The earth split open with a grinding roar. From the cracks, Terracotta Warriors surged forth, armor rattling, shields locking into place with perfect rhythm. A wizard on the wall raised his wand and shouted, voice cracking over the din:
"Formation! Dragon's Fang!"
The stone soldiers responded as though they had trained for centuries, halberds snapping forward in perfect unison. A line of demons rushed them snarling, claws outstretched—only to be skewered on the spears and shoved back into their own ranks.
"Advance!" the wizard bellowed.
The warriors pressed forward, their shields angled in a wedge that cut the tide apart. Demons shrieked as they were trampled underfoot or driven through by blades that never faltered.
On the shrine walls, defenders rained terror down into the melee. A young witch whipped her wand toward the heavens. "Ferrei Catena!" she cried, and a chain of iron links shot upward, snagging an angel by the ankle. The celestial shrieked, wings beating furiously, but three more chains followed, dragging it screaming down to the stones where a Terracotta spear met it mid-fall.
Another wizard jabbed his wand skyward, transfiguring the clouds themselves into barbed nets. "Catch them! Don't let them regroup!" The nets unfurled with a whip-crack, tangling around a cluster of angels and yanking them from the air like snared birds. They hit the earth with a sickening thud, bodies breaking against the unyielding ground before the stone warriors fell upon them.
"More spears!" someone on the wall shouted. "Transfigure the rubble, now!"
A team of three slammed their wands down in unison. Shards of the courtyard stone tore free and twisted into jagged javelins, hundreds of them, which rose high into the air before plummeting into the demonic horde. The front line of fiends disappeared in an explosion of blood and dust.
Above, the air arsenal team worked with grim precision. "On my mark—three, two, now!" their captain roared. Wands swept in deadly arcs. Spears of conjured steel flew upward, trailing fire. One skewered an angel through the wing, pinning it against another. Another burst into chains mid-flight, wrapping two of the shining beings together and dragging them down into the Terracotta ranks.
Morpheus stood at the center, his cloak fluttering in the hot wind of battle. His gaze was fixed not on the slaughter before them, but on the wide, silvered lake in the distance. The water rippled though no wind touched it, and dark shapes moved beneath the surface.
He leaned toward Kazuki. "The merfolk are ready at our signal."
Kazuki's jaw was tight, his knuckles white around his wand as he cut down a demon that tried to leap the wall. He shook his head. "Not yet. To bring them in, we'll need a full team working together. In the middle of this madness, it will be hard."
Morpheus's eyes narrowed, a small, cold smile touching his lips. "All good things are hard, my friend."
The Terracotta wedge chewed into the demon front lines, and among their stone feet darted a band of goblins. They fought low, quick, and vicious, slipping into the blind spots between clay shields and stabbing upward where the warriors' rigid movements left gaps.
Ragnor, a broad-shouldered goblin with a scar carved across his brow, swung his axe in a brutal arc. The blade bit deep into a demon's knee, sending the beast sprawling under the press of advancing clay feet.
"Hold the line!" he barked in Gobbledegook, spittle flying from his tusked mouth. "Stay under their shadows—make the bastards trip over themselves!"
His squad responded in snarls and grunts. One vaulted off a Terracotta shoulder and buried his dagger into the throat of a wingless fiend. Another jammed a hooked spear between a demon's ribs, then dragged it screaming into the waiting pikes of the stone warriors.
Ragnor hacked again, his axe singing with enchantment, the runes along its head flaring with each strike. Black ichor sprayed across his face, but he only grinned, tusks slick. Above him, an angel dove, light blazing from its spear.
"Down!" Ragnor roared. His team threw themselves flat. The angel's thrust shattered against a Terracotta shield. In perfect silence, three clay halberds drove into the celestial's chest, impaling it. Ragnor was already on his feet, hacking the corpse free before it could tumble onto his squad.
"Next wave!" someone screamed over the din. Ragnor looked up to see more demons surging like a flood, faster than the warriors could cut them down. For a moment, his grin faltered.
On the wall, a witch leaned against the battlement, her lungs burning, hair plastered with sweat and soot. Her name was lost in the roar of battle, but her wand still twitched upward with every ounce of strength she had left.
"Bombarda Maxima!" she shrieked, and a section of stone transformed into a rain of jagged spikes. They fell like hail into the sea of demons, punching through hide and bone.
Her arm trembled. She had cast the spell a hundred times tonight more. Her voice cracked raw from the screaming of incantations. Every muscle in her body begged her to collapse.
But when she glanced down, she saw the goblins fighting under the Terracotta wedge. She saw them drenched in black blood, heard their snarls of defiance. She saw the stone warriors marching forward, implacable as mountains.
And she knew she could not stop.
Her lips moved again. "Ferrei Catena!" A chain lashed out of thin air, wrapping around a demon that had leapt onto the wall. It shrieked as she yanked it off balance and sent it tumbling into the killing ground below.
Her vision blurred. She could barely hear her own voice over the thunder of wings. More angels were descending, radiant and merciless. She wiped blood from her forehead—she wasn't sure if it was hers or someone else's—and raised her wand again.
"There's no end," she whispered to herself. Her hand shook. "There's no end to them."
Then, gritting her teeth, she forced her arm higher. Another spell ripped from her throat, tearing the very stone beneath her into spears and flinging them into the sky.
***
The night sky above Britain split with fire and shadow. A tide of winged demons poured through the wards, shrieking, their bodies burning with celestial or infernal light. Against them, a hiss echoed so loud it rattled the glass in windows and shook the air in men's lungs.
Herpo the Foul was no longer a man.
Where once robes and sinew had stood, now towered a basilisk, scales the color of wet night, glistening with enchantments too ancient for words. His eyes burned like molten green furnaces, enchanted so they could no longer petrify, but instead seared flesh like brands when they fixed on prey.
The serpent's body coiled through the ruined streets, crushing stone and bodies alike. With a sound like mountains splitting, Herpo whipped his tail through a cluster of angels. The air cracked, and radiant armor shattered like glass, wings torn to ribbons as their owners slammed into the fortress walls.
He hissed low, furious, and endless. The sound made even the hardened goblins fighting below grit their teeth and shiver, but they pressed on.
"Hold!" roared a goblin captain, swinging his rune-etched mace at the leg of a demon, breaking bone with a wet crunch. "Form under the serpent's shadow! Drive them to him!"
The goblins fought as a knot, darting between fallen masonry, dragging their foes into the sweep of Herpo's coils. Above them, centaurs galloped along makeshift avenues of rubble and barricades, their arrows lit with flame and enchantment. They loosed volley after volley into the night, each shaft striking true, each target another piece of meat to be trampled beneath the basilisk's weight.
"Loose! Again!" cried a centaur mare, her hair soaked with sweat, bowstring snapping with relentless rhythm. She sent shafts into the eyes of winged horrors trying to flank the fortress walls. Her people wheeled in practiced arcs, never breaking formation, hooves hammering on stone streets now turned into causeways of war.
The city itself had been twisted into a bulwark. Rows of shops, cottages, even pubs had been transfigured into barricades of stone and steel, their walls grown taller, fused together by magic. Streets had been narrowed into kill-channels, funneling the enemy toward waiting firing lines. At the far horizon, Hogwarts loomed like a crown over the battlefield, its towers lit with defensive runes, wards shimmering in veils of blue and gold.
Herpo's colossal head reared back, green flames leaking from between his fangs. With a guttural hiss, he unleashed it—an alchemical venom turned to fire, spraying across dozens of demons. They screamed as their armor melted, flesh liquefied, wings collapsed in on themselves.
Still, the tide did not break.
More and more enemies surged forward, an endless wave of black wings and radiant blades, crashing against the fortress lines. The walls shuddered with every impact. Goblins shrieked as they were pulled into the air, wings tearing them apart. Centaurs toppled from barricades, skewered by spears of light. Wizards and witches apparated in flashes, trying to plug gaps, trying to keep the tide from spilling through.
Herpo thrashed harder, his massive body coiling around three blocks of houses, crushing them flat as he used the rubble to shield his flank. His hissing turned into a roar-like bellow, half reptilian, half human madness. His fury rattled the battlefield, daring the enemy to surge closer.
The defenders fought under that sound, teeth grit, hearts hammering, knowing that the fortress of Britain everything, Hogwarts itself stood or fell on whether the line could hold.
—
A/N: , I can't believe it reached 300 chapters and I just want to say thank you!