.
Rycharde already stopped command altogether once he saw that the Anticourt men were listening to the toddler. He focused more on battle than command.
Ezra pointed, sharp and procedural.
"Try and choke him with your whip so that he can't cast!" he shouted. "A voiceless mage is a dead one!"
Whips dropped in a coordinated snap. One looped across Orst's throat. Another came down near his jaw, trying to pin his mouth closed and keep his chant from forming.
Orst's hands came up instantly, forearms braced. He used his gauntlets as a shield, absorbing the whip's pressure and keeping his throat protected.
He couldn't chant. He could only hold.
And on ice, holding without casting meant slipping.
He went down to one knee, then caught himself on his forearms, armor scraping ice.
Within minutes of Ezra's appearance, Orst was on defense.
He turned his head toward the child, eyes narrowing.
Just a toddler, yet the whole line had changed the moment Ezra opened his mouth.
Orst didn't understand it. Not emotionally. But he understood effect.
Still—he was Viscount-ranked. He had options.
He couldn't chant now. Little did they know as soon as he jumped he had already held a spell. The only thing missing was the activation.
He timed the release perfectly and the spell triggered.
Ezra misread Orst's mana. He just saw his body tense to where he wanted the spell activated.
He couldn't shout in time to make everyone move. His legs did what he meant to say.=
A violent tremor rolled out in a radius—fifteen meters of cobbles and ice turning unstable. The cracked ice shattered completely, breaking into plates that bucked and slid over each other.
Around him, most of the Knights reacted the same way. They didn't panic. They braced, adjusted, took it as doctrine: a strong mage always has a hidden card.
Only Dynham was caught wrong.
His footing went, and he toppled as the street shook. The broken ice slid under him and carried him toward the forming crack in the ground.
A crevice opened—fast, ugly.
Phobos's whip shot out and coiled around Dynham's torso such that there would be no damage to him. He yanked hard, dragging Dynham back just as the cobbles split into a deep hole.
The save cost him.
Phobos collided into Dynham as the quake settled, both of them crashing shoulder-first onto jagged ice.
They started to get up—a mass sailed over the defenders' heads.
A stone projectile, that came from the bandit's camp.
Phobos and Dynham tried to dodge.
They were a second late.
The stone hit Dynham square in the torso.
His armor caved. Metal folded inward. Dynham's body snapped backward and flew—ten meters across broken ice.
It hit him hard and vomited hard immediately.
Orst landed in the newly cracked zone and finally regained solid footing. The ice had broken enough that his boots found stone again. He took a breath and cast with open aggression.
[Stone Barrage]
A swarm of rocks zoomed toward Ezra and the two Knights beside him. Ezra and the Knights scattered, dodging by inches, stones chewing gouges out of the ground behind them.
Ezra glanced at Evan—short, direct—and nodded once.
Evan understood. He shifted his stance, readying a shot.
Ezra turned his head, deliberately drawing Orst's attention toward Deimos.
Deimos raised his whip to attack.
Orst noticed.
And in that fraction of distraction, a single [Stone Bullet] came in from the side.
[Stone Bullet]
It hit Orst's [Stone Helm]. with a sharp crack, hard enough to snap his head sideways and leave him dizzy.
Deimos didn't waste the opening. His whip snapped out and coiled around Orst's neck.
Arrows hissed in at the same time. Orst sidestepped most. A few hit the earthen shield forming on his forearm and bounced.
Oswyn rushed in to help Deimos reel him—but he was a moment late.
Orst grabbed the whip with both hands and heaved, as one would throw a child.
Deimos whirled into the air.
Orst threw him straight toward Phobos, who was still trying to recover his footing after the tremor.
Deimos and Phobos collided hard, both stumbling and nearly going down again on the cracked ice.
Orst charged for cover.
He seized a nearby allied soldier—one of the Duke's men—and grabbed him by the leg.
Then he used the man as a shield.
Arrows slammed into the soldier's body. The man screamed once, then went limp.
Orst dragged the corpse with him, buying the half-seconds he needed to free his neck from the whip's choke. The cord was strong. His reinforced hands couldn't tear it, it wasn't made with normal materials.
Around the square, the defenders' rooftop arrows were still doing work.
They kept Shadow Walkers from closing on Rycharde's group in open lanes. Galwell's direction from above made Anticourt's inexperienced archers less useless—calls, timing, telling them where to waste arrows and where not to.
Without that roof pressure, the line would have been eaten.
Rycharde and Evered tried to flank Orst together, moving in from both sides.
Orst responded with contempt.
He hurled the arrow-riddled corpse at Evered.
Evered ducked, but the dead weight still clipped him and staggered his step.
At the same time, Orst shot a stone projectile toward Rycharde.
Rycharde met it with his hammer, smashing it mid-flight with a violent swing that jarred his arms.
The exchange bought Orst space.
Then Ezra struck again.
A tiny stone came from distance—fast, precise.
It hit Orst in the right eye, blinding him for a moment.
Orst screamed—furious, raw—and snapped his head toward Ezra.
He charged.
Ezra stayed his ground.
"Now! Javelins!" Ezra shouted.
Anticourt Knights—those with javelins—had already been positioned.
A hail of spears flew.
Orst dove instinctively, dropping to the ground to avoid the volley aimed for his throat and chest.
That was the moment.
Rycharde and Evan moved together without needing to speak.
Evan dashed to the pre-dug hole—one of the cracked pits in the broken ice zone, flipped a cauldron and dumped everything.
Rycharde followed with a single cast.
[Fire Ball]
The flame punched down into the oil-dark gap.
Fire roared in the hole.
Orst's roar answered from below, distorted by earth and stone.
He stayed underground longer than expected—either to avoid the javelins or because the fire forced him deeper.
Evan stared at the smoking hole, chest heaving.
"Is he dead?" Evan asked.
Ezra's eyes were locked on the ground, sensing.
"No," Ezra said flatly. "He's still down there. I can sense his aura."
He pointed at the barrels.
"Pour more oil inside," Ezra ordered. "He'll stew. And he'll suffocate if he insists on staying underground."
Rycharde turned from the hole toward Dynham's broken body.
"Get Dynham out of here," Rycharde commanded. "Oswyn—move him inside."
Oswyn didn't argue. He sprinted for Dynham, hauled him up with help, and dragged him toward the hall's light.
Shadow Walkers began to drift closer to the wounded—sensing weakness, trying to exploit it.
Dynham, pale and shaking, still raised his hand.
He forced a spell through the pain.
[Fire Ball]
The fireball flew into the nearest pooled shadow. It had enough power for them to hesitate, buying Oswyn enough space to get him into the building.
***
At the edge of the fight, two Shadow Walkers watched Ezra.
One leaned close to another, speaking low.
"The child," one murmured. "He has the Emperor's Eye."
"It is called God's Eye by the Varkun, Whisperers in imperial tongue," the leader replied, voice cold.
"He could be the Worldbringer," the younger insisted. "Elderheart of the old songs. So young, yet that precision of attack, and his sense for the flow of the battle… I have not seen such even among grown Imperials, even among their generals, their Vorran, not like this. You heard him, he does not need a crown or a seat. They listen like sheep, like they were meant to obey. That magic is like the Vael. "
The leader's head tilted, and snorted. "The Vael's magic pertains to minds yes, but I did not see a flicker. He has not used magic at all."
"Do not hang every sharp mind on a fireside tale."He continued" The Worldbringer of the sagas commands all workings—shadow, light, earth, flame, wind, water, and arts we have no words for. A walking storm, a god descended and made flesh. This boy does not even cast in the Imperial fashion." He watched Ezra again, calculating.
The leader continued. "If he were that, the square would already be ash and glass."
The other Shadow Walker's voice tightened.
"Empyreans of Vartan's stock have made patterns like this before—great clarity, strange sense for the future. Their blood wakes late, ten summers or more. Not in a babe barely past his second winter."
The leader didn't look away from Ezra.
"He's too early," he said. "Too small."
"Then what is he?" the younger whispered.
"A mutant spark in some Imperial noble line. A genius, perhaps." The leader's tone did not change. "Dangerous, certainly. But not a god from our myths."
The younger shadow walker fell quiet, though his eyes remained fixed on Ezra. Below, the boy was already pointing, sending men where they needed to be, watching the burning pit with a predator's patience.
He turned his gaze toward the column of smoke rising from Orst's burrow.
"Names and omens will not give us power," he said. "Whatever he is, our task remains. We complete the contract. We take the cores."
He let the shadows curl up around his shoulders, his form thinning, edges blurring into the dark.