"Denied," Elder Lysara said, the word steady as a keystone.
Tian braced for argument and found none in her gaze—only a resolve that had ferried people through too many nights like this one. The ground shuddered; dust sifted from the carved ceiling in thin curtains. The sanctuary swayed and then stilled as the living wood absorbed another far-off impact.
"Tian, I understand your desire to help, truly I do," she said, compassion running under the iron. "But wielding divine power in battle is not a matter of courage or need. Without proper control, you could harm our warriors—or worse, the energy could explode outward and fracture the sanctuary itself. Divine essence requires months of training before it can be safely used in combat."
Another tremor rolled through the chamber, harder, longer, crueler. Through the crystalline windows, the last of the evacuation patterns locked into place: families flowing toward deep, blue-lit corridors that had budded open in the trunk; guardians moving in pairs; rittles ushered into sling-baskets; cranes wheeling to the eastern quarter with slow, silent wings. The community's muscle memory unfolded without a word.
"But Elder," Tian said, the words pulling against the tight tripwire lodged between throat and sternum, "people are going to die out there. How can I just hide while others fight for our survival?"
"By staying alive and continuing your training," Lysara replied, unflinching. "Your power will be crucial in the battles to come, but only if you survive this one and learn control. Raw power without discipline is a liability, not an asset."
He heard the rebuke. He also heard the trust threaded through it, thin but unbreakable: you are part of more than tonight.
"Everyone, stay close," Hisag said, arriving at Tian's shoulder like a rope thrown from a moving ship. The brightness had bled from his face, leaving clear lines of purpose. He gestured toward the massive doorway leading to the deep chambers, where warm light withdrew and returned like breath. "We move quickly and we move smart. The elders know this dance. Preserving you preserves our future."
Elena's hand closed on Tian's shoulder, warm through the fabric, steady as a handrail in a shaking train. "He's right," she said softly, not as surrender, but as strategy. "We've barely learned to stand upright in this. We'd do more harm than good out there—now."
His pulse banged once against the cage of his ribs, a flare of fury that flickered and dimmed. "Now," he echoed, tasting the vow in the word, then nodded and allowed himself to be folded into Hisag's wake as the group moved toward the sanctuary's heart.
Elsewhere, different vows sharpened themselves into steel.
Yavia buckled the last strap on her treated, fur-dark garment, the runic threads catching emergency light in cold angles. She lifted her gleaming spear, and it thrummed low—a beast that only bared its teeth when asked. At her hip, the curved blade seemed to drink the ambient light and offer none back, a pocket of quiet night riding into a storm.
"Tonight," she said, voice carrying across the assembly like a thrown spear, "we avenge our fallen sister. Every life they take will be paid for in their own blood."
Glyph rolled his spear along his palm until the balance hummed perfect, black weave hugging him from throat to heel. "The creatures think terror is a law," he said. "Tonight they learn it's a habit—and we break it."
Muan, usually a man of few words, hefted shield and sword with the finality of a tolling bell. "For every friend we've laid into earth," he said, "for every family torn apart—tonight we teach them the consequence of touching home."
The trio strode into motion, leading separate combat groups across the platforms. Around them, warriors fell into formations that looked like geometry had learned to bleed—wedge arrays and interlocking arcs, some bearing traditional arms crackling with contained weather, others barehanded and wrapped in the slow swirl of conjured earth, fire curling along knuckles, ice condensing like breath turned solid.
Hisag led Tian's unit down into the sanctuary's core. The deep doorway sighed as they passed, wards whispering along their skin like pages turning. Inside, broad corridors split into octagonal, reinforced cells hollowed from the tree's living heart, each stocked with water, stores, and the soft blue light of salvaged sky. The stone-sweet air tasted of sap and old promises.
"I know it feels wrong," Hisag said, slowing for a heartbeat to meet Tian's eyes, then Elena's. "But this is strategy, not surrender. The elders fought these things before you were born. They know what only they can spend."
Elena nodded. Tian took a breath. The corridor accepted it without judgment.
Above ground, the battle lines drew themselves taut.
Third Elder Migos hovered twenty feet in the air at the eastern mouth, robes billowing in a breath that did not exist anywhere else. Around him, dozens of ice lances spun into being—crystalline spears of frozen energy, edges keen as scripture. Boulder-sized spheres condensed at either shoulder, a slow, patient fury built from captured cold. His eyes were narrowed slits in a face that had learned to stare down avalanches until the avalanches blinked.
Below him, Fourth Elder Lysara stood planted at the cave entrance, left arm bearing a shield of pure energy that shimmered like a living aurora, right hand gripping a sword of condensed light that drew a seam down the dark. Every angle of her body spoke long practice—hips square, knees loose, weight on the balls of her feet like a secret trusted only to the ready.
Behind them, Seventh Elder Gelrad set himself at the rear, feet planted, eyes closed, awareness unfurled like a net cast across the grove. His power flowed outward, invisible but undeniable, a rising tide that met each defender and lifted them. Muscles steadied. Reflexes sharpened. Elemental channels widened as if he'd oiled hinges left to weather. Where his influence touched, fear found less room to sit.
Warriors arrayed in tactical swarms. Yavia, Glyph, and Muan took their points, leading separate units like teeth along a jaw. Some wielded spears that crackled with lightning contained—a storm wrapped around a point. Others drew swords that burned with inner fire, edges singing. Shields flashed with sigils and slid like mirrors across incoming harm. Bare hands cupped ice and flame and hurled both with unceremonious precision. The air smelled of sap, iron, and the sweet lick of ozone.
Then, through the poisonous darkness, the enemy appeared.
The Vykras led like rabid wolves with a mathematician's mind, bear-mass bodies braced on elongated limbs that carried them in spider-like bounds. They were wrong to look at—the eye wanted to refuse their geometry, then could not. Their howling prefigured them, an invisible blade that cut stone and will, a subsonic hook designed to rip resolve from bone before claws ever kissed flesh.
Behind them came the Vorthaks—twisted abominations with spiral horns glowing a dark, oily light. Their matted black fur drank glow; their eyes flashed with coordinated intent. They moved like a thought obeyed by many bodies, weaving and unweaving as terrain demanded.
Grimjaw Behemoths thundered in their wake, massive hippo-shapes with jaws built to close around anything the world offered. Each footfall cratered the torn ground; each snap of their bone-crushers wrote a punctuation mark you felt, not heard.
Towering over all, the four Hasuras advanced with the optional haste of predators who never had to run. Each step created craters that rippled quakes in the earth; the air around them warped with heat, reality hazing at their edges as if refusing to host them without protest.
"For our fallen!" Yavia raised her spear high, light catching along the shaft in a clean line. "Tonight, we show these monsters that humanity still has fangs!"
Dozens of voices answered, layered and fierce. The combined surge of defiance shivered the air, visible as ripples that ran down the ranks and settled into ready.
Migos unleashed the first volley. Ice lances fell like frozen lightning, each spear plummeting exactly where it needed to. Vykras jerked mid-leap and crashed, dark blood steaming where it met cold. Two Vorthaks were impaled outright, pinned squirming like beetles on long, clear nails, their death cries ragged and ugly. The boulder-spheres followed, smashing into the front lines with all the tenderness of falling moons.
Lysara moved. She charged with a speed that made the air itself late. Her energy shield met the first wave like a hammerhead, the impact ringing down the shrub of bone in every watching body. Her light sword carved bright seams through black fur and bark-hard hide, each cut leaving a ribbon of brilliance hanging in its wake. A Hasura stepped into her path; she ran toward it as if toward a door she meant to kick in.
She leapt. Mid-arc, her weapon shifted—light thickening into twin edges, haft lengthening—an axe now, double-headed and unstoppable. It plunged into the Hasura's hide and bit deep. Black ichor sprayed in a foul fountain. The creature screamed, sound breaking across the plain like a sheet of metal torn by hand. Lysara kicked free, weapon liquefying back into a blade even before her boots touched.
Above, Migos pivoted, palm scribing a tight arc. A jade-colored spear condensed along an exhale and flew, spinning end over end. It struck a Hasura where heat bent air just above its heart, slid between plates that thought themselves invincible, and sank home with a sound like old ice breaking. The beast lurched, staggered, fell like a felled tree that had never learned humility. In the same movement, he split one Grimjaw's jaw and then beheaded a second Vorthak trying to use the falling behemoth as cover.
The tide hit the lines.
Vykras that had survived the first barrage skittered past the impact zone, up pillars and across ceiling, dropping behind shields to tear at ankles and hamstrings. Vorthaks lowered horns and smashed into fronts that bent and did not break. Grimjaws slammed and found stone that rose to trip, earth clenched by hand-signs from defenders who held the ground's name in their mouths. Fire rolled, ice hissed, lightning stitched through flesh and black fur alike, and still the monsters came.
Gelrad's tide flowed through the chaos, a choir of hands on spines. Every warrior touched by his reach found the world slow by a breath, options widening where panic would have narrowed them to a blade's edge. A misstep corrected; a throw extended; a shield took a blow that should have shattered it and held with a groan and a grin.
Yavia's spear became a serpent of light and inevitability. She moved like music remembers the shape of a dance, slipping inside a Vykra's leap to drive the point under its jaw, twisting to sever the thinking in its brain, then spinning free to take the next. Glyph's spear punched through a Vorthak's eye and pinned it to a shattered buttress; he tore the weapon free and broke a second's advance with the haft. Muan's shield caught a Vykra mid-pounce; his sword answered the insult by opening its throat.
Within moments, the battlefield became a storm of technique and terror. Stone erupted in barrages that entangled and crushed. Arrows of living flame stitched the night. Ice shards scythed along corridors of air carved by wind-handlers, each piece a surgeon's stroke. Earth spikes rose under Grimjaws' bellies and through Vorthak chests. The sanctuary's defenders did not merely hold. They answered.
For a breath that felt like a minute, the line held.
Then a Vykra swarm split along the ceiling, folding and dropping behind Yavia's left flank with the elegance of a well-rehearsed nightmare. Gelrad's hand flicked; a wave of force like a silent shout shoved their descent just enough that blades met bodies at better angles. Yavia's group turned as one, the spear-point of a unit honed by grief into something cleaner than rage.
Back at the cave mouth, Lysara parried a Hasura's burning swing with her shield and carved down through its elbow, severing a limb that sprayed heat and dark fluid. Migos' hand traced a smaller circle; six needles of ice shot with the force of bullets into the same wound, freezing regeneration in its cradle. The beast roared and fell to one knee. The air shook. The shield wall bowed and steadied. The world-tree hummed in its roots.
And in the deep chambers, Tian stood in the blue light and listened to the battle with his new sight, feeling the elders' power like weather, the warriors' grit like drumbeats on a long road. The energy inside him wanted. He learned the first lesson of war that wasn't in any manual:
Sometimes holding is harder than charging.