Wrath Domain, Ashbastion Walls, April 27, 2026
Ashen pulled his spear free from the Gorefiend's skull with a wet squelch. The beast hit the stone battlements with a dull thud, joining dozens of others scattered across the wall's blood-slicked surface.
"Cleanup crew, you're up next!" he called out, voice cutting through the residual chaos. "Medical, tend to the wounded. Everyone else, hold positions and rest while you can."
"Yes, sir!"
The response came immediately from his ten-thousand-strong division. Their unity was utterly at odds with what they'd been a month ago.
Ashen surveyed the wall. His section had held again. Casualties were minimal compared to the adjacent divisions where bodies were being hauled away in significantly higher numbers.
The siege had been relentless.
Not long after Lucia's departure, the Narkals had attacked in force. The remnants of the reinforcements—those pitiful few thousand that had actually arrived—were finally allowed through the gates despite the higher-ups' obvious suspicion. They'd been lumped in with the Reserve Army without ceremony.
Since then, the assault on Ashbastion hadn't stopped, not for a single day.
It was a month of constant fighting… a month of blood on stone and bodies over the walls. And a month where the surge of Narkals remained as endless as the horizon itself.
For most, it was hell. For Ashen, it was opportunity.
He'd taken this fortress defense scenario and turned it into a stage for exactly what Lucia advised him against doing… amass fame, consequences be damned.
And it was working.
⛧
The battlefield atop the walls was chaotic.
Narkals kept hurling ropes and ladders at the walls, over and over, until they were rendered useless—soldiers above cutting them down, kicking them loose, doing their damndest to ensure not a single one held.
When even that failed, the Narkals adapted. They piled their dead against the stone and climbed anyway, feet sinking into cooling flesh as if corpses had always been meant for this purpose.
Above them, the defenders answered in kind—oil and fire poured from the battlements, turning the wall into a blazing altar. Bodies burned, screams rose, and still the Narkals came on, undeterred, as though the flames were just another rung on the way up.
Ashen stood at the center of his section, eyes half-lidded, mana threads extending from his position like invisible silk. To anyone without mana sensitivity, he appeared to be simply observing his troops.
To those who could see mana, he looked like a spider at the center of an enormous web.
Dozens of threads spread outward, connecting to soldiers and Narkals alike. The connections pulsed faintly with each use, distributing dream parasites.
{Activated Path Skill: Lucid Dreamweaving}
For his own men, the parasites served multiple purposes. He'd arranged them in their most suitable posts based on psychological profiles harvested from their dreams. Filtered out those likely to cause trouble before problems arose. Tended to soldiers on the edge of breaking from stress with precisely timed interventions.
And the results always spoke for themselves: lowest casualty rate, highest morale, most efficient rotation schedule.
For the Narkals, the dream parasites served a simpler function.
A Wild Beast charged up the siege ladder, claws scrabbling against stone. Ashen's attention flickered to it for less than a second. One of his mana threads connected, and the parasite detonated.
The creature's legs buckled mid-climb. Its eyes glazed. For exactly one second, it dozed.
A spear thrust from a solider ended it before it woke.
The technique only worked on Wild Beasts, the weakest classification. Gorefiends and anything stronger remained unaffected, their mana too dense to allow such easy intrusion. But Wild Beasts made up the bulk of the Narkal forces, and even a single second of forced sleep was a death sentence on this battlefield.
Ashen had finally achieved his dream of becoming what Alice had mockingly called the "tentacle man." His mana capacity allowed him to maintain several dozen threads simultaneously, each one spreading dream parasites like a plague.
Another Wild Beast fell. Then another. His soldiers moved with practiced precision, capitalizing on every opening he created. It was almost elegant in its efficiency.
"Section eight is faltering!" one of his captains called out. "Narkal breakthrough imminent!"
Ashen's eyes snapped open fully, mana redirecitng into his eyes as the convesionalist unfolded.
The battlefield sharpened and details crystallized. Troop movements became patterns, individual soldiers became data points, and the chaotic melee transformed into something readable.
There—section eight's left flank had thinned too much. A cluster of Gorefiends was exploiting the gap, and behind them, a Great Beast was methodically dismantling the defensive formation.
"Companies three and seven," Ashen ordered. "Move now."
Two hundred soldiers peeled away from his position with disciplined speed, flowing toward the breach. They hit the faltering line at precisely the right angle, shoring up the weakness before it could collapse entirely.
The Great Beast roared, frustrated, then took a mana blast from one of the wall-mounted cannons directly to its armored skull. The impact sent it reeling back, smoke rising from scorched flesh.
Ashen's gaze swept across the battlefield. His division held a two-hundred-meter section of wall—a significant stretch, but manageable with his enhanced awareness.
He could see where reinforcement was needed. Where retreat would preserve lives. Where a calculated push could break enemy momentum.
His performance hadn't escaped the higher-ups' attention.
In a siege where everyone was desperate just to survive, anyone who could actually contribute to that survival was treated as a hero. No one questioned why his methods worked so much better than others'. No one demanded his secrets.
They simply kept assigning him more soldiers.
From his initial two thousand, to five thousand, to his current ten thousand. Each promotion came with more resources, more authority, and more weight on his shoulders.
"Sir!" A sergeant appeared at his side, blood-splattered on his face. "Casualty report: twelve dead, forty-three wounded. Narkal count: approximately four hundred killed, including three Gorefiends."
"Acceptable," Ashen said, though the word sounded hollow. Twelve families would be devastated. Twelve lives ended. "Rotate the wounded out. Bring up fourth company from reserve."
"Yes, sir."
She departed, and Ashen allowed himself a moment to simply breathe.
This was an unexpected downside to being in a position of authority. Each life felt like his own responsibility, and each death… his own fault.
And when those deaths started piling up, there were only two ways forward. You either stopped caring… or you broke.
His gaze drifted to the cannons mounted along the wall's turrets. That was also Alice's work. Her designs had been replicated and installed across every section of the fortress over the past month.
They looked almost primitive in their bulky, mechanical, shape. But appearances were deceptive.
The cannons fired concentrated mana blasts capable of dropping a Great Beast with sustained fire. Without them, the truly massive Narkals would have already torn through the walls.
The only downside was their voracious appetite for mana. Each shot drained reserves that took hours to replenish, even with dedicated operators cycling through in shifts.
But it was a price worth paying.
Ashen's eyes traced the familiar lines of the cannon nearest his position. It reminded him that Alice wasn't here, even though her presence saturated this battlefield anyway.
The thought brought was both comforting and concerning. He'd never want to see her risking her life here, but the worry still gnawed at him, where was she? What was she doing? but he forced it down. There was nothing he could do about it from the walls.
"Incoming!" someone shouted.
Ashen's attention snapped back to the battlefield. Another wave was trying to climb up.
The wave crashed against their section like water against stone.
And like stone, they held.
⛧
Hours later, when the current assault finally broke and scattered, Ashen stood alone at the wall's edge, staring out at the darkening wasteland beyond.
The Narkal corpses had been cleared… thrown over the outer wall to pile up with the thousands that had come before. The count had stopped mattering after the first week.
He then glanced back at the ten thousand men under his command. This was close to his absolute limit as a sixth-step pathwalker.
Any more, and he'd become too visible a target. Smarter Narkals, the ones coordinating attacks from the rear, would notice him and start prioritizing him.
A Great Beast or Demon targeting him specifically would end in his death within seconds, leaving his entire division headless and disorganized.
That was the higher-ups' reasoning anyway. And that's why his promotions had slowed, then stopped.
But Ashen wasn't worried.
He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward, to that familiar void where the Candlebearer walked his path.
The figure moved forward with unchanging rhythm, cupped hands cradling the ancient candle.
The flame flickered.
It wasn't red anymore but almost fully amber…There was just the faintest blush of crimson remaining at the core.
"One more story," Ashen murmured to the empty air. "Maybe two."
The thought brought a tired smile to his face.
⛧⛧⛧