The horn split the world open.
It wasn’t a sound. Not really. It was like sothing ancient and rusted had scread through steel—ripping the silence apart, dragging every last breath into its pitch. I felt it in my chest before I even registered it in my ears. My bones locked. My fingers froze on the wall’s edge. The air died.
Then ca the silence.
No birds. No wind. Just that unnatural, ringing quiet. Like the whole world had sucked in its breath and forgotten how to let it go.
I turned to the left. Cealith was standing still, eyes narrowed toward the sky, one hand on the hilt of his blade. Carn gripped her spear tighter. Amina’s mouth opened—about to say sothing, maybe a curse, maybe a warning—but then the stone beneath our feet cracked.
“Back!” Nikita’s voice—sharp, imdiate, the only thing that could cut through the static in my brain.
I didn’t even question it. We stumbled off the ledge just as a thin, black fracture split the stone wall beneath where we’d been posted. Not a clean break—this was organic, like ink bleeding through the fortress, like sothing was pushing through from under reality.
The ground beneath the watchtower groaned. And then the screaming began.
Not ours.
Theirs.
From the fractures spilled the first wave.
It didn’t look like soldiers. It didn’t look like anything. Black bodies—not smoke, not flesh, not shadow—just absence. No faces, no armor, no weapons. Just shapes that twisted the air around them and tore into the first line like paper.
The first soldier went down screaming. Another ran and didn’t make it five steps before sothing lanced through his neck—from the inside. Blood sprayed. The wall exploded behind him.
“Unit Twenty-Seven!” Nikita roared over the chaos. “Form up! FORM UP!”
I scrambled toward the others, almost slipped on blood. Daisuke pulled upright, his face pale, eyes wider than I’d ever seen. “They’re fucking everywhere,” he muttered. “They’re—”
“Shut it and move!” Amina shoved past him, grabbing a discarded shield and slamming it against the dirt like a barrier. “We hold here!”
Carn landed beside . “Where’s the rest of the unit?”
“Scattered!” I yelled back. I couldn’t even hear my own voice. “So by the west trench—so—”
Another explosion rocked the ground. A hole opened ten ters from us—like the earth had been torn from underneath—and two more creatures slithered out. One moved like it was underwater. The other just floated—like it didn’t even need to follow gravity’s rules.
Cealith moved. No words. Just steel.
His blade cut one of them in half. It didn’t bleed. It just collapsed, like sothing had shut off inside it. Carn drove her spear into the second’s chest and kicked it off, panting. “They die,” she gasped. “That ans they can be killed.”
“Hold the line!” Nikita roared, slamming his blade through a third one, grabbing a bleeding soldier by the collar and dragging him behind a broken cart. “Get behind cover! Reinforcents will flank in from the west in five!”
He was lying. I could see it in his face. There were no reinforcents.
There was just us.
We made a barricade out of crates and the body of a collapsed tent. Cealith, Amina, and I crouched behind it. Daisuke was already bleeding from his leg, pressing a cloth to it with shaking hands.
“I can’t move,” he muttered. “Shit—shit—I can’t feel my foot.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Carn snapped, tossing him a dagger. “They co for us, you stab until your arm gives out.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it or anything,” he muttered.
“Not in the mood.”
Nikita moved like he was made of iron. Shouting orders. Repositioning troops. Killing anything that ca too close. But we were spread too thin. Half of Unit 27 was already dead. Another soldier—Lukas, I think—was dragged over the edge of the ridge by three of those things. He didn’t scream. He just vanished.
That was when Aleks—the Aleks before today—would’ve broken.
But sothing else snapped first.
Carn’s breathing got louder. More labored. She was favoring her left side.
“Hey,” I said, crawling toward her, “You hit?”
She didn’t answer.
I reached her—saw the blood.
A deep cut across her ribs. Dark. Ugly. She’d been hiding it. Still fighting.
“You need to fall back—”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re fucking not.”
She turned to , finally. Her eyes were glossy, red around the edges. But her jaw was locked. “If I stop now, I die. If I stop now, you die. So I’m gonna keep standing. And you’re gonna shut up and cover . Got it?”
I nodded.
She turned back to the barricade and didn’t say another word.
Sowhere far across the field, another horn blew—short, broken.
A warning.
Not from our side.
From soone who didn’t make it.
Cealith looked toward it, just briefly. I saw it in his face. That tilt of the head. That flicker of recognition. He knew what it ant.
“We’re cut off,” he said.
Nikita appeared seconds later, covered in dirt and blood, panting hard. “They breached the southern chapel. Dwarves are falling back. We need to move—now.”
“Where?” Amina snapped.
He didn’t blink.
“To the inner courtyard. If we lose that—we’re done.”
We didn’t run.
We fought our way back.
The path to the inner courtyard was half rubble, half corpses. Every ten steps, sothing lunged from the shadows. Aleks of last year would’ve curled into a ball and begged the dirt to swallow him.
But Aleks today—
I didn’t have the luxury of fear anymore.
I dragged Daisuke with one arm, blade in the other. He was bleeding worse now, muttering numbers under his breath, maybe coordinates, maybe prayers. Amina limped beside us, her dagger red and rusted from overuse. Carn had gone quiet—no jokes, no orders—just breathing like a furnace and cutting anything that ca close. She was still bleeding. She didn’t care.
Cealith led the way, sword drawn, moving like a shadow with purpose. And Nikita?
He held the flank.
We reached a choke point near the chapel gate. Half-collapsed stone, charred wood, bodies piled so thick we had to climb over them. Behind it, the last stretch before the inner wall. Our only fallback.
“Hold here!” Nikita barked. “Thirty seconds! We regroup, we move together!”
Carn leaned against the wall, gasping.
“I can’t see out of my left eye,” she said flatly.
“Don’t need to,” Amina replied. “Just keep the arm with the blade moving.”
Daisuke coughed blood onto his sleeve. “Tell my stats to go fuck themselves.”
“I’ll send them a letter,” I muttered.
We locked eyes. Just for a second. We didn’t say it, but we all knew—this was probably it.
Then the second wave ca.
No warning. No horn.
Just silence—and then the sky above us cracked open like glass.
A rift tore through the clouds. Shadows poured down in sheets, like black rain that twisted mid-air. One of the creatures landed in front of us—massive, malford, screaming without a mouth.
And Nikita went forward alone.
He didn’t shout. He didn’t look back.
He moved fast—grabbing a broken spear, charging the thing like it owed him money, slamming it through its chest and yanking upward. The creature shrieked—dissolved—and behind it, three more ca through the gate.
“Go!” he shouted. “NOW!”
“Co with us!” Carn yelled.
“I said go!”
He turned—eyes locked on hers.
And then—
The spear ca from behind.
Black stone. Silent. Perfectly aid.
It pierced straight through his back and out his chest.
Carn scread.
Amina froze.
Daisuke stopped breathing.
Cealith stepped forward—but it was already too late.
Nikita dropped to his knees.
He looked up—at . Just .
His lips moved. No sound. I ran to him, skidding on blood and dirt, catching his shoulders just before he collapsed completely.
He gripped my coat, blood running from his mouth.
“You lead them now,” he rasped.
My chest caved in. “No. No, don’t—”
“Don’t let them break.”
His hand went limp.
His head dropped forward.
And the sky above us shattered again.
I stood up.
I didn’t think.
I didn’t cry.
I turned.
The rest of Unit 27—what was left of us—stood frozen.
Carn’s eyes were wild. She stumbled to Nikita, dropped beside him, shook him once, twice. “No—no, no, no—you don’t get to fucking leave us!”
She hit his chest with a bloodied fist.
Cealith stepped forward, placed a hand on her shoulder.
She didn’t move.
Behind them, another wave of creatures poured through the breach.
Daisuke looked at , eyes hollow. Amina stood over him, ready to protect both of us.
The world felt like it was collapsing.
And sohow—
I was still standing.
I didn’t feel brave. I didn’t feel strong.
But I rembered what Nikita had said.
“Don’t let them break.”
I stepped forward. My voice cracked.
“Unit 27…”
No one looked at .
I scread.
“UNIT TWENTY-SEVEN! FORM THE FUCK UP!”
They turned.
And I raised my sword.
“Shield wall! Cover the left! Cealith, right flank! Carn—”
She stood. Tears in her eyes. Blood on her face.
She nodded once.
“—front line with .”
Amina stepped beside , gripping her dagger like it was part of her body.
Daisuke limped up behind.
And slowly—
what was left of our unit snapped into formation.
I turned to face the gate.
And the Darkness ca.
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