The full moon climbed high above Cardella, its pale light spilling over the city of half a million.
The walls of Cardella groaned with the weight of men, steel, and fear.
Captain of the Knight's Order, Astoria Faralith stood at the center of the West Gate's battlements, her blue-and-silver uniform armor gleaming faintly under torch and moonlight, her platinum hair snapping in the night wind as her violet eyes swept the forest's edge where shadows shifted — and then surged.
The horde was coming.
On either side of her, the wall bristled with soldiers.
Archers lined the ramparts, bows strung, arrows already notched and aimed into the darkness.
Mages stood in magic circles, staves glowing as incantations spilled in steady chants weaving threads of flame and ice on their staffs.
Behind them, ballistas creaked as crews strained against winches, their massive bolts aimed squarely at the lumbering silhouettes.
Beside Astoria, Faris Hart, her vice-captain, stood grim and silent.
His blonde hair whipped across a face carved into calm steel, his halberd braced in hand, shield on the other.
The man known in calmer days for kindness had eyes now like frozen rivers — cold, cutting, and immovable.
And on Astoria's other side, the Church's authority stood tall.
Captain Serenya Vael, Knight of Liora, clad in robes of deep blue laced with light armor, a grimoire strapped to her thigh and a heavy mace in her hand.
Her amber eyes glowed faintly in the torchlight as her lips moved in quiet prayer, the sound swallowed by the roars rising from beyond the wall.
And after a heartbeat, the forest spat them out.
Orcs, goblins, trolls – Feral Beasts.
And something worse alongside them – Monsters, Ferals mutated by the Cataclysm.
A tide of flesh and claws, their shrieks carrying across the night like a war drum.
Each of the three captains felt their own heartbeat answer in kind as Cardella braced.
Astoria raised her hand as her voice rang over the walls, sharp as the steel she carried.
"First volley!" The order cracked through the night.
More than a thousand bowstrings sang in unison, arrows hissing into the dark, covering the night sky before plunging into the front lines of the horde.
Ballistas fired with thunderous release, massive bolts spearing trolls clean through the chest, pinning them like insects.
And a beat later mages raised their staves high and let loose their chants — fireballs roared across the heavens, ice spears fell like javelins from gods, and lightning ripped open the night in blinding arcs.
The horde screamed as the storm fell on them.
Goblins burst apart in sprays of ash and gore.
Trolls bellowed, staggering as the ballista bolts plunged into them.
Even the greater beasts such as shaggy ogres and winged carrion-things flinched under the rain of fire and steel.
But the swarm did not break.
They answered in kind.
Boulders hurtled skyward, hurled by troll hands like catapults.
Fire-gals—sprites shaped like burning children—spat blazing orbs that streaked crimson across the moonlight as they giggled.
Acid drakes whipped their necks skyward, vomiting streams of hissing green liquid into a rain that ate through the grass in clouds of choking steam.
Shadow-wraiths shrieked, their keening cries scraping through the minds of men like knives of rust, leaving archers clutching at their temples.
The wall should have splintered under such a barrage.
But the towers on the wall glowed.
Priests of Liora knelt within, their voices raised in an unbroken hymn as their chants poured into the night.
Hundreds of voices rose in unison.
Their hymn weaving Liora's will with every note, filling the air with divine resonance.
And from their prayers, the ward flared — a dome of golden light that blanketed the battlements.
Fireballs struck and burst into flames and sparks.
Boulders cracked and fell to dust.
Acid hissed harmlessly against the shield, evaporating into mist.
The barrier quivered under the weight of the assault, but it held.
While the silver moonlight washed over the ward, mixing with its gold until the walls seemed wrapped in divine and starlight both.
The defenders looked out through it, breath fogging in the cold air.
While the Ferals and Monsters shrieked, stumbling over their dead as they surged ever closer.
The first volley was done.
While the distance between the living tide and the walls was closing fast.
And in that fleeting silence between barrages, every soul on Cardella's walls knew the truth.
This was only the beginning.
The Horde was still closing in.
Their attacks hadn't ceased.
Fire orbs streaked, boulders whistled, acid hissed, sonic booms rippled like arrows, even as their claws and feet tore up the ground in a full sprint.
Unlike men, they needed no chants, no formations.
Chaos was their weapon.
The ward flared again under a barrage, its golden light bending but holding.
The defenders braced, readying the second volley.
But Astoria did not wait.
Her gaze slid sideways. "Faris," she said, voice steady despite the roar around them. "Give me your sword."
"Yes, Captain."
The vice-captain leaned his halberd against the crenellation and drew his longsword before placing it in her waiting hand.
And now she stood armed with two blades.
Her own sword burned faintly with a flame enchantment, its edge whispering heat into the night.
And Faris's sword, gleaming cold, an edge kissed by frost with runes along its fuller glowing with a pale-blue shimmer.
Astoria exhaled once, violet eyes narrowing.
Then she moved.
Her aura surged, mana flaring bright enough to paint her silver armor in light.
The third sequence of her cultivation technique ignited — The Way of the Sword Saint.
Above her, dozens… then hundreds of translucent blades shimmered into existence, each a perfect phantom copy of the two in her hands.
Fire-kissed swords and ice-hardened blades floated together like an arsenal suspended in the night sky, their edges catching both moonlight and wardlight until it seemed the heavens themselves had drawn steel.
Every soldier on the wall stilled to watch.
Astoria lifted both swords high in the air and with a single thought and a motion downward, she unleashed her rain of blaze and frost.
The phantom blades screamed forward in a storm as they tore into the rushing horde like a rain of meteors, stabbing through flesh, feathers, and wings.
Orcs were skewered mid throw of their boulders, goblins burst apart as fire-swords seared their flesh, trolls howled as ice-blades sank deep, freezing blood and muscle solid before shattering them from within.
And then —
—Boom!
—Boom!
—Boom!...
The blades exploded.
Fire erupted in chain-bursts, turning Ferals and Monsters alike into smouldering husks.
Ice detonations cracked the ground, freezing entire clusters in place before shattering them like brittle glass.
The front lines buckled, thrown into chaos as the neat surge of the horde fractured into stumbling waves.
The night lit with fire and cracking ice as their screams filled the air in tangled rage and agony.
By the time the dance of blaze and frost faded, a carpet of burning corpses and shattered ice-statues littered the no-man's-land before Cardella's western gate.
While Captain Astoria Faralith stood tall on the wall, the twin blades still humming in her hands with her violet eyes glowing fierce.
Behind her the soldiers roared into the night, voices swelling over the battlefield.
For the Sword Saint of Cardella had joined the fight.