The wind changed before the sky did.
It was subtle at first—a dry current curling through the outer trenches, carrying with it a scent not of ash, but of iron and heat-warped stone. Even the drakes stirred in their pens, the elder wyrmling clawing at the corners of its enclosure as if something beneath the earth had whispered to it.
Riku was already awake when the global message burned across the horizon.
[Third Blood Moon Ascending. Apex Beasts Awaken. Sovereign forces permitted in ranked conflict.]
No sound followed it. No trumpets or storms or shifting of terrain. But the air grew heavier. The red hue bled across the clouds like an infection.
He stepped onto the eastern rampart as the sun disappeared behind the crimson cast of the rising Blood Moon. Kael joined him without speaking, eyes scanning the trench lines below.
"How long do you think we have?" Kael asked.
Riku didn't answer immediately. The wyrmlings were still pacing in agitation. That meant something was already moving.
"Not long," he said. "Alert all squadrons. Passive watch only. No engagements until you hear the call."
Sira met them moments later, stepping out of the shadows near the gate tower. "Eastern ridge heat signature spiked. It wasn't there yesterday."
"How far?" Riku asked.
"Two ridges. Near the collapsed obsidian vent line." She hesitated. "Something big."
Riku glanced at Kael. "Get me eyes on the ridge. Now."
Within the hour, two of Sira's fastest scouts had returned with heat-mirrors and fragment reports. They laid them out on the war table beneath the forge.
What stared back from the scans was massive.
A wyrm—at least fifty meters long, its spine ridged with obsidian plates, its core glowing bright beneath its segmented flesh. A living faultline. It wasn't hunting. It was burrowing—headed straight toward Blackridge's eastern trench.
Kael swore under his breath.
"We haven't faced anything this size before," he muttered. "Not even during the first Blood Moon."
"Then we'll adjust," Riku said. "Double the spike traps. Divert steam charge to trench three. And wake the glaive units."
"Glaives won't stop that thing," Sira said flatly.
"They're not meant to." Riku locked eyes with her. "They're meant to buy time."
The wyrm hit the eastern trench an hour after dusk. No sound preceded it—just the sudden, violent eruption of earth and molten stone as it burst upward, sending a dozen meters of trench wall flying in shards of glassed rock.
The front line braced. Traps triggered in staccato rhythm—obsidian spikes skewering forward, steam vents igniting in waves—but the wyrm's momentum didn't falter. Its hide cracked but held, plated like ancient armor. Its mouth split open in four jagged jaws, each lined with magma-dripping teeth.
Riku didn't wait. He was already moving, glaive in hand, his squad flanking him as they dropped into the second trench. Glaive tips glinted with molten oil, and every step was measured. His pulse didn't spike. It narrowed.
"Formation delta," he said, calmly, as the creature lunged.
The spearmen moved without hesitation. A wall of heat rose with the beast's roar, but the unit held. One was flung back with a bone-cracking thud against the trench wall—alive, barely.
Kael lobbed a searing spike charge beneath the creature's midsection. It landed clean, detonating in a wave of compressed pressure. The wyrm screamed. Obsidian plating cracked. The left flank of its segmented body sagged—but it was still moving.
Then, as Riku moved to intercept another strike, his system pulsed softly behind his eyes.
[Inventory Updated: Glaive Prototypes ×3 → ×6]
He blinked. The broken glaives on the rack near the trench wall—ones shattered earlier in the battle—were no longer cracked. Whole, again. Not reworked. Not reforged. Just... restored.
Riku didn't pause. He kicked one toward a spearman scrambling backward and shouted, "Take it!"
The soldier caught it mid-fall, turned, and stabbed upward as the wyrm surged overhead. The blade caught a seam in its armor. The creature spasmed—and then stilled.
Slowly, with a groan like mountains shifting, the wyrm collapsed, its molten breath rattling to silence.
Blackridge held.
The trench teams staggered back as the air finally cooled. Ash fell like rain from the sky.
Sira limped toward Riku, blood streaking her cheek. "It's dead."
"For now." Riku looked to the east. The trench was in pieces. But their people were standing.
Kael leaned on his glaive, grinning through cracked lips. "One hell of a warm-up."
Riku didn't answer. He turned to the forge. The Blood Moon had only begun.
But for the first time, he didn't just feel like a survivor.
He felt like a threat.