For a few hours the city breathed easier. Lanterns swung in the wind and marketfolk slept with their doors bolted but their hearts lighter; the bait wagons had passed, gliders had traced lazy arcs across the sky, and the cordons hummed with watchful life.
Then the riders came.
They arrived without any warning — no horns, no banners — only the sound of hooves that did not clap but struck like dull drums, as if something heavy lay beneath the shoes. They fell out of the dark like a thing the sky spat up: black-armored figures on coal-colored mounts that moved with a silence like turned pages. Helmets swallowed faces; capes hung in angles like knives. The first that anybody saw was a flash of a lance, and the second was the way the moonlight bled off those armor plates as if the metal drank light and kept it.
Borderknights met them first, where the outer ring frayed into fields. The Borderknights were built like cliffs — shields broad as doors, spears long as reasoning — and they held a line with a steady, soldierly patience. Their captain gave the order without any stress; the men raised shields, braced, and the first charge unspooled like a storm hitting a stone reef.
Solis had been on a courier reroute that night, helping shepherd a line of mothers and children away from a narrow lane. He heard the rumble before he saw the riders; the sound traveled like an animal's breath. He looked up to see shadow-silhouettes slice the horizon and then rush toward the border road.
"Defensive line!" Devon's voice cut through the night; it was a rope pulled taut and snapped back. He moved like a man who had done this type of things for years — fast, efficient. Alongside him, a handful of A-rank Postknights slammed into formation beside the Borderknights and K.P.P: heavy, precise strikes timed like a well-read book.
The clash that followed was the first stanza of the night's violence. The dark riders were fast and metallic — lances that came and left like brief comets — but the Borderknights were disciplined, absorbing force and punishing the openings. The sky filled with the sound of metal on metal, with the whinny of spooked horses and the sharp, oiled ring of blades. A Postknight, gauntleted and lithe, slashed upward and snapped a rider's wrist; another hooked a reins and unseated a dark horse in a shower of straw and reek.
Solis did not fight in the line. He moved like water beneath a dam — between the ranks, quick, he is fulfilling his task first. But suddenly they got ambushed. A bunch of dark knight soldiers attacked them.
It was a tricky situation. Solis just got separated from the main evacuation team to get some civilians who live here. He just went in here alone. "Well I guess it was inevitable..."
The sword at his back hummed with its patient heat; his axe, strapped to a sling, felt like an old friend if blunt. Between breaths he imagined the aura teachings Devon had hammered into him: the breath, the spine, the small bright hinge inside the chest where intent gathered. He let the thought pool and opened himself to the edge of a twenty-percent release — not enough to scorch his limbs, but enough to sharpen the world. Heat bloomed behind his ribs and his limbs answered with a speed that felt borrowed from the wind.
He double-wielded almost without thinking: sword in the right, axe in the left, repurposing the axe as a hook and the sword as a cutter. A rider rushed him with lance lowered. He stepped aside — left — then slammed the butt of the axe against the horse's flank. The beast bucked, the rider's balance broken, and Solis followed with a blade cut across the leather of the rider's pauldron. Metal shrieked; the man toppled like a string cut.
Well it didn't take long before Ada entered the scene and immediately striked down a enemy who was getting behind Solis to stab behind. "Nah na. Not on my watch."
Solis turned back. "Oh! Ada. Thanks for coming. I could use a hand."
Ada smirked, "Your welcome. And why is it always me who has to save your a**."
Solis looking towards the enemy, "Uh... can I answer this later. I don't think they will give us any time to breathe."
"Huh... whatever."
Ada's new armor took a spear blow without making her wince. She had learned that lasting mattered more than flamboyance; tonight, that lesson kept children's noses from being crushed by panic. She darted to catch a runaway cart and used the reinforced shoulder to block a blade that would have cleaved a vendor's ribs. Her blade flashed like lightning against the dark metal, and where she cut, the black armor flared and gave way — only to close again in another man's swing.
The fight was not pretty. It was tidy and brutal: horses reared, riders were punched through shields, spears splintered, and the earth grew slick with mud and sweat. The dark riders — efficient and tight — threw feints that were sometimes gas-lit and sometimes downright savage. They were not mindless thieves. They struck logistical points: coach-hitching rails, watch-posts, storehouses. No one saw a face beneath the helm. No one heard words.
On the end, while the Borderknights held line and the Postknights pried the night away from the raiders, a different current began to flow underfoot — under the city, in a place of stone and iron — where Rizille had been held.