They did not wait for the wounded to finish screaming.
High command ordered reposition before the blood had fully soaked into the ground.
Momentum.
Always momentum.
The siege engines were dragged five paces forward.
Five.
Not enough to change trajectory.
Enough to signal confidence.
Enough to convince officers that progress had occurred.
Eiden stood on the ridge and watched engineers hammer wedges beneath wooden wheels, resetting torsion arms, tightening rope bundles that groaned under strain.
Five paces forward meant five paces deeper into projected engagement range.
It meant pride.
Not strategy.
Across the field, the demon formation had not moved.
Not back.
Not forward.
They stood precisely where yesterday's retreat had ended.
Spacing identical.
Shields angled at the same degree.
Even the banners hung at the same measured height.
They were not reacting to the five paces.
Which meant the five paces did not matter.
Rynn adjusted the leather strap on her shoulder guard.
"They think we've got them leaning," she said quietly.
"We don't."
"You're certain again."
"Yes."
She didn't ask why this time.
The horn sounded.
Advance.
No artillery support.
No magical prelude.
Just infantry push.
The humans descended from the ridge with heavier boots than usual.
Confidence made steps louder.
Eiden kept his position in the third rank.
Not front.
Not rear.
Margin.
Margin meant time to read.
The clash met earlier than expected.
The demons stepped forward to meet the advance instead of absorbing it.
Pre-emptive compression.
Steel collided with a dull, rhythmic violence.
No screaming charge.
No chaotic brawl.
Just pressure.
Eiden adjusted his stance immediately.
Breathing even.
Shield spacing constant.
Do not overreach.
Do not chase momentum.
The demon line held steady.
No false gap.
No visible weakness.
That was the weakness.
The human left flank pushed harder.
Someone misinterpreted steady resistance as faltering.
Pressure increased unevenly.
The right responded by tightening formation prematurely.
Canter compressed.
A small seam opened three positions ahead of Eiden.
Not visible to most.
Felt.
The red-trimmed demon stepped into view two rows behind his front line.
Not striking.
Watching.
His gaze tracked the ripple caused by the human overcommitment.
A horn pattern—two short, one long.
The demon right flank advanced half a pace.
Just enough to stress the seam.
The human left counter-pushed reflexively.
Canter spacing collapsed inward.
Eiden felt the air change.
This is the test.
A human knight surged through the narrow seam.
Aggressive.
Confident.
The red-trimmed demon moved.
One measured step.
Feint left.
True strike right.
The knight dropped before completing the lunge.
Momentum severed.
The demon line did not pursue.
They rebalanced.
Perfectly.
The horn sounded retreat for the humans.
Too fast.
Too reactive.
Both lines disengaged with minimal casualties.
But something had shifted.
Back on the ridge, officers argued over maps and distance rods.
"…they're reacting slower…"
"…push again before they stabilize…"
"…we can force collapse…"
Eiden stared across the field.
No.
They are stabilizing faster.
The demon formation shifted two paces backward.
Not retreating.
Expanding engagement envelope.
Increasing margin against artillery and infantry surge.
The red-trimmed demon stood still, hands resting lightly at his sides.
He wasn't adjusting to win.
He was adjusting to remove unpredictability.
Behind the demon front, smaller wooden structures were being assembled.
Portable mantlets.
Shielded platforms reinforced with iron strips.
Engineers moved in disciplined lines.
Preparation.
Projection, not defence.
Rynn stepped beside him.
"You're seeing something."
"Yes."
"Say it."
"They're shrinking variance."
She frowned.
"They're removing mistakes from their side. And reducing ours."
"Reducing ours?"
"They're forcing us into predictable responses."
She followed his gaze toward the mantlets.
"They're preparing something."
"Yes."
High Marshal Garry Hawkinge's banner snapped sharply in the wind above the command ridge.
Wilfred Webstere gestured with his staff toward the canter again.
Another push.
This one tighter.
Less spacing between horn signals.
Fatigue creeping into timing.
The horn sounded advance again.
Faster.
Impatient.
The human left advanced half a beat early.
The canter followed slightly late.
That half-beat misalignment was invisible to most.
But Eiden felt it like a pulled thread.
A blade struck his shield from the right.
He deflected and stepped back precisely half a pace.
The follow-up slash scraped Armor instead of splitting muscle.
Clean.
Controlled.
Ahead, the misalignment widened.
The demon line did not exploit the initial seam.
They bypassed it.
The red-trimmed demon stepped past the gap and struck the second-rank soldier supporting it.
Structural support removed.
The seam expanded.
Three humans fell in rapid succession.
Not a collapse.
A slice.
The demon left flank advanced three paces in synchronized motion.
Human captains shouted correction orders.
Retreat horn sounded.
Too late to prevent losses.
But early enough to avoid annihilation.
The lines disengaged again.
Alive.
But thinner.
Eiden stood on the ridge breathing steadily.
His heart was not racing.
That worried him more.
The battlefield felt… cleaner.
Cleaner meant fewer accidents.
Fewer accidents meant sharper consequences.
Rynn wiped blood from her blade and looked at him.
"You moved before the seam widened."
"Yes."
"You hesitated before calling it."
"I was measuring."
"Measuring what?"
"How narrow it can get before it breaks."
She studied him.
"And?"
"It's getting narrower."
Behind them, engineers adjusted the siege engines again.
Forward another two paces.
No order announced it.
It just happened.
Incremental escalation.
Across the field, the red-trimmed demon watched the adjustment.
He spoke briefly to a taller officer in darker Armor—higher rank.
Hierarchy layered cleanly behind him.
The officer nodded once.
Mantlets were repositioned slightly inward.
They were preparing for something synchronized.
Not immediate.
Structured.
Eiden felt it settle into place.
The first week had been chaos.
The second had been testing.
Now—
The battlefield was entering equilibrium.
Equilibrium was dangerous.
In chaos, mistakes are random.
In equilibrium, mistakes are fatal.
He flexed his fingers around the spear shaft.
Margin of error was shrinking.
Not just for him.
For everyone.
And somewhere in that narrowing space—
An engineered mistake was being constructed.
Not by accident.
By design.
The horn sounded end-of-engagement.
The humans withdrew behind their engines.
The demons reset spacing exactly where they had calculated optimal resistance.
The red-trimmed demon met Eiden's gaze across the field.
Not hostile.
Not triumphant.
Acknowledging calibration.
You adjust.
We adjust.
You escalate.
We stabilize.
The next move would not be tactical.
It would be structural.
Eiden exhaled slowly.
He had not died in two days.
Clarity remained intact.
Which meant—
When the collapse finally came—
He would remember every detail of how it began.