“Fall back! Fall back!” Panic tight in her chest, Medith drove her warhorse toward the rear like wind herding dry leaves. The Sia City soldiers obeyed, their line peeling back like a receding tide. The heavy cavalry finally caught breath; Erig had only just hauled himself to his feet, dust clinging like ash.

From the Bonecrusher Arrow’s first scream to steel meeting steel, less than ten minutes had flowed away like sand. The heavy cavalry fought like thunderheads, cutting down over a third of the attackers, yet gaps in their armor opened like cracked ice, and dozens died.

Counting the fallen and the stragglers, the men under Medith’s hand had dwindled to fewer than a thousand, a bonfire shrunk to embers. But their heavy cavalry had also vanished by more than half, the iron tide broken on hidden reefs.

“Medith...” Erig’s hatred ran hot like poison in his veins. Their once-unstoppable heavy riders found no advantage before her, iron pride turned to rust.

“Think I’ll let you pull back so nicely? Full advance!” Erig’s voice cracked like a whip. “Those outer houses are bait. Their last line is brittle. Slay any Elvenfolk, and you’ll get a castle, hundreds of slaves, rank and title. Charge—!” He spurred ahead, leading the two hundred-odd riders straight at Medith, hooves drumming like stormrain.

Medith’s group vaulted the trench at a dead sprint, then formed up behind a rough wall of sandbags, like reeds bristling in a gale. Iling’s team had already quit the tower and flowed down to join her. Here, only low, few‑meter houses offered firing perches—thin shelter, but the arrows flew with meaner bite.

“Commander! We’re nearly out of Wind‑Cleaving Arrows—maybe two hundred left!” Iling called from the roof, her voice cutting like a hawk’s cry. Her magic was half‑drained, the well gone shallow; she didn’t dare cast wind‑speech, saving it for the bow.

“Doesn’t matter! Loose at full strength—empty every quiver!” Medith shouted, yanking her bow up from the saddle. In the distance, several thousand troops, swept along with a thousand Mountain Bandits, surged like a locust cloud. Medith’s arrows hit like falling meteors; each shaft reaped a dozen Sage Soldiers.

But on this ocean of war, one blade can only cut so far. Ahead, a black death rider thundered in, the reaper at his back, closing within a hundred meters like a storm-shadow.

Medith stowed her bow and leveled her longsword, the signal sharp as lightning. Her fighters cut the hidden ropes on both flanks. Two thunderous booms rolled out from the buildings, as if a chained giant had woken and lunged.

Erig’s riders reared and howled like wolves to the moon, then executed a bizarre pivot, wheeling away in a reverse gallop like swallows cutting air.

“Damn it—!” Her stomach dropped like a stone. “They can pull the pivoting horsemanship?!” Medith stared, stunned that those half‑ton brutes could whirl like windmills.

“Boom—ka‑ka—aaah—!” Two massive battering rams scissored past the flanking walls. The houses folded like paper and crashed. The rams spun off toward the field’s edge, smashing through more small homes like tossed logs.

Look close and you’d see it: those rams were the same make Nessos favored, only the carved crests wore different faces.

“Humph.” Erig’s sneer cut like a thin blade. He’d known Medith wouldn’t leave the road open. No one trips twice on the same stone. This time, her killing trick lay shattered.

“Enemy trap is broken! Full assault—!” Erig roared, fury blazing like a brushfire, and he sprinted for Medith.

Medith stayed unruffled, calm as a still pond, as if every ripple matched a plan she’d drawn at dawn.

“Fall back fifty meters,” she said, her tone cool as frost. “Iling’s squad, keep guerrilla fire from the houses. Phiby’s squad, per plan, clear the western rooftop defenses. Hold for my order to execute the [Burn‑the‑Boats] plan.” She drew a breath like winter. “We lose a frontal fight. And though I hate saying it, it’s the truth. Delaia was right: under absolute power, tactics turn to dust.”

The soldiers answered with silence, their eyes burning like live coals at the iron riders coming on.

Medith tightened her reins till they sang like wire. “We’re likely dying today... but! If this plan works, a thread of dawn remains. If we give the lives in this circle, the two hundred thousand of Sia City behind us live. I can’t choose your deaths, I can’t weigh whose life is heavier. What’s your answer?”

“Swear to defend Sia City—to the death!”

“Good! Then you—” Her words froze like frost. Behind the Sage Soldiers, a whole new force was rolling in, banners she’d never seen.

“Commander! It’s Manto!” Iling’s hawk‑eyes snagged the rear even while she moved. “Manto’s leading in person. He must think we’re in the kill stage—he wants it done by his own hand!”

“Medith Waheit—!” Erig reached the trench and ditched his mount in a single black‑hawk leap, vaulting overhead. He smashed the armor on the back of his right hand with one punch, then bellowed, “Regido—!”

“Retreat—!” They saw his body kindle with black light, an eclipse blooming under skin, and they broke formation in a rush.

Fear spiked cold in Iling’s throat. “Ah—!” She stumbled backward, retreating hard.

“Boom—” A dead‑black pillar ripped out of him like a night volcano. Ten meters around, everything shattered. The trench and sandbags launched hundreds of meters, trailing a hail of iron grit.

The riders behind hadn’t expected that hell. Several couldn’t brake their mounts and got swallowed by the destruction ring, man and horse together. Even Impado warhorses, immune to iron spikes, blew apart into black ash like burnt paper.

The ring raged for about six heartbeats, then guttered out. Around him lay wreckage—shattered stone, iron sand, torn‑open houses, and Sia City soldiers whose very armor had burst. That single transform‑blast swallowed over two hundred shieldmen and a hundred melee guards. The count hit Medith like a hammer to the chest; she almost cracked.

“Thunk—” A slim silhouette dropped from above Medith, clothes nearly shredded. Wounds scored her like claw marks, and blood ran in rivulets.

Terror seized Medith like cold water. “Iling—!” She dropped from the saddle and caught the girl’s slight frame. Iling looked half‑gone, breath thin as thread. She’d been near Erig when he leapt to transform; she hadn’t made the retreat and got clipped by the ring’s edge.

Medith checked fast, fingers shaking. Iling’s heart fluttered like a trapped moth, but it beat. Medith hauled a torn brown cloak from the rubble and draped it over her like earth.

“People—! Get her to Lord Draela, now!” Medith’s voice rang sharp, anxious as a snapped bowstring. Several guards lifted Iling and ran for the tall building where Lord Draela watched.

“Reform the line! Full retreat!” Medith called, the words falling like cold rain. Their final defense was broken; the city’s nightmare had just begun. In Iling’s squad, likely no one survived but her—she hadn’t even made it out.

Without that hard shield at their backs, no one remained to leash the Mountain Bandits; wolves ran free in the wheat.

The bandits feared her, but only when her blade could still sing. Before this, she was their god—untouchable, a shrine they dared not profane.

Once she crumbled, awe vanished. Once the wall falls, every passerby shoves; they kick you when you’re down. Medith finally understood what Paris had meant that day.