The battle is turning.
There’s a rhythm to violence once it fully takes hold, a pattern beneath the noise and blood and impact that levels out into something almost predictable. The Queen’s soldiers came fast, hard, confident enough to think surprise would be enough. It wasn’t. Dathanor bends, reroutes, endures. The outer lanes are chaos, the old bowling alley structure trembling under the force of impact, but the settlement proper still holds, and I feel the exact moment the enemy realises they’ve miscalculated.
A Glowranth lunges for my throat with a hooked blade slick with rebel blood.
I catch his wrist, twist until bone gives with a brutal crack, then drive my elbow into his chest hard enough to collapse his breath. He folds. I end him quickly and move on.
There is no pause.
No satisfaction.
Only momentum.
The air burns with the scent of iron, heat, and discharged energy. Rebels shout, orders cut through the chaos, bodies fall. A Veilvox fighter drops to my left, skull crushed by a mace swung by a palace guard who doesn’t get a second strike. I intercept,deflect, drive my blade up through the male’s jaw, and turn before he hits the ground.
Too many.
Not too many to hold.
Too many to forgive.
Kael is ten paces away, cutting through enemies with cold precision, every movement efficient and lethal. Shanae holds the western line, voice sharp, keeping the retreat structured instead of breaking. Aelith is somewhere to my right, and wherever he moves, the line fractures under him.
Still, the dead gather.
A young Riftborn falls before I reach him. An older Glowranth ally collapses protecting a route that should never have become a battlefield. Two others hold long enough for the wounded to escape. Only one survives.
The Queen sent her guards to die.
The thought burns through me with every kill. She did not send enough to take Dathanor. That is clear now. This is not conquest. It is pressure. A test. A message.
It brings no relief.
A guard charges me, screaming.
I meet him head-on, slam his strike aside, break his stance, and put him down before he can recover. Another comes. Another falls. The line shifts.
We are winning, as we should be.
Then the bond hits.
Not a flare.
Not a warning.
Wrong.
It slams into me hard enough to disrupt my footing—not pain, exactly, but something worse. A fracture. A pull. Pax.
I miss my next strike by a fraction. The guard still dies, but the error freezes something deep in my chest.
Pax.
The awareness tears through me.
I sent him away. It was the correct decision. Jamie needed protection. Solan would get them there. Jack and Sonny would reinforce. It was the right call.
The bond convulses.
