The moment I landed among them, the noise of the district changed.
It wasn't just screams anymore.
It was organized shouting—commands cutting through chaos, spells snapping into place, boots pounding stone in rhythm instead of panic. For the first time since the docks fell, the sound of resistance took shape.
Yna was already there, her crystalline aqua hair catching the firelight as she raised a hand, spell matrices forming instinctively around her. Her breath was quick, eyes darting across the battlefield as she took everything in.
"This is bad," she said, voice tight. "This is really bad."
Her gaze flicked to me, sharp with concern.
"I know," I replied, forcing steadiness into my voice. My hands still trembled faintly from adrenaline—and from what I'd seen. "Go. Cast purification with the officers in command. Eliminate the spread zones. I'll watch your flank."
She hesitated for a heartbeat.
"Be careful," she said.
I nodded once.
She ran.
Captain Renia strode toward me through smoke and falling ash, sword in hand, armor scorched and dented. Her expression was fierce, jaw set hard enough to crack stone.
"Captain," I said. "Why didn't you flee? The orders—"
She cut me off.
"Because if we had," she snapped, "you wouldn't be standing here breathing."
She glanced past me.
Behind us, civilians huddled on higher ground—some wounded, some crying silently, others staring blankly as support mages worked frantically. Bastion Grace cadets moved among them with practiced efficiency, hands glowing as they stabilized wounds, carried the unconscious, whispered reassurances they barely believed themselves.
Renia turned back to me.
"Besides," she said quietly, "everyone agreed."
—
Earlier.
Before the alarms drowned out reason.
Captain Renia stood before Cadet Squad 28, smoke-stained walls trembling from distant impacts.
"This will not be a glorious stand," she said flatly. "This will not be remembered kindly. If you stay, you may die here."
Silence.
One by one, hands tightened on weapons.
No one stepped back.
Tairi Enon was the first to speak.
"If we leave," he said, voice shaking, "who covers the evacuation?"
Others nodded.
Renia closed her eyes once.
"…Then we hold."
—
Now, in the present—
"We are soldiers too, General Ignis," Renia said.
The words landed like a challenge.
A beam of condensed Axiom tore through the smoke from behind us, washing the corrupted front line in blue fire. The infected shrieked as the energy unraveled them—not burning flesh, but unwriting it.
Madam Roseanne stepped forward, robes fluttering violently in the backlash of her spell. Her face was calm.
I had forgotten.
She wasn't just an instructor.
She stood on the same tier as legends.
Behind her, a pressure descended on the battlefield.
General Ignis.
He landed with a heavy step, sword already in hand, its edge humming faintly as if eager. His presence alone seemed to force the Blight to recoil—not physically, but instinctively.
"Didn't I order all cadets to evacuate?" Ignis said, voice thunderously calm. "Are you defying me?"
No one spoke.
I did.
"We're not backing down," I said, meeting his gaze. "Not while people are still trapped."
I pointed behind me.
Civilians. Wounded staff. Children clutching Bastion Grace medics.
Ignis followed my gesture.
He took it all in.
Arcanum Spiral mages forming support lines.
Vanguard Concord cadets holding the forward edge with shields and steel.
Thunder Foundry artillery crews setting up improvised firing arcs between shattered buildings.
Instructors.
Officers.
Professionals.
Not running.
Ignis exhaled slowly.
"…You're all going to suffer a severe beating from me after this," he muttered.
Then his eyes hardened.
"Orders," he barked.
Everyone snapped to attention.
"Madam Roseanne—drive back the Blight with purification saturation."
"Yes."
"Vanguard Concord—civilian extraction and frontline suppression."
"Understood!"
"Arcanum Spiral—support magic and purification layering."
"Yes!"
"Bastion Grace—move the wounded to higher districts. We will cover."
"On it!"
"Thunder Foundry—artillery support. Fire at will."
A collective roar answered him.
"YES SIR!"
Madam Roseanne raised her staff.
A complex spell bloomed—and instead of firing outward, it collapsed inward, funneling into Ignis's sword.
His blade ignited.
Not with flame.
With truth.
Ignis surged forward.
He swung once.
Reality split.
The air screamed as the arc of his slash cleaved through corrupted flesh, stone, and Blight alike—like Moses parting an ocean of gore. Infected were erased mid-motion, buildings along the path sublimated into ash, the ground itself scorched with a glowing scar where the strike had passed.
I stared.
So this is the power of a General.
—
We pushed.
Not as scattered cadets.
Not as terrified students clinging to drills and manuals.
We pushed as a single body.
Vanguard Concord formed the spine of the advance—shields interlocked, boots planted wide, steel and Axiom reinforcing one another. Their captains barked short, brutal commands, voices hoarse but unwavering. Every step forward was paid for in sweat, in blood, in raw resolve.
Behind them, Arcanum Spiral mages worked without pause. Circles bloomed and collapsed in rapid succession—purification lattices stitched together like frantic sutures over a rotting wound. Blue-white light washed across streets, peeling Blight from stone, unraveling corruption strand by strand. Some mages staggered as backlash tore through them, only to be caught by comrades who forced mana-restoratives into their hands and shoved them back into casting formation.
To my left, Bastion Grace teams moved like ghosts through the chaos.
They didn't fight.
They rescued.
Stretchers materialized from folded runes. Floating platforms of hardened light carried the unconscious and the screaming alike. Support mages knelt in the open, hands buried in torn flesh, chanting stabilization spells even as infected slammed against shields barely a meter away.
"I've got you—look at me—breathe—don't sleep—"
I saw a Bastion cadet no older than sixteen hold a dying man's hand while pouring every drop of her Axiom into his shattered chest. When her knees buckled, another took her place without a word.
Thunder Foundry made the sky itself tremble.
Artillery spells launched from rear platforms in measured arcs, detonating midair into controlled fragmentation bursts that tore Blight masses apart without collapsing nearby structures. The timing was perfect—every blast synchronized with Vanguard advances, every recoil absorbed by anchoring sigils hammered into the ground.
They weren't firing wildly.
They were conducting destruction.
People were moving uphill now—streams of civilians guided by glowing markers, escorted by mixed-unit teams. Children clutched at armored legs. Elderly were lifted without ceremony. The wounded groaned as barriers flared around them, shielding them from falling debris and stray Blight tendrils.
I fought alongside them.
Not as a noble.
Not as a strategist.
As a weapon in motion.
Every step forward I cast—short-range kinetic bursts to clear space, force-anchored strikes that shattered infected bodies against walls. I saw Tairi Enon ram his spear through a corrupted soldier's chest, screaming not in fear but rage as he dragged the writhing body away from a Bastion team.
Renia was everywhere—blade flashing, orders snapping, blood streaking down her temple. When one of her cadets fell, she didn't hesitate. She stepped into the gap herself.
For a moment—
For a single, impossible moment—
It felt like we were winning.
Then—
"EVERYONE RETREAT!"
The voice boomed across the battlefield, magnified by layered resonance spells.
"LARGE-SCALE SPELL INCOMING!"
The unity didn't shatter.
It shifted.
Vanguard Concord slammed shields into the ground, forming a defensive crescent. Arcanum Spiral mages cut spells mid-cast and pulled back with practiced efficiency. Bastion Grace accelerated evacuation protocols, platforms lifting higher, faster, civilians screaming as they were rushed toward safety.
The battlefield cleared in seconds.
Only two figures remained at the front.
General Ignis stepped back—then turned to me.
"Elrin."
His hand clamped onto my shoulder, grip iron-hard.
"Do not hold back."
The words weren't encouragement.
They were permission.
I swallowed.
My throat burned.
"YEAH."
Ignis moved behind me, planting his feet like the world itself would have to break before he did.
"I'll guard you," he said. "Cast. Just like what we've practiced."
So he's talking about that
I raised my hands.
The air resisted.
Then obeyed.
A magic circle snapped into existence beneath my palms—pure, precise, trembling with contained violence. Another formed above it. Then another. Then more.
Layers.
Interlocking.
Spiraling.
Each ring fed into the next, Axiom flooding through me in quantities that made my vision frost at the edges. It wasn't heat.
It was cold.
The kind that burned down to the bone.
My muscles screamed. My veins felt like glass.
I hesitated.
They were still human.
Once.
Faces flickered in my mind—soldiers laughing in mess halls, standing at attention, dreaming of home.
"DO NOT HESITATE, ELRIN!"
Ignis's shout cracked like thunder.
The battlefield froze around that command.
I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
I can't die here.
Not yet.
Not before my vengeance.
"Rest in peace," I whispered.
Then—
ᚨᚷᚾᛁᛋ ᚹᚱᚨᛏᚺ — AGNIS WRATH.
I screamed.
The spell detonated.
Pure Axiom erupted from my hands in a column of impossible density, compressing inward for a heartbeat before exploding outward in a catastrophic burst. It wasn't fire. It wasn't light.
It was force given form.
The district vanished in white.
The sound came late.
A delayed thunderclap that crushed the air, rattled teeth, shattered glass kilometers away. The shockwave slammed into me even through Ignis's guard, flattening debris, tearing infected apart molecule by molecule.
They didn't burn.
They were erased.
The Blight recoiled like a wounded beast, its tide forced backward by sheer annihilation rather than purification.
When the light faded—
There was nothing.
Bell towers reduced to dust.
Streets scoured clean down to blackened stone.
Only scorched ground remained.
"Impressive," Ignis said quietly.
Madam Roseanne stood behind him, staff lowered, eyes wide with something dangerously close to awe.
—
Then—
Something moved.
At the far edge of the devastation, where the Blight pooled thickest, a leaning bell tower still stood—half-swallowed, half-defiant.
Atop it—
A white horse.
Unblemished.
Untouched.
And astride it—
A man.
Cloaked in blackened fabric that smoldered but never burned away. A crown of thorns pressed into his brow, blood trailing down his face without dripping.
The Blight lapped at his mount's hooves.
Did not touch him.
Did not consume him.
He drew a bow.
"Insolent fools," he said, voice ancient, wrong—like history itself speaking through a corpse. "But… fascinating."
His gaze found me.
Pinned me.
"Such magecraft will not stop the apocalypse you have birthed."
He loosed the arrow upward.
Not at us.
Into the sky.
Like a signal.
"We shall meet again," he said softly. "And when we do—conquest will be complete."
He vanished.
The Blight screamed.
It surged.
The ground convulsed as faces pushed up through the flesh—human mouths stretching impossibly wide, eyes fused shut or multiplied, screaming as they cast stolen Axiom back at us. Tendrils split into limbs. Limbs into monsters.
Not just infected.
Distortions.
Things that hurled spells grown from absorbed magic—warped sigils vomiting corrupted force, ripping shields apart, striking buildings to absorb more.
Mouths opened in the Blight itself.
Casting.
Consuming.
Becoming.
Yna threw up a shield just as a mass of fused bodies slammed into us, their combined voices shrieking in chorus.
"RETREAT!" someone screamed.
Formations broke.
Panic returned.
This wasn't a battle anymore.
It was a cataclysm.
And as we fled—
One thought burned into my mind like a brand.
That man…
Was riding the Blight.
And this—
This was only the beginning of doom.