9/20. Erig’s plan fit like a blade to the sheath, and under a noose-tight siege the mercs of Dawnlight Castle started to crack like dry clay.

The key command circle sat mute, faces overcast like a sky before storm, their hands tied, their spirits frostbitten.

The Hexclaw Legion even “kindly” delivered a handwritten letter from Felica, a leaf fallen on cold water, saying aid was impossible and Gerald should pray for luck.

Medith and the others tried to hide it, but their stiff movements and Hexclaw’s strutting told the tale like crows circling a field.

...

Inside Elena Town.

Felica’s hunger knifed first, but obsession burned hotter, and she locked herself in the war room like a moth before a candle.

Day bled into night as she sought a way out, her once-smooth silver hair now kinked and wilted like frost-bitten reeds.

Her eye sockets sank like dry wells, yet her gaze sparked like flint, scanning a map dense as ant trails for any path through.

Outside, people waited with hearts like drums, and those who brought food almost screamed, seeing her gaunt as a winter branch.

No matter how much they offered, the bowls returned untouched, like waves thrown back by rock, and fear piled up that she’d simply drop.

“Are we... really out of moves?” The question fell like a dead leaf in a still pond.

“Even Medith can’t pull a trick from the wind?” Their hope frayed like old rope.

“The enemy’s a kingdom, not Mountain Bandits; that’s a war machine, iron wheels grinding stone—how can we win?”

“What if... we send troops on the sly? Gather a few thousand, and Medith has ties with guilds.

We unite with them and ride hard, wind in our faces, and maybe they hold a bit longer than we guessed...”

“I think we should. We can’t let Her Highness bear this storm alone.”

“Then we move, and we skirt ‘Shadowshade,’ like fish slipping past a net.”

Several branch commanders clasped hands, ready to act like sparks in dry grass, when a shadow rose before them, big as a hill and cold as midnight water.

His stubbled, wrinkled jaw couldn’t hide the scar-slashed brutality, a face carved by knives, a mountain under storm.

“Where are you commanders headed?” His voice was gravel in a riverbed; he was the tavern security at Felica’s place.

“Shadowshade...” they gasped, as if a raven landed on the ridge; they’d chosen the darkest alleys, yet his hunt still found them.

No one knew his roots, only that he had followed the Commander through fire and snow, an ash-black veteran rumored to wear 256 scars like rings on an ancient tree.

Under moonlight his shadow looked like a hell god rising, a nightmare stamped on stone.

Back in the pioneer days, when blood clashed with Mountain Bandits, he led a thousand like a flood, bare-chested under the moon, and cut down five thousand like wheat.

As Felica’s force grew, he aged like a sword set aside, and he retired; his true name sank like a stone in deep water.

He came and went like a ghost; the man unseen, the shadow arriving first, like fog before dawn.

“We’re going... to save Medith and Gerald,” they said, hearts pounding like hooves on a bridge, “and we can’t beat you.

But give us a reason we can trust, or we’ll still go and guard Her Highness’s smile with our lives.”

Shadowshade met their flint-hard eyes, then let out a long sigh like wind through pines. “Then you must swear today’s talk won’t spread.”

“You underestimate us,” they said, steel over ice.

“Good.” He paused, a stone dropped into a well, and began to speak like a fire kept low.

...

“So it’s set in stone? Gerald’s disaster can’t be dodged like rain?”

They listened, and despair seeped in like cold through a thin wall, while Felica’s torment weighed on them like wet cloth.

Send troops, send how many? They couldn’t beat twenty thousand elite soldiers, a steel river that drowns hills.

If they had fifty thousand or more, maybe—just maybe—a crack in the ice would show.

But their strength was scattered like seeds, and the whole north held barely less than a hundred thousand.

In a handful of days, to gather fifty thousand, ready plans, gear, grain, and horses—fog couldn’t thicken that fast.

Go with less, and it’s a march into the mouth of the tiger; the enemy knew, which is why they boasted like thunder.

Power breeds fearlessness, like a cliff facing waves.

Even if they gathered, raced, and bled to save Dawnlight, then what?

The Eastern Nation is a deep ocean of resources, no shore in sight.

With one command, for the interests between states, they’d form a coalition like storm clouds merging, and sweep mercenaries clean.

The people would sigh like wind through grass, the force would vanish like smoke, and all because a wrong move tipped the board.

If there’s no rescue, the Eastern Nation, bound by public opinion like a hawk by tether, would hesitate before ripping the veil.

For now, safety is thin ice, shameful but real; life traded for life, a bitter tea swallowed hot.

Life’s priceless; the few for the many looks simple like a straight road, but every step sinks.

Worth it or not—only those in the storm and those who survive can judge by the river’s bend.

So holding still is best, a thorn swallowed but necessary, the choice a leader must carry like a millstone.

Felica can’t throw the entire Radiant Knights into a valley for one Dawnlight; she’s not Medith—she doesn’t have the wings or the daring.

“All we can do is pray,” Shadowshade sighed, like ash lifted by wind. “Let her go.

If that eases her heart, it’s better than bottling it up till it poisons the well.”

“Alas, so be it... Medith, are you truly out of roads?”

...

9/21 morning. The Hexclaw Legion’s seven-day deadline neared like a sunset’s last line, and inside Dawnlight the air was dead as a pond in winter.

From a kilometer away you could feel their despair, a cold tide rising, and their grain would break like a dry stalk.

They were a timber skiff cast into an ink-dark sea, a lone plank in endless swell.

Silence seeped from every corner like damp; only the void stretched, no hope, no shrine of faith.

On the little boat sat a handful of food and water, a candle guttering, and hunger was nothing next to the gnawing fear.

“Hm?” Harrison raised his spyglass like a falcon’s eye and watched the walls.

He saw Medith arguing with someone, heat flaring like sparks in straw, limbs slashing the air.

That ghost-masked fighter... if he remembered right, a Kuso Guild man, a borrowed blade under Medith’s banner?

They argued for ten minutes, time dripping like tar, and then Nameless stood by Fangge, anger sharp as ice.

The women gathered around like birds in a storm, frantic, trying to pull the thunder apart.

At last Medith roared, the sound rolling like a drum across the plain, clear even a kilometer away: “Get out—!”

Nameless and Fangge nodded, a decision dropping like a guillotine, then turned and slipped into the castle, gone like fish in reeds.

Medith’s chest heaved like a bellows, rage choking like smoke; the women soothed her like cool hands and hurried after the two.

“Hahahaha—who’d have thought?” Harrison laughed, joy bright as sun on steel.

“Medith’s own people aren’t one slab of iron. This fight’s as good as won.”

Erig and Manto hustled over, snatched the spyglass, and peered, their laughter bubbling like spring water.

Medith wasn’t omnipotent; in a siege like this, hearts shifted like sand in wind.

Nameless and Fangge were rootless clouds, their loyalty thinner than that of the female Sprites.

They had skill and pride, and they’d pity their own lives like bird guards its wings.

Medith’s “sacrifice yourself to save others” might cow her own, but it wouldn’t bind outsiders like rope on oil.

“You think they’ll start a fight inside?” Harrison asked, grin sharp as a knife.

“Unlikely,” Manto said, after a heartbeat like a pebble’s ripple.

“If they care for their own lives, they won’t do that.

If I were them, I’d sweep up everyone inside who won’t die for nothing, and use our strength like a hammer on the thinnest pane.

Trade blood for a sliver of dawn.

For example, the northern Kalinta line.” His words fell like chess pieces.

Harrison thought on it, and it rang true like a struck bell.

This is the near-north middle, a tangle of powers, even northern troops grazing nearby.

Starting a brawl with them now would be a wolf biting a tiger.

So Dawnlight’s northern line was the thinnest by design, a courtesy bow to the northern army.

“What if they really do it?” Clive’s voice shook like a leaf; panic crawled cold as rain.

“I’ve got it covered,” Erig said, calm like a stone in current. “Put the army on full alert.

If nothing goes wrong, we move by dawn tomorrow. The fruit’s ripe.”

Harrison nodded, confidence blooming like fire.

Seeing Medith raging yet helpless, the old fear of her melted like frost; she was human, tangled by feeling like a kite by string.

...

9/21, 23:00 sharp. Gerald stepped up to muster troops, breath steady as a drawn bow, and then the ground shifted like sand.

Hundreds of elite warhorses were missing from the war-horse depot, and top knights were gone like stars at dawn.

Panic stabbed him like ice, and a dark premonition rose like fog.

“Medith—” he called, but a blast cracked the armory, and fire speared upward like a flare into night.

Hooves thundered like storm drums, and hundreds of warhorses burst from the stores, bits jangling like rain on iron.

Two figures led them, momentum roaring like a river.

One wore a shoulder-length black ponytail, eyes keen as a hawk, resolve set like steel, and he leveled a cross-engraved lance.

He charged like a spear through reeds, straight for the gate.

Beside him crouched a ghost-masked warrior, low on the saddle like a coiled panther, accelerating with vicious intent.

Their aim was clear as moonlight—straight for the side gate.

It was too sudden, a summer squall, and the gate guards felt the kill-cold in the air like frost on back.

If they fought to the death, it would be mutual ruin, two eggs against a rock.

“Open the gate—open the gate—!”

At the first bloom of fire at the armory, Medith’s voice broke, panic flooding like a breached dam.

No one dared hesitate; they threw the gates wide like a mouth, and the rebels flew through like arrows loosed.

“Bastards—! Nameless—Fangge—traitors, both of you! Get back—!”

Sais’s eyes went blood-red like fresh cuts, and she lunged to chase, lightning in her legs.

Medith caught her, grief carving her face like wind on stone, and shook her head. “Too late...”

Sure enough, before Sais could run, the rebels who had burned their store of hope and their sharpest edge were already gone like wildfire downwind.

They spurred north, riding like night-swallowed comets, and vanished in a heartbeat into the dark.

Only the sky-tall flames remained, and mercenaries staring blankly like stones, hope drained to dust.