[Inside Lachesis]

“Bolt every door and latch every window! Don’t open up for anyone! Hiding comes first, fighting second! If you don’t have to fight, don’t! Trust me—there won’t be time to regret it.” Medith’s voice cut like a cold bell. Candles snuffed like fireflies. Doors sealed like shut mouths. The streets fell death-still.

Medith and Delaia stood in armor that caught the moon like frost, with fifteen hundred Sia City soldiers massed behind like a steel tide.

Milia and the other three captains had already rushed to three defensive lines. Six hundred holding terrain and earthworks against at least two thousand. It felt like standing before a flood. Medith believed anyway, because Sia’s soldiers didn’t surrender while a single breath still smoked in their chests.

Kasda was nowhere. He was the one pillar you’d lean a whole house on. He should not be hidden. The battlefield held no trace of him, like a stone swallowed by a lake.

Iling and Phiby held two towers on the east line. The best archers and arrows were stacked like winter wood. Twenty guarded the stairwells, to keep their sky-fire from being choked.

Milia went west. Beyond lay the West Gate wall, and they’d felled plenty of Magic Breakers on the way, steel singing like winter hail.

Don’t die, Milia… The thought hit before breath. Medith clenched her helm, the ghastly white crowned with a waist-long pheasant plume. She threw on the Dusk Cloak. The black sun felt nailed into the deep, silent night. It fit the moment like a shroud. The Sage–bandit coalition was that black sun. Medith and hers were the Crimson Sun clawing through its eclipse.

Every Sprite wore a Dusk Cloak over heavy plate, so friend could spot friend, and enemy would flinch at the sight. Yesterday’s fight had seeded fear like thorns in their hearts.

Sais matched her plume—Medith’s pale as bone, Sais’s fire-red, quick as her temper and cut like her figure, a flash against the dark.

Delaia wore armor and the only longsword they had, a river of steel under moonlight. He wasn’t a warrior. His sword was a banner, or the last splinter you bite.

They met eyes. Delaia nodded. Come, then—the storm is here.

The sky sulked and parted, letting a few strips of moon pour down, eerie as knife-light across Medith’s face.

She pulled a pocket watch from her breast. Under five minutes. She faced the guards and drew her blade. Bloodthirsty steel caught the night like a white fang. “Soldiers of Sia City! Guardian spirits! Tonight we don’t sleep. Lachesis will scatter on the wind. She won’t shelter us forever.

“For three days we tasted despair, pain, wailing, anger, helplessness.

“But hope never died. Despair just threw a cloak over it. Blink, and it gets eaten. Grip the single thread, and we’ll rip the enemy wide open!

“Tell me! Before last night, who could imagine that arrogant rebel legion running like rats with their tails on fire?

“Tell me! Before today, who could imagine a whole day of laughter, of calm, like any other day under the sun?

“Our lives don’t end in a day. Our simple, precious daily bread won’t end either.

“Remember who you are. You are Sia City’s guardian spirits. You’re the kingdom’s wall of hope. You’re the strongest backs your brothers can lean on!”

She hadn’t finished when Lachesis gave a brittle crack—pa-ting—like a mirror breaking. Spiderweb fractures raced the walls like lightning, filling the whole city in a blink. Then the world blew apart.

The city walls became a snow of green motes, drifting like pollen, then thinning into nothing.

Lachesis was gone at last. The enemies, held back like wolves on a chain, howled victory and rushed every line. Medith turned calm as a winter lake. She watched that roaring tide and did not blink. She coiled her hair, buckled on her helm. The visor was crafted from twin crystal panes—opaque to humans, clear to a Sprite’s magic. Now she was a sealed fortress, armed to the teeth.

Moonwash turned her eyes bone-white. The ranks behind drew breath like bellows. Archers bent their bows. Watchtowers and earthworks stood open like jaws. On the spike barricades, shield-bearers raised heavy walls of iron. Impado wards thrummed back to life, a hard shell for the line, and the ground firmed, letting warhorses find their old bite.

Medith watched the iron horses thunder in, lancers bright as falling stars. They were the nation-ending death riders from that day. Her eyes narrowed. She lifted her blade and split the silence. “Soldiers! Burn your fighting spirit! Raise your steel and roar at the foe!

“Long live Emperor Ogathas! Long live Eunomia!”

…

“Loose!” Manto’s order cracked like a whip. Arrows screamed into the sky, sketching an ugly, terrifying curve of death. The rain of shafts knifed toward the shield wall.

“Shields up!” The order rolled. Shield-bearers raised their walls. Pikemen lifted war-shields, not as heavy as the Royal Capital’s towers, but good work, quick to carry.

Ting-ting-ting.

Thud-thud-thud.

Arrows rang on earth, houses, and shields, a clashing chorus like iron rain. The noise was thunder, the damage a drizzle.

“Hmph. Again. Empty every quiver,” Manto said, arms folded like iron bars.

“Loose!” Another black rain fell. Sia took losses, but the line didn’t bend. Runners gathered fallen shafts and sprinted them up the towers like ants with grain. Manto stared, then snapped for the shooting to stop.

“You crafty bastard… Erig—” he roared. On the front, Erig’s eager troops surged at a word and broke into a charge.

…

[Frontline / East Front]

Ahead, helmet-masked soldiers with cold light under their visors, and mountain bandits behind them, finally pressed to arm’s reach, breath steaming like beasts.

“Loose!” Watchtowers and towers answered. Arrows hissed off the string and hunted for flesh. Impado armor drank the blows like a stone drinks rain. The shafts shoved them back a few steps; they staggered, then drove on.

The mountain bandits paid in blood, strewn like leaves in a red wind.

Iling and Phiby’s arrows flew, and each shaft carried away several lives, a reaper’s scythe in twin hands. Under their touch, even the human archers on the towers struck harder, as if wrapped in a hidden aura. The two didn’t even know. Was it a magic shift from days lived on the knife-edge, or a race-born gift waking at last?

The enemy packed under the towers. They swung greatswords like falling doors. A few strokes, and tower legs screamed and split. The poor towers lasted minutes, then crashed like dead trees.

The iron horsemen held back, wary as wolves before fire. They circled beyond iron spikes and spiked barricades, hooves tracing hunting loops for a gap. None showed.

Medith’s long formation locked every chokepoint like a key in a door. Six hundred shield-bearers looked fragile as reeds, yet they stood like a thousand.

From the roofs, rain became knives again. Dense arrows hammered Sage Soldiers. At first the effect was faint. Then bodies thinned, the line grew ragged. Spikes and barricades bled their momentum. Shielders braced in front, spears thrust from behind, stabbing any who tried to wriggle through. Overhead, arrows fell like cannon-shot. The Sage numbers began to melt.

…

Erig saw everything from the rear. His grip tightened until reins creaked. His warhorse nearly leapt, thinking that iron knuckle meant go.

“Medith… you’re the fiercest foe I’ve ever met.” A veteran knows the bones of a formation. He read her array at a glance. It butchered infantry—two layers of works, ace shielders, a hedge of longspears. Worst were the tower archers, their arrows growing meaner, shot after shot. “Yesterday your shafts already hit like sin. Is that your gift? Damn Wind Sprites…”

“All units, fall back! Stop wasting lives! Bring up the Blackblood War Chariot—” Erig’s battlefield roar rolled across the sky. The Sage regiments fell back fast, leaving a field sown with mountain bandits and Sage soldiers, cold as cut wheat.