The roar of the current swallowed their war cries.
The river was no calm escape — it was a thrashing, white-fanged serpent, its surface broken by jagged rocks and half-sunken logs that turned the crossing into a gauntlet. On both banks, enemies closed in like the jaws of a trap.
Kaelvryn roared — a sound half-beast, half-steel — before his form shattered into frost and ember, fusing down into the haft and blades of Gideon's twin axe. The glow pulsed faintly along the runes, but the armor and twin katanas were gone. Gideon's shoulders squared — heavier now, slower, but carrying a weapon that could split a boulder in two.
Ezra staggered forward, face pale, hands trembling as the last sparks of her magic flickered and died. The air around her felt emptier — the sudden absence of mana like a candle blown out in a storm.
"Ezra's dry," Caleb called, loosing an arrow past Eliakim's ear. It struck true — but his hand came up empty for the next shot. He looked at the quiver as though staring into a grave. "I'm out."
And then Skyling screamed.
The sound punched through the noise of the river, raw and sharp. Eliakim's head snapped up in time to see her wings fold wrong, a dark stain spreading along her flank where the knife had struck earlier. She twisted midair, trying to stay aloft — and then she fell, hard, vanishing into the tangle of brush just short of the bank.
"Skyling!"
The Codex of Imreth still pulsed in his mind, the last impressions from her eyes shimmering across his thoughts — glowing lines marking enemy positions, the shape of the riverbed, the hidden snipers in the tree line. But the feed was fading, the world narrowing to static and fragments.
On the far bank, black-armored titans were wading into the current, their steps like stones dropped into the water. Dark Elves loosed volleys from the right bank, and the fourth force surged down behind them, blades drawn, howling over the sound of the river.
Eliakim's brain burned.He saw the Codex's map like a puzzle collapsing under pressure — enemy formations tightening, water depth shifting, the gap in the far bank too narrow for all of them to hit at once.
"Gideon — crack the middle, just enough to scatter them. Ezra, stay low and hold whatever spark you've got left for the push. Caleb — grab any arrows you can find from the fallen."
"And you?" Gideon grunted.
"I'll think," Eliakim said, eyes darting over the fading Codex map. "I'll think until my head catches fire."
The current clawed at their legs as they stepped into the river. The cold bit through boots and armor alike.
Then the first wave hit them — Dark Elves with hooked blades, trying to drag them under. Gideon's axe split the water in an arc of ice and flame, each swing buying them inches. Caleb's scavenged arrows bought them seconds. Ezra's trembling hands crackled once, twice — little bursts of chaos that fried anything too close, friend or foe alike.
And still the enemy pressed.
The far bank felt miles away. Skyling's absence pressed on Eliakim's chest like a weight. The Codex's last images burned in his mind — a single unguarded rock formation midstream, the only anchor in the chaos.
If they didn't reach it in the next thirty seconds, the river would swallow them whole.