“Medith!!!” Skaro’s guts turned to ice, his soul blown like ash into the night. His rat-bright eyes picked her out—the green hair drifting like river weed, the eyes a green lighthouse in a storm. “She’s really here! She’s really here! Was today all her weave? No! No!!”

His knees knocked like loose shutters in winter wind. Even a kilometer away, Medith’s killing intent sliced over him like sleet. He saw her gaze—hell-king eyes, a storm that unmakes worlds.

“Chief Skaro! Erig won’t spare us a glance! We should pull back!” a bandit leader yelled, voice frayed like a torn flag.

Skaro swallowed hard, throat dry as sand. “Chief Buck, you’re right. In this weather, the only road is death. Fall back!”

“Medith—look—Medith—”

“Damn it! Why’s the Green Demon here?”

“Back—back—”

He didn’t need to say a word. With losses like a field after wildfire, and that legend stepping from the fog, their courage guttered like a candle in wind. They wanted only to flee; five hundred meters back and the tide might stop at their ankles.

“Damn it, damn it, I shouldn’t have followed Erig!” Skaro ran like a hare before hounds. Their Mountain Bandits were brigands at best, reeds before a flood; they weren’t Nessos’s lot, a wild army hard as rock. If Ogathas hadn’t crushed them lately, and if Erig hadn’t held the umbrella, how would they dare lay eyes on Sia City?

Regret flooded him like cold rain. He prayed the arrow of death, that black-feathered hawk, wouldn’t stoop for him.

Luck, thin as a spider thread, held. The impact thunder by his ears ebbed like a storm rolling off. The crackle of breaking bones—like a millstone chewing walnuts—had nearly stopped his heart. The screams around him faded like waves on a far shore. He had no blood left for battle and bolted, a fox with fire at its tail...

...

[Erig’s Army]

“Damn it! Stop those two arrows—” Erig shouted, fear sharp as frost on steel. Those shafts carried doom like a plague wind; if they struck, the field would drown. The Sage Soldiers scrambled and loosed a Bonecrusher Arrow. Thoom-crack— The chariot groaned under the pull, then spat a sky-splitting bolt.

At the breath before impact, Medith’s and Sais’s arrows climbed in a strange arc, rising like swallows riding a thermal, skimming past the Bonecrusher by a hair’s width. The Bonecrusher lost its prey and slammed into Lachesis’s wall. The wall boomed like thunder in a canyon; the whole face shivered like a drumhead. Behind the stone, townsfolk who prayed in whispers shook like leaves, fearing the wall would crumble and black-and-white reapers would pour in like a tide.

Luck walked with them again. The wall only trembled; barely a pebble fell. That arrow that could split a boulder like dry wood sank only its thick head into the stone, then froze, its strength gone like smoke.

“Damn! So it really is the Wind Sprite clan’s trait?!” Erig clenched his fists till bone clicked like ice. Watching those two raiding shafts scythe in, a hard resolve flashed in his eyes like steel catching dawn.

As the arrows skated over his crown like twin comets, a flat, toneless voice fell like cold rain. “Regido.”

Ting— The arrows locked as if caught in invisible iron, jammed above Erig and hung like pinned moths. They quivered, straining to break the unseen shackle.

“What is that?!” Medith and the others stared, shock biting like winter air. Sweat beaded her skin like dew on jade. That one arrow had drunk nine-tenths of her mana dry. If it had met Sais’s shaft, a hundred warhorses would have fallen like wheat before a scythe, and hundreds of theirs would have gone with them. But this...

Then Erig’s body flashed with black light, a coal flaring in a gale. A column of darkness burst from him. Crack— The arrows shattered like mirrors dropped on stone. A pitch-black beam speared the sky, a night-stalk darker than night, swallowing stars; it was deeper than the devouring cloud that wanted to eat the world.

...

[Atop the East Gate]

“Powell! Didn’t you tell me there were no mechanisms or secret tunnels in the wall? Then what the hell is this?!” Manto had bottled his fire, but when Erig used Regido, the volcano broke its cone.

It was their trump, a blade kept in the sheath. While Erig’s depths stayed clouded, Medith and the others had no sure win. Now the odds still leaned their way, yet grit had flown into the gears.

Powell dangled by his neck over the wall’s lip, windpipe pinched like a reed, Death sprinting up the stair. He forced out a few words with his last breath. “Lachesis truly has no secret tunnel... cough... that’s all the... infor... mation... I found...”

Sinis looked at the far black pillar, eyes a mix of awe and winter drizzle. “Leave it, brother. The marquis didn’t lie. Lachesis is a product of the [Godland]. Delaia likely stumbled on it like a miner on a vein. The marquis is loyal to us. This isn’t right.”

Manto wavered a few heartbeats, time beading like rain on eaves. Powell’s face swelled to liver-purple; his breath thinned to a thread. Manto finally flung him aside, tossing him toward Sinis like a rag bundle.

“Cough... cough... th-thank you for your mercy, Lord Manto...” Powell drank air like a drowning carp, then lay limp, staring up into the dark like a man measuring a well.

Sinis walked to Manto’s side. One in black, one in white—yin and yang under thunderclouds—both grim, both silent as frost.

Powell watched the ink-black sky. The wind and roiling clouds seemed to laugh like waves on rock. “I must live. Namelia, wait for me. I will... I will...” A woman’s face floated up like a moon on water. Darkness swam across his eyes, and he fainted...

...

[Erig]

The black column still stood like a dead tree rooted in night. The arrows lay in pieces like broken antlers. The sky grew heavier under its shadow. People within the wall stared, and fear bloomed like cold dew on stone. That wrong-black pillar seemed to whisper it came from hell’s own kiln.

Medith took it in: a true cylinder, two meters in radius, a stone well of night. Eerie black fire wrapped its hide; the smoke-flame was hunger turned to color, a night that devoured every lamp. The column speared the cloud-peak; its end was lost where heaven keeps its secrets. At the heart of the clouds, inside the black, a leopard was carved and wreathed in black flame, a jungle king stalking in shadow.

From birth to break, the column lasted roughly ten heartbeats. And from that darkness stepped...