Wrath Domain, Beyond the Wall, February 28, 2026
Ashen unscrewed his spear from the last Narkal's skull with a wet squelch; the way the cross-blade pulled free was almost mechanical.
The beast's body hit the ground, joining dozens of others scattered across the rocky outcropping. Blood steamed in the cold air, mixing with the acrid stench of Narkal musk.
"Clean up," he ordered, voice even despite the exertion. "Strip anything useful. We move in ten."
"Yes, sir!" The response came immediately, crisp and unified.
His platoon of two hundred moved at once, stripping weapons, checking bodies, covering tracks with no complaints or hesitation. They were so swift and professional in their execution that no one will recognize that they were prisoners not long ago.
The change was stark, to say the least.
Ten days ago, when they'd first marched out from the Pit, his soldiers had been... loose, disrespectful criminals wearing uniforms, following orders with minimal enthusiasm and maximum skepticism.
Now they moved like a proper military unit.
The transformation had one simple catalyst: they'd seen him fight.
Ashen had killed as many Narkals as the entire platoon combined in that first skirmish… and that was only because he'd been matching their pace, ensuring no one got overwhelmed. They'd all seen it: the leisurely gait, the economy of motion, the spear moving like water through gaps they hadn't even noticed existed.
Disrespect? Insubordination?
What a joke.
So what if their leader was a bit of a weirdo who kept his eyes closed half the time and scribbled in notebooks? As long as his strength was up to par—and theirs, by extension, stayed intact—he could be as weird as he liked.
But the respect wasn't just about combat prowess.
It was the other thing…. The eerie thing.
Ashen knew them. All two hundred of them.
Their habits, their strengths, their weaknesses… What made them tick, what triggered them, what brought them comfort.
He'd pair soldiers who complemented each other perfectly, both in personality and skill. He'd break up disputes before they started by rotating positions preemptively. When someone was on the verge of breaking down, he'd appear like a guardian angel with exactly the right words to pull them back from the edge.
They'd started calling it uncanny. Some gossiped about prophetic abilities or mental skills, but none of them knew the truth: Ashen had invaded their dreams, chronicled their lives, and harvested every memory worth knowing while they slept.
He knew Private Tariq had nightmares about his sister's death and would freeze if ambushed from behind… so Ashen always positioned him with clear sightlines and backup.
He knew Corporal Layla's reflexes were exceptional but her stamina poor… so he rotated her to the front for initial contact, then pulled her back for recovery.
He knew Sergeant Omar was loyal to a fault but struggled with initiative… so Ashen gave him clear, structured orders and let him execute without micromanagement.
and so on and so forth…
There were two hundred soldiers, but he had two hundred complete psychological profiles.
And that made leadership... simple.
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The cleanup finished in eight minutes.
Ashen surveyed his platoon as they formed up. There wasn't a single casualty today. Overall, they had the lowest loss rate in the entire Reserve Army, now ten days running.
"Move out. Formation Delta. Stay alert."
"Yes, sir!!"
They moved.
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The question had come up early: How does a single battalion of Bloodwall soldiers contain a million-strong prisoner army?
The answer revealed itself three days after deployment.
A group of twenty prisoners had attempted desertion during the night.
They were a bunch of opportunistic and survival-focused criminals, so it didn't take them long to make a run for it at their first chance. They'd slipped away from their company, heading east toward the less Narkal-infested zones.
The Bloodwall battalion that was tasked with looking after the prisoner army gave chase.
Twelve hours later, they returned with twenty corpses.
And the state of the corpses wiped away any thought of deserting for the rest of them… Not because they had been subjected to some gruesome torture… In fact, there was not a single external wound marked on the bodies, just pale skin and black spots spreading from fingertips and lips. Eyes frozen in expressions of confusion and betrayal.
The culprit of their death was clear: Poison.
It was the same poison from the Pit. And soon, they discovered that the antidote was delivered through their rations.
Even if the entire million-strong force revolted and scattered, they'd all be corpses within seventy-two hours.
After that display, desertions stopped since it became clear to them that even though they had physically left the Pit, they were still as much prisoners as before.
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The man responsible for managing this precarious situation was Senior Advisor Konrad Halabi.
Dispatched from Wrath Domain command, officially titled as an advisor but functionally the army's true commander. His role was threefold:
Receive strategic orders from Ashbastion and relay them to the Reserve forces.
Manage field promotions and merit distribution while maintaining a coherent army structure.
And ensure the prisoners stayed useful and obedient… and—in the case that proved to be difficult—dead.
His official rank meant nothing to most. But his control over promotions, supplies, and the Bloodwall battalion's deployment made him the most powerful man in the Reserve Army.
And ten days in, one name kept appearing in his reports with increasing frequency:
Ashen Hart. Sixth Step. Platoon Leader. Zero casualties.
"How curious…" the Advisor muttered as he read Ashen's report, but didn't linger long. He had much more important matters to attend to.
…Such as the army's strategy and movements.
The Reserve Army's strategy drew inspiration from a principle as old as asymmetric warfare: Don't fight where the enemy is strong. Fight where they aren't.
A million soldiers moving as one massive force would have been obliterated in a single pitched battle. The Narkal tribes numbered in the tens of millions, with Great Beasts and Gorefiends mixed throughout; direct confrontation was suicide.
So they did what every successful guerrilla force in history had done: they dispersed.
The million-strong army fragmented into smaller, mobile units and companies of five hundred to a thousand and spread across hundreds of kilometers of frontier territory. Each unit operated semi-independently, targeting isolated Narkal tribes, disrupting their movements, then vanishing before reinforcements could arrive.
It was the strategy of the weak against the strong, scaled up to continental proportions.
Hit-and-run. Ambush. Retreat. Repeat.
The Pride army had done it against superior demihumans and more numerous Narkal tribes. The Bloodwall had done it against the same foes. Now the Last Reserve was doing it against an endless tide of monsters.
The terrain helped since the frontier between the Great Wall and Narkal territory was a patchwork of ravines, forests, and broken badlands. It was perfect for small-unit tactics. A company could stage an ambush, kill fifty Narkals, and disappear into the terrain before the tribe's survivors could organize pursuit.
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Wrath Domain, Beyond the Wall, March 5, 2026
Ashen's platoon had unknowingly transformed into a company of five platoons. A thousand soldiers were under his command after a rapid promotion.
The newly formed company held a position in a narrow valley.
The approaching Narkal tribe numbered perhaps three hundred. Wild Beasts mostly, with a handful of Gorefiends in the rear.
They had winnable odds, if barely.
"Positions," Ashen called out, voice carrying. "Formation Sierra. Bait team, on my mark."
His soldiers moved with efficiency. They'd done this dance a dozen times now.
A fifty-soldier bait team advanced into the valley mouth, making noise, deliberately exposing themselves. The Narkals took the offering with predictable aggression, surging forward with bestial shrieks.
Too bad for them, they didn't get to partake in the meal. The trap sprang.
Two hundred soldiers emerged from concealment on the valley slopes, raining arrows and throwing spears into the Narkal flanks. The beasts recoiled, confused, turning to face the new threats—
But that was the least of their worries…
A white phantom whooshed forward
{Riven State}
From the soldiers' perspective, their captain simply... changed.
One moment he was standing calmly, spear held loosely. The next, a point of concentrated light blazed across his body… too fast to track and too bright to look at directly, and then… he simply vanished.
When he reappeared, a Narkal charging twenty meters away suddenly had a spear through its throat. Ashen withdrew the weapon without apparent motion, and another beast died.
The light danced across his body as he dished every strike to the vitals. Every step rearranged his position to another point as if he were teleporting all over the place.
Thrust. Dead. Pivot. Thrust. Dead.
The rhythm was relentless and utterly mesmerizing as he left crisscrossing white trails across the valley.
"Holy shit," someone breathed.
Ashen carved through the Narkal formation like a scalpel through flesh. Fifty kills in two minutes. The beasts couldn't even react because by the time they registered his position, he'd already moved, and three more of their number were dying.
One Gorefiend, larger than the rest, charged him directly. Ashen's spear blurred, and the beast collapsed with seven identical wounds across its body, all struck in the same instant through some trick of angle and timing that physics shouldn't have allowed.
The valley floor became a charnel house.
By the time Ashen stopped, half the Narkal tribe was dead, and his soldiers hadn't even needed to fully engage. The survivors fled, and the bait team picked off stragglers.
The light faded. Ashen stood in the center of corpses, breathing steadily, his expression neutral as if he didn't do most of the work himself.
"Clean up," he said. "Five-minute rest, then we move to the next sector."
His soldiers stared.
Then they moved to obey, and the whispers started.
"Did you see that?"
"How is that even possible?"
"The captain's a monster."
"Thank god he's our captain..."
The story spread.
By the next day, half the Reserve Army had heard about the Riven State… though none of them called it that.
But names aside, one thing was clear… Ashen Hart's reputation grew.
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Wrath Domain, Beyond the Wall, March 10, 2026
Senior Advisor Konrad Halabi reviewed the reports with growing interest.
Company Commander Ashen Hart. Five platoons. Engagement record: Seventeen battles. Casualties: Twelve killed, thirty-four wounded. Kill ratio: approximately 1:150.
Twelve dead out of a thousand soldiers, across seventeen engagements. In a prisoner army where most companies lost a quarter of their strength in the first week.
The numbers were... improbable.
"He's training them," one of Konrad's aides also chimed from the side. "From teaching techniques to drilling them in off-hours. The soldiers under his command show marked improvement in combat effectiveness over time."
"Background?" He had the simple information but now he wanted more details.
"Sixth Step Sloth user. Thema: Bellator. Former Bloodwall soldier, though his service record is... complicated. Imprisoned for kidnapping charges, though the details are sealed."
"Skills?"
"Confirmed Skilled-rank spearmanship. Suspected mental or perception-based abilities given his battlefield awareness. Some kind of physical enhancement technique that his soldiers call the 'Ghost Form.' Unverified reports of him knowing personal details about soldiers he's never formally met."
Konrad tapped his desk thoughtfully.
Most company commanders were managing survival, but this one… he was running a training program.
"Promote him," Konrad decided. "Field rank: Battalion Commander. Give him operational autonomy within his sector. If he can keep delivering results like this, I want him with as many men as he can handle."
"Sir, he's only Sixth Step. Battalion command typically requires—"
"I don't care about typical. In the Wrath domain, only results matter. Promote him."
"Yes, sir."
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Ashen received the news without visible reaction.
He was now a battalion Commander with fifteen hundred to two thousand soldiers, depending on assignment. What's more, he had broader operational authority.
He welcomed this development with open arms. These were the pieces for whatever plan was forming in the back of his mind after all.
"Understood," he told the messenger. "When's the transfer?"
"Tomorrow. Your new companies are being assembled now."
Ashen nodded.
Tomorrow, then.
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