The southern fields lit up with red flame.
Not fire from wood or oil — but bloodfire — the cursed blaze carried by Ashkar's vanguard, made to burn through vampire flesh and shadow-bound sigils alike. It roared like hungry wind, devouring the defensive runes Seraya had painted hours earlier.
Jayden ran through the smoke, his cloak already torn, the edge of his arm scorched from a glancing blow. Beside him, Elira fought like a ghost, her twin blades singing through the mist, cutting down a twisted warspawn with one clean strike.
These weren't ordinary soldiers. They were spawned things — pale, eyeless creatures draped in ritual markings, limbs too long, mouths too wide, born not from mothers but from blood altars.
Graveton's defenders held the line.
Barely.
A young vampire boy, no older than twelve, screamed as a spawn lunged toward him. Jayden blinked forward, faster than thought, and drove his blade through the thing's chest. The boy sobbed in his arms.
"Run to the north gate," Jayden ordered. "They'll take care of you there."
He stood up just in time to see a shadow rise above him.
Not a spawn.
A war general.
A vampyre clad in crimson metal, his helmet shaped like a serpent's maw.
"You," the general snarled. "The one they whisper about. The false heir."
Jayden didn't flinch. "I don't need to be an heir. I just need to end you."
The general struck first — a hammer of bone crashing into the ground where Jayden had stood a second earlier. Jayden twisted, rolled, slashed. Sparks flew. Blood followed.
The general laughed. "You're quick. But you bleed like the rest."
Jayden's mark glowed faint white. "Then come and make me bleed."
They clashed again, metal and magic, fang and flame.
Meanwhile, on the western ridge, Seraya unleashed her full power. The sky above her swirled as she called down a storm of dark water, quenching bloodfire and tearing through the lesser spawn.
From the eastern towers, the werewolves struck. Silent. Precise. Swift. Their leader, now called Fen, tore through Ashkar's soldiers with a brutal grace — no wasted motion, no mercy.
And above them all, perched on the broken spire of the chapel, a silhouette watched with unreadable eyes.
Ashkar.
He made no move to intervene.
He only whispered.
"Let the boy struggle."
"He must learn what it costs to defy a god."
Down below, Jayden disarmed the general and buried his dagger beneath the armor's edge.
The crimson giant fell.
Jayden stood over him, breathing hard, face streaked with blood and rain.
From every street, fighters began chanting again:
"Blood. Fang. Fire. Free."
It echoed like thunder.
But Jayden knew it was just the beginning.
Ashkar wasn't sending armies to destroy him.
He was sending them to test him.
And the real war hadn't even started.