The tremor ca again. Not like the shakes from trebuchets. Not the scream of spells. This was deeper.
Boom.
...Pause.
Boom.
Raven froze mid-run. His foot lifted off his ballista and hovered. He felt it. In his bones. In the walls. In the wind.
The world wasn’t reacting to an explosion. It was bracing for a footfall.
Fold soldiers near the breach stopped. Even they weren’t charging. They were... shouting. Not at the defenders. At each other.
Raven grunted as the zone’s attention dangerously shifted away from the massive breach still gaping in front of them
Even with the Gravewalker coming, the breaches in the wall were still wide open. Fold soldiers hadn’t stopped pouring in. The threat hadn’t paused. It had multiplied.
Raven snapped into motion.
"Make the gate too hot for them to cross," Raven ordered.
He pulled out his ballista kit in his inventory and slamd it into place. The rune-lit limbs unfolded, anchoring fast.
Other players hesitated. So didn’t. A nearby rogue blinked.
"Wait. You’re that dagger summoner guy—the one who took over zone lead right, right?"
Raven didn’t look at him. He cranked the lever. Loaded the bolt. Fired. A Fold mage’s head burst into mist.
"Doesn’t matter who I am. Do this and die with , or die alone sowhere else."
Another shot. Another kill.
3
4
5
But there were too few. Too few to matter.
Then ca the screech—a Fold storm mage on the rooftop, arms raised in a glowing channel. Raven turned too late. The sigil pulsed. A crackling bolt of lightning slamd down into the siege platform.
[You have died.]
The respawn trigger fired. Light. Wind. The stone runes of the Inner Sanctum etched themselves back around him.
Soone shouted in zone chat.
[Zone Chat] "Where is the Golem spawning? Anyone got visual?"
Rogues peeled from the walls, climbing to scout. Seconds ticked by.
Then one ssage popped up in pure caps
"NORTHEAST WALL. IT’S HERE. I SEE IT."
Raven respawned in Inner Sanctum.
The pain still lingered. His head feels heavier, the faint shimr of respawn still clinging to his armor.
No ti to dwell. No ti to waste.
He sprinted to the siege vendor—quick taps, quick buys. Several trebuchet kits dropped into his inventory.
Then he turned and ran. Out of the Inner Sanctum. Back into the chaos.
As he ran, the walls began to shake again.
Boom.
Boom.
Then ridian Fold’s NPC commander.
"Clear the way!"
"Guard the Siege Breaker!"
"Gravewalker inbound!"
Then ca the chant.
Low. Unified. Carried by too many voices from the ridian Fold soldiers, echoed through the battleground in unified threat of death and destruction.
"GRAVEWALKER. GRAVEWALKER. GRAVEWALKER."
It didn’t rise in pitch. It compressed the air.
Raven turned his head before the rest even noticed.
A shadow erged on the far side of the Northeast Wall.
He didn’t see the full form yet.
Just the shoulder.
A jagged slope of stone and steel.
Then the leg.
Then the arm—a siege ram shaped like a limb.
Boom.
The foot landed.
The Gravewalker had fully erged.
Lymira’s na lit up in zone chat:
[EC] Lymira: "Rotate ranged units. Make the path a killbox. Summoners and siege, prep trebuchets and ballistas. Mages on rooftops. That thing bulldozes straight lines."
A random player answered, "Why should we listen to her? She just fed half the zone to Fold mages."
Raven answered, directly converted into text in world chat, cool and blunt. "She’s not wrong this ti. Listen. We don’t have the luxury to be divided. Kill the Golem, or lose the city."
"Yo, dagger guy from yesterday, right? Aight, if you’re backing her call, I’m in."
The Gravewalker finally cleared the mist.
It stood three stories tall. A torso of obsidian chunks chained together by glowing rune-strips. Limbs like cathedral towers. Its head was eyeless—a carved face of ancient despair, pulsing with Fold glyphs. And beneath its feet, stone crushed itself into dust.
It didn’t roar. It didn’t even care about the incoming arrow or spells from the defenders even though it damaged it.
It just walked.
Boom.
Each step shattered stone. A ripple of force cracked barricades without touching them.
Boom.
Archers fired. Mages launched spells. So bolts connected.
But that thing still moving forward.
[Zone Chat]
"It’s not slowing down!"
"Why is it ignoring us?!"
"What the fuck is this HP bar??"
[System Warning: Siege Breaker HP - 6,000,000]
[System Warning: Faction NPC Panic Status - Tier 1 Triggered]
"Newbies. First ti?" Raven chuckled at his own joke as he set up the trebuchet. "The Golem’s a random event. Total bulldozer—moves in a straight line, doesn’t care who’s in the way. And the Fold? They’ll flood in right behind it. We stop it, or it punches straight through to the throne."
Cindraleth NPC soldiers began to retreat. citizen NPC disappeared mid-interaction. The effect of Panic Status. Part of Golem event.
The players stood alone. The NPC Cindraleth soldiers stepped back to protect inner city. Now, it’s up to them.
Raven reached the north east ridge. Sweat slicked his palms. The trebuchet was ready. No stealth this ti.
He faced the Gravewalker, and beside him, a player with a shaky voice—but still trying to sound cheerful—joined him on the weapon. Trebuchets needed two to operate, after all.
"Let help," she said. Her voice cracked, but she forced a smile.
"They said this was supposed to be better."
She didn’t clarify who ’they’ were. She just exhaled, stepped up, and grabbed the crank.
Her armor caught the light—dark gold, the kind issued to mid-ranking paladins. Red hair, singed at the edges. Tired eyes she didn’t show.
Raven didn’t ask.
She sounded like soone who just watched sothing she believed in fall apart.
Everyone was shaken during the Throne War.
"Aim ten ters in front of the golem,—" he said, glancing at her naplate. "Fairyblade. That way, when the ballista lands, it’ll slam straight into its torso."
One hour earlier...
Elara stood in the Titan Corp eting room, her posture straight but her fingertips white around the edges of the datapad she held. The screen displayed real-ti analytics: player drop-offs, complaint heatmaps, and a surging wall of forum threads tagged with "#ThroneWarCrash."
Her manager paced in front of the sponsor representative, voice sharp with panic.
"We’re getting buried. Look at this engagent spiral—it’s a PR nightmare. Do you know how much White Mansion invested in this patch cycle?"
Elara didn’t flinch. "I followed SOP sir. Paraters were cleared. You approved it without further investigation."
The manager turned to her, voice cold and clipped. "Don’t deflect. You’re QA. This should’ve been caught. The AI’s collapsing under pressure and the public is blaming our balancing."
She clenched her jaw. "Then let test it directly. If AI behavior only cracks under siege load, I’ll log in and observe it first-hand."
The manager scoffed. "This isn’t an esports team. We don’t provide field accounts."
Elara blinked. "No test accounts? Not even for the QA division?"
He crossed his arms. "You want to play gas, do it outside work hours. I’m not signing off on any employee using company ti to roleplay."
"I’ll use my own account," she said, firm. "Through the public capsule. No synced progression. But I’ll see what the players see."
The manager barely looked at her. "Fine. Use the office pod. I don’t care what you do as long as it doesn’t hit our KPIs. We’re 9% behind forecast. Fix it."
Elara didn’t respond. She just turned and walked out.
Minutes later, in the capsule lounge, she slid into the pod, her breath shallow.
The ga loaded.
She spawned into Greycliff Hold. The air was already thick with fire and tension. The sky churned above as Fold troops breached the walls.
She stood still for a mont, letting it wash over her.
Players sprinting. Siege fire screaming overhead. Cries of pain and panic echoing off broken walls. HUD warnings stacked like debris.
"This was where I tested my Fairy Paladin build for the first ti..."
Her lips quirked into a small smile.
Flashbacks flickered:
She often left her dorm late at night, walking alone to rented VR cafes or the campus capsule lounge during off-peak hours. She left her college dorm room with notes and a half-eaten cup of noodles still on her desk, just to imrse herself in the battlefield—fighting lag, power outages, and strict ti limits to be soone else, if only for a while.
Her paladin class—basic at first—gradually morphing into the Fairy Paladin archetype through behavior-based evolution.
She didn’t just summon spells. She summoned companions. Bright, fluttering fairies who healed her wounds, empowered her strikes, shielded her allies. They chirped. They sparkled. They stood beside her.
And when she entered her first Throne War event, they followed her into chaos.
That was the day she felt like a hero.
Back in the present.
She raised her weapon. Tried to summon.
Nothing.
Tried again.
Glyphs flickered. Then static. Then silence.
A third ti. Still nothing.
She froze. Her fairies were gone.
Not bugged. Not skipped.
Deleted.
The AI sync patch had erased the one system that made her class unique.
She watched the battlefield fray.
Broken summons. Glitched spells. Players dying out of sync. No synergy. No defense.
Her fingers trembled.
"This isn’t a system failure. This is greed."
"The sponsor wanted a clean image. The company bowed to them. And the players? They’re the ones bleeding for it."
She blinked hard. Breathed out once.
Then she saw him.
A lone figure coordinating fire, drawing focus, setting up a trebuchet.
She moved before thinking. Stepped into position at the siege platform beside him.
"Let help," she said. Her voice cracked, but she forced a smile.
She hadn’t ant to say the next part out loud. It slipped, too raw to stop.
"They said this was supposed to be better."
That player just glanced at her for a second before speaking, "Aim ten ters in front of the golem, Fairyblade. That way, when the ballista lands, it’ll slam straight into its torso."
She nodded, and glance at his naplate before answered, "Got it..Raven"
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