The stone stairs descending from the battered remnants of the keep's wall felt infinitely steeper than they had re hours ago. To Brett, navigating the uneven, blood-slicked masonry felt less like walking and more like a controlled, agonising fall.
He leaned his shoulder heavily against the cold, soot-stained stone, his breath hitching with every jarring step. His hands were wrapped in hastily torn, filthy rags. The magical burns he had sustained from over-channelling raw kinetic energy pulsed with a blinding, white-hot agony that rivalled the searing heat of the fires still smouldering in the courtyard below. Beside him, Perberos moved like a ghost. The ranger’s quiver was completely empty, his bow slung uselessly across his back. His face was a mask of grey soot and dried blood, his eyes locked in a thousand-yard stare that saw right through the ruins and into so private, horrific mory of the night.
They didn't speak. There was nothing left to say. The vocabulary of survival had been entirely exhausted.
When they finally reached the courtyard floor, the sheer scale of the devastation hit them anew. From the vantage point of the wall, it had been a nightmare, but down here in the mud, it was a butcher's yard. The ground was an unrecognisable morass of churned earth, shattered cobblestones, splintered wood, and the cooling remnants of those who hadn't made it. The golden motes of the disintegrating monsters had mostly faded, absorbed into the night sky, leaving behind only the stark, undeniable reality of the casualties.
Brett and Perberos hobbled blindly toward the shattered centre of the barricade, drawn by the familiar, battered silhouettes of their companions.
Josh was sitting in the mud with his back pressed against the splintered wheel of an overturned supply wagon. His legs were splayed out in front of him, and his head was tipped back against the wood, his eyes closed. Every shallow breath he took was accompanied by a wet, rattling wheeze that spoke of cracked ribs and internal bruising. Carcan sat a few feet away, her knees pulled tight to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins. She was shivering violently despite the ambient heat of the burning debris. Bhel was flat on his back, his massive chest rising and falling in jerky, uneven spasms, his blood-matted beard blending into the gore-soaked earth beneath him.
Without a word, Brett collapsed next to Josh, his legs simply refusing to support his weight a second longer. Perberos sank to his knees, then slowly pitched forward until his forehead rested against the cold, damp stones.
They ford a tight, ragged circle of misery. They didn't check on each other’s wounds. They didn't offer words of comfort. They just sat there, anchored by each other's presence, existing in the profound, ringing silence that follows a brush with total annihilation. The adrenaline that had acted as their armour and anaesthetic for the past few days had completely evaporated, leaving behind a crushing, leaden exhaustion that seeped into their very marrow.
All around them, the courtyard was a graveyard of the living and the dead.
The air was thick with the copper stench of blood, the sharp tang of ozone from expended spells, and the earthy, almost sickly-sweet scent of the aggressive magical flora. The moans of the injured rose and fell like a macabre tide. Militian with missing limbs, guardsn clutching their torn bellies, and adventurers staring blankly at the stumps of their shattered weapons—they all lay strewn across the courtyard like discarded toys.
Moving through this landscape of despair was the Guard Captain.
The veteran soldier had lost his helt hours ago, revealing a scalp heavily scarred from old fights and freshly bleeding from a glancing blow. His heavy plate armour was dented and rent in a dozen places, the steel stained a uniform, horrific crimson. He moved with a stiff, chanical gait, a man functioning purely on the fus of duty and profound grief.
Josh forced one eye open, the lid heavy and swollen, as he watched the Captain kneel beside a young guardsman. The boy couldn't have been more than seventeen, his face pale and smooth beneath a mask of dirt. A kobold spear had taken him cleanly through the collarbone. The Captain reached out a gauntleted hand, his fingers trembling violently, and gently closed the boy's sightless eyes. He lingered there for a long mont, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking with a silent sob he refused to let the survivors see.
It was an agonising tableau, a portrait of victory that felt entirely indistinguishable from defeat.
Heavy, asured footsteps crunched against the gravel, drawing Josh’s heavy gaze toward the ruined gatehouse.
Two figures were erging from its deep shadows. They had finished securing the area around the portal. The massive, cylindrical chimney of iron-hard vines that Hopeless had conjured was currently humming, reminding Brett of bamboo in the wind, occasionally snapping inward with a wet crunch to instantly pulverise any stray monster foolish enough to step through.
Hopeless walked with a breezy, unbothered stride, his hands clasped neatly behind his back. The golden motes of the dungeon monsters still clung faintly to his brown and green robes, giving him a faintly angelic, utterly absurd aura. Beside him walked the knight.
Up close, the young man was an imposing figure. He wore a long, sweeping leather duster coat that billowed slightly in the night breeze, worn over a pristine white tabard. Beneath the fabric, the heavy clank of thick plate armour rang out with every step, though he moved with the liquid grace of an acrobat. The blinding, shapeshifting sword he had wielded with such devastating efficiency was nowhere to be seen, presumably stashed away in the deep, seemingly bottomless pockets of his coat.
As they drew nearer, Brett shuddered, instinctively leaning away. The knight’s presence was oppressive. It wasn't an aura of malice or heat, but a physical density in the air around him. It felt like standing at the bottom of the ocean, the sheer weight of his level and latent power pressing uncomfortably against the eardrums of everyone nearby.
The two newcors navigated the sea of bodies with respectful care, avoiding the dead and the groaning wounded, until they reached the centre of the courtyard. They stopped a few paces from where the Guard Captain was unsteadily rising from the body of the young soldier, right on the periphery of where Josh and his party were huddled.
The Captain swayed slightly as he stood, gripping the haft of a discarded halberd to keep himself upright. His eyes, rimd with red and completely hollowed out by trauma, tracked the two n.
"Captain," Hopeless said, his voice surprisingly soft, stripping away the theatrical cheer he had displayed earlier. He offered a short, deeply respectful bow. "You and your people fought like lions. It is an honour to stand in your courtyard."
The Captain stared at him, his jaw tightening. "You're the ones who answered the ssengers." It wasn't a question. It was a statent laced with a desperate, crushing bewildernt. He looked past them, toward the gatehouse, as if expecting to see an army marching through the fog. "Two of you. We called for an army. We called for the Royal Vanguard. Two n?"
"I am Hopeless Vance," the druid said, gently ignoring the accusation in the man's tone. He gestured to the young man beside him. "Administrator of Ashenfall. And this is Sir Terry, Knight of the Realm. We ca as fast as the earth would carry us."
Terry didn't speak. He offered a sharp, crisp nod, his eyes scanning the periter with the cold, calculating gaze of a man assessing a tactical puzzle.
"Ashenfall," Bhel grunted from the mud, his voice sounding like two boulders grinding together. He forced himself up onto his elbows, his eyes wide. "We sent word to Ashenfall days ago. But we also sent word to the capital, to the Iron Mountains, to the Silver Coast. Where is the army, Vance? Where are the bloody reinforcents?"
Hopeless let out a long, heavy sigh. The breezy deanour completely vanished, replaced by an exhaustion that seed to age him by ten years in a matter of seconds. He reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
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"There is no army coming," Hopeless said quietly, the words dropping like lead weights into the silence of the courtyard.
The party stiffened. Carcan stopped shivering, her head snapping up. Josh felt a cold spike of genuine terror pierce through his physical pain.
"What do you an, there is no army?" the Captain rasped, his knuckles turning white around the halberd. "We're a portal town. If we fall, the entire valley burns. Command knows this."
"Command is burning, Captain," Hopeless said, his voice devoid of any inflection. "The world has gone to hell. It isn't just here. It isn't just this dungeon."
Hopeless turned slowly, sweeping his arm toward the smoke-choked horizon. "Three days ago, the ambient mana density in the atmosphere spiked to levels not seen since the First Age. The dungeons—they’ve all shattered. The Capital is currently besieged by a horde of void-touched gargoyles. The Iron Mountains have sealed their gates from the inside and gone completely dark. The Silver Coast is fighting a tidal wave of amphibious horrors that marched straight out of the depths.”
The words hung in the air, a litany of apocalyptic disasters that defied comprehension.
"We didn't bring an army, Captain, because there is no one left to send," Hopeless continued, his eyes eting the veteran soldier's hollow gaze. "Every city, every town, every isolated hamlet with a dungeon portal nearby is currently fighting for its absolute life. The military has fractured, defending their own walls. The guilds are spread so thin they are practically transparent."
"Ashenfall?" Josh croaked, the word tearing at his dry throat. He thought of the sleepy town, of the bustling market, of the cheerful rchants.
"Holding," Terry spoke for the first ti. His voice was remarkably calm, smooth, and utterly devoid of panic. "The wall wards are strong, and we don’t have a dungeon that close by. Though, as we were leaving, there was word of a complete breakout at the undead dungeon, and we’d had no word from the goblin dungeon. But we are an island in a sea of fire. When your ssenger arrived, Ashenfall was the only settlent in a two-hundred-mile radius with the capacity to spare anyone at all."
"And they sent the bare minimum?" Carcan whispered, the despair evident in her cracking voice. She buried her face in her hands. "Gods. We survived this, and for what? The whole world is ending."
"It's not ending. It is rely undergoing a severely violent restructuring," Hopeless offered, though the attempt at comfort fell flat. "We are here. You held the breach. That is what matters right now."
The Captain let out a bitter, barking laugh that quickly devolved into a wet cough. He leaned heavily on his halberd, staring at the purple glow of the portal illuminating the night sky above the town square.
"It doesn't matter," the Captain spat, pointing a trembling, gauntleted finger at the swirling vortex. "You plugged the hole, but the dam is already broken. Hundreds of those bastards slipped past us. They got over the wall, then shattered the gate and scattered into the woodlands. They are out there right now, multiplying, hunting."
He turned his fierce, desperate gaze back to Terry and Hopeless. "And the core itself. You know how this works. A dungeon break isn't stopped just by holding the door. The mana density in that portal is critical. It will just keep spitting them out, day after day, until the ambient energy is bled dry. We have to push in. We have to clear the dungeon. Not once, but dozens of tis. We have to kill the boss, let it reset, and kill it again until the core stabilises."
The Captain gestured wildly to the broken bodies around him. "Look at us! We don't have the manpower to hold the walls against a stiff breeze, let alone mount an expeditionary force into a fully enraged, hyper-dense dungeon. We’re dead. If the monsters in the woods don't get us, the portal will eventually burst your vines and finish the job."
Silence descended on the group once more, thick and suffocating. The reality of their situation was a physical weight. Surviving the night wasn't a victory; it was rely a stay of execution.
"I'll get to it, then."
The voice was so casual, so completely unremarkable, that it took Josh a mont to realise Terry had spoken.
The knight rolled his shoulders, a heavy, tallic clanking echoing from beneath his duster coat. He casually adjusted his collar, looking at the violently pulsing purple portal with the mild irritation of a man contemplating a stack of unwashed dishes.
"I'll clear it," Terry said, eting the Captain's stunned gaze. "A fair amount. I'll bleed the core dry."
"Son," the Captain breathed, his voice a mixture of awe and pity. "I don't care how good you are with that fancy sword. That is a fractured core. The real horrors are down there."
Terry didn't argue. He didn't puff out his chest, nor did he offer a boastful smile. He simply nodded his head once, a sharp, economic gesture of acknowledgent. Without another word, Terry turned on his heel. His duster billowed behind him as he began to walk toward the town square, his pace utterly relaxed.
"Wait!" Josh called out, trying to scramble up, but his ribs scread in protest, forcing him back down into the mud. "He can't go in there alone! That's suicide!"
Hopeless chuckled, the sound incongruous with the grim setting. It was a warm, genuine laugh. He placed a gentle hand on Josh's shoulder, easing the young man back against the wagon wheel.
"I wouldn't worry too much about Sir Terry," Hopeless said, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he watched the knight's retreating back. "In fact, I'd argue the dungeon is the one that should be considering its mortality right now."
"He's one man," Perberos muttered from the dirt, his face still pressed against the stones.
"He's a man who has been profoundly, aggressively bored for the last three months," Hopeless corrected, a hint of genuine sympathy in his voice, though the sympathy was entirely directed at the monsters. "He is significantly higher level than anyone here, myself included."
They watched in stunned silence as Terry approached the massive, terrifying funnel of vines encasing the portal. The knight didn't pause. He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't even cast a defensive ward. He simply raised a hand, offered a lazy, two-fingered wave over his shoulder, and hopped effortlessly over the thrashing, razor-sharp roots, vanishing into the purple void of the portal.
"He'll clear it," Hopeless said, turning back to the group with a reassuring smile. "Fifty tis, a hundred tis. Whatever it takes. I imagine he'll be done by breakfast. The man is frighteningly efficient when he wants to stretch his legs."
The absolute confidence in Hopeless's voice left no room for argunt. It was a bizarre, jarring tonal shift, but it was exactly what the broken defenders needed to hear.
Hopeless sighed, dusting a fleck of dried blood off his otherwise pristine robes. He looked around the courtyard, his expression softening as he took in the sheer agony of the survivors.
"I am deeply sorry we couldn't bring a healer," Hopeless said, his voice laced with genuine regret. "We didn’t have any that would be able to keep up with us, and I’ll be frank, the town's healers were busy dealing with the influx of injured from the country. Hopefully your own healers will be back on their feet soon."
He raised his hands, gesturing broadly to the periter of the courtyard. "In the anti, you all need to rest. I will guard the portal until Terry has it at a normal density. I give you my absolute word: not a single creature, void-touched or otherwise, will make it more than ten steps from that portal while I am standing here. The earth itself will swallow them before they can draw a breath."
The promise hung in the air, solid and unbreakable. It was a guarantee of safety, sothing none of them had felt since the sun went down.
"Rest," Hopeless urged, his voice taking on a hypnotic, soothing cadence. "Close your eyes. The night is over. You have earned your peace."
Josh felt the last remaining shreds of his willpower begin to dissolve. The command to rest was overwhelming. His eyelids fluttered, the darkness beckoning with the promise of oblivion. But a sudden, jagged thought pierced through the fog of his exhaustion, snapping his eyes open.
The dungeon.
He planted his hands in the mud, ignoring the searing pain in his arms, and forced his head up.
"Hopeless... wait," Josh gasped, his voice barely a whisper.
The druid paused, tilting his head. "Yes, my friend?"
"Inside," Josh swallowed hard, tasting copper. "Inside the dungeon. Before the break... several parties went in. Adventurers. Our friends. We were waiting for them. They ca out once and went back in straight away, but they must surely be coming out again soon."
Hopeless’s eyes widened slightly, the cheerful deanour slipping to reveal a flash of genuine concern. He looked back toward the pulsing portal, then back to Josh.
Hopeless closed his eyes, raising two fingers to his temple. The air around him shimred slightly, the scent of crushed pine and ozone flaring in the courtyard. He stood perfectly still for a long mont, communicating through channels none of them could perceive.
After a few tense seconds, Hopeless opened his eyes and offered Josh a warm, reassuring smile.
"It's taken care of," Hopeless said. "I have inford the plants of the situation. They have promised faithfully that they will check to see if a creature is a kobold before it is… dealt with.”
It was a morbid, entirely inappropriate reassurance, but it was all Josh needed.
The final tether holding Josh to consciousness snapped.
Around him, a collective, communal sigh rippled through the survivors. It was the sound of a hundred n and won finally, truly believing that they were not going to die tonight. The tension that had kept their muscles coiled and their hearts racing abruptly vanished.
Carcan slumped over, her head coming to rest on Josh's leg, instantly asleep. Bhel’s ragged breathing smoothed out into a deep, rumbling snore that shook his massive chest. Perberos didn't move, having already succumbed to the darkness, while Brett simply let his eyes slide shut, his chin dropping to his chest.
Josh looked up at the sky. The thick, unnatural clouds of the void storm were finally beginning to break, revealing the faint, pale light of the approaching dawn creeping over the horizon.
He didn't even feel his head hit the cart. Without another thought, Josh passed out, swallowed by the deep, dreamless dark of absolute exhaustion.
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