The night sky above Korvath was unnervingly clear—an empty sheet of black glass. No flicker of cloud, no drifting embers from the city's newly built fortifications. Workers had finally begun to breathe after three sleepless nights.
Then the heavens tore open.
A thin blue line drew itself across the darkness, bright enough to sting the eyes. It wasn't a star. It wasn't lightning. It moved deliberately, curving in a graceful arc like a hunter adjusting the trajectory of a spear.
Perched on the outer ramparts, Kenji froze mid-scan, Hana's breath caught beside him, and Seikaku's hand dropped instinctively to his quiver.
"…You seeing that?" Kenji whispered.
Seikaku answered without looking away. "Not seeing. Feeling."
The streak pulsed once—sharp and alive. Magic rolled off it like pressure waves from a dragon's wingbeat.
Then the dread hit.
"That's headed for Korvath," Hana said, voice tight.
Kenji didn't wait for orders. His bow was already up, mana flooding into the limbs until the wood groaned like a living thing.
"Overcharged Shot—Meteor Arrow!"
The air boomed around him as a searing comet-arrow burst from the bow, spiraling upward to intercept the descending streak. It should have met force with force.
Instead, the moment the arrow touched the blue light, it vanished—disintegrated into harmless sparks.
Kenji stumbled backward. "What—? No, no, no—"
Seikaku didn't hesitate. His bow snapped up with a metallic ring.
"Bull's-Eye—Raging Arrow!"
His shot screamed into the sky, streaking red-gold, honed with the kind of accuracy that could pierce a wyvern's eye at five hundred meters.
The arrow dissolved just as easily.
Hana stepped forward next, face pale but stubborn. She whispered a quick prayer to the old spirits, then aim her bow upward.
"Piercing Strike!"
Her mana surged, forming a needle-thin beam of white-gold thrust that shot toward the falling weapon. The beam hit.
It, too, evaporated.
No clash. No explosion. No disruption.
Just erasure.
The streak continued its path unbothered—more like a god drawing a line across the sky than a spell being fired.
Kenji grabbed the rails. "That thing isn't a projectile… It's rewriting whatever it touches."
Seikaku's eyes narrowed. "Version two."
Hana swallowed. "Warn the city! Sound the alarms!"
The horns barely had time to breathe their first note.
The blue line plunged.
For a heartbeat, Korvath was bathed in blue brilliance—too bright to look at, too cold to comprehend. Then light expanded outward in a silent, perfect sphere.
It swallowed the city whole.
Stone cracked into silver glass. Wood turned to brittle ice. Air itself crystallized in place. Flags dropped frozen mid-flutter. People in the open froze mid-step, expressions captured as if carved by a sculptor with a cruel hand.
Korvath froze in a single breath.
Kenji felt the cold hit their tower next—not enough to kill, but enough to sting through layers of armor. Frost spread across the walls in jagged veins.
"Hana!" Seikaku shouted. "Down, now!"
They leapt behind a reinforced alcove as the shockwave passed. Frost settled on their eyelashes and hair; the rampart floor glittered like a mirror.
Then—silence.
Not quiet.
The kind of silence that happens when an entire city stops moving at once.
Hana pushed herself up, horror widening her eyes. "All those people…"
Kenji clenched his jaw. "Anyone underground might still be alive."
Seikaku nodded. "We need to get down there. Now."
They sprinted off the battlements, boots skidding on ice as they descended toward the emergency tunnels.
Below the city, trapped civilians and guards shook off the tremors. Dust fell from the ceilings, several torches snuffed out by the sudden pressure change. A mage captain shouted over the panic:
"Everyone remain calm! Surface teams will investigate! Prepare fortification spells in case—"
The ground trembled again.
Not from the freeze.
From footsteps.
Heavy, slow, rhythmic. Like drums made of bone.
Outside, shadows moved across the frozen streets.
Torches flared in the distance—too many, too uniform. Figures marched through the frost-lit city, breaking the clean stillness with armor that clanked and scraped. Valerian soldiers moved with eerie discipline, spears and halberds reflecting the icy glow.
Behind them, lumbering shapes—Ogres, thick-skinned and breath steaming in the cold. Their massive clubs slammed the ground, cracking frozen stone.
Then came the deep, guttural chanting.
Dargath shock troops, armored in bone-laced dark metal, strode into view. Their hounds scraped claws along the ice, eager to tear into anything that still lived.
Korvath, frozen and defenseless, had become a battlefield without defenders.
Valerian officers surveyed the crystal-coated city with satisfaction.
"Begin extraction of targets. Don't damage the structures; they're worth more intact."
An ogre growled. "What 'bout survivors?"
"Break them."
Beneath the frozen city, Kenji, Hana, and Seikaku heard the vibrations of marching forces.
"They planned this," Hana whispered. "They timed the strike with an invasion."
Kenji's eyes sharpened. "They want Korvath as a trophy."
Seikaku drew his bow with a steady breath. "Then let's remind them we're not done breathing yet."
Above them, in the frozen streets of Korvath, war began anew—under a sky still streaked with the ghost-image of a blue arc that had rewritten the rules of battle.
And far to the north, in Frostholm, something continued to pulse… slow, patient, evolving again.