The clash of tal echoed all around; soldiers on both sides fought for the upper hand, but neither would yield.
CLANG! CLANG!
A soldier from the Hall family raised his shield. The steel of the spear struck it once, twice, three tis, each blow denting the tal, snapping the arm behind it, until the shield fell and the spear pierced his open mouth as he scread, his cry turning into bubbles.
Beside him, the rest of the group had arrived.
A Migzar soldier, his visor shattered, wielded his two-handed axe as if he were chopping wood.
The first blow split a shield in half and continued until it lodged in the chest from behind. As he pulled back, he tore out broken ribs that hung from the blade for a mont before falling into the mud.
Another, the largest of them all, with no weapon other than a mace, swung it in short, devastating arcs. Each blow sent a mass of flesh crashing to the ground.
A helt crumpled with a sound no one wanted to rember. A shoulder vanished into a pulp of crushed bone and blood-soaked fabric.
They didn’t stop.
The target lay ahead there, where the banners flew highest. Where a group of knights in gleaming armor watched as if they were nothing more than monsters.
Alisha, her fists clenched tightly, kept shouting orders as the situation continued to escalate with each passing minute and more deaths.
The next soldier from the Halla family struck with his blade, pointing downward, slicing through the groin of the man—still a soldier of Migzar—in an upward motion that split him open from his pubis to his sternum.
His guts spilled out in a bluish tangle that stead in the cold air. The soldier fell to his knees, staring at them, trying to gather them up with hands that no longer trembled but shook in uncontrollable spasms.
The ground had turned into a swamp.: blood, mud, urine, feces from his torn intestines.
His boots were slipping.
One of his own n fell to his knees, and an enemy soldier plunged a dagger into the back of his neck, right where his helt didn’t cover him. The soldier fell face down with a short groan, his arm outstretched, his fingers scraping the mud as life drained from him through the hole between his vertebrae.
Another of his n returned the favor. The sword entered the soldier’s back, exited through his chest, and when he pulled it out, the man spun around with a death rattle, his broken ribs protruding from the torn mail like the teeth of an upside-down jaw.
Beyond the walls, the trumpets sounded.
Spears, swords, shields, and more flesh continued to pierce toward the heart of the enemy, their arms covered in blood up to the elbows, breathless and jaw clenched, the world reduced to what lay before them.
A soldier with a halberd felt the blade slice through his left shoulder—a pain he didn’t register—and his sword pierced the man beneath the armpit, aiming for the heart.
He shoved him aside as the body bled out in his arms.
...
Watching as the soldiers continued to advance, Alisha waited for that mont, because hidden among them was a knight who had not yet made his move.
He was a key piece—a single move.
Then she saw it; the opportunity had presented itself. She silently prayed that they could seize the mont.
It was brief. Fragile.
The knight hiding among the soldiers shouted.
His voice rose above the chaos.
"CHARGE!"
The impact was imdiate and chaotic; the soldiers charged with all their might, and in their midst, the knight who had been hiding sprang into action.
The signal had been given.
He moved at great speed, killing every soldier who stood in his way, until he reached the knight of Migzar, who was protecting the information core.
There was no pause. Nor were there any detours.
The knight of the Hall family channeled mana throughout his body and coated his sword, which shot out like an arrow, entering through the slit in the helt and piercing the eyes with a sickening crack.
It was a clean strike.
With this knight’s death, it was exactly what they needed.
"RETREAT!"
The order ca imdiately without hesitation.
The knight from the Hall family stepped forward so the soldiers could retreat with so degree of safety before more knights from Migzar arrived as reinforcents.
His presence held back the enemy advance at just the right mont.
"NOW!"
There was no room for delay.
The soldiers began to retreat quickly, before it was too late, and helped the wounded.
So carried their comrades on their shoulders; others dragged those who were still breathing, leaving trails of blood in their wake.
That action caused Migzar’s army to halt, not because they were afraid or anything like that... it was because they were confused.
The move didn’t fit with what they expected.
They had taken out one of their knights, and suddenly, they retreated; that didn’t make sense.
It was too clean.
...
The enemy formation shifted again, this ti more slowly and much more cautiously; there were now more knights in their ranks, on the lookout for any attack.
The formation no longer advanced with the sa confidence. Every step seed asured.
It seed that Alisha’s strike had worked perfectly; she had sown doubt in the enemy ranks.
The trap had left its mark.
...But most importantly, she had bought ti, which was exactly what she needed right now.
Every minute gained... was a victory in itself.
But it hadn’t changed the outco; Migzar’s army didn’t retreat, but adapted.
And that... was even more dangerous.
Alisha surveyed the soldiers and knights and gave her orders.
The murmur of the battlefield, the distant clang of tal, and the muffled cries reached her like a constant echo.
Her eyes quickly scanned the formations, assessing the gaps, the fatigue, and the weak spots.
"Let’s reorganize our lines... we have to change our strategy before they do."
They couldn’t afford to react too late again.
Lucas, standing beside her, nodded. His armor creaked slightly as he moved.
"Let’s move fast; we don’t want any surprises."
Ti was already on their side.
Alisha narrowed her eyes. And then she saw it: the enemy was splitting up. It wasn’t obvious at first... just small shifts in the flow of the troops.
At first, it looked like a simple adjustnt to their formation—sothing normal in the heat of battle—but the more she watched, the clearer the pattern beca: the movents weren’t chaotic or reactive, but deliberate.
One part maintained the frontal pressure... while another began to shift, cutting through its own ranks with precision.
Then, a cry of urgency rang out:
The warning ca too late for many, filled with tension and desperation.
The sound cut through the air like a blade.
Cutting short any attempt to maintain control, marking the exact mont when the situation began to slip from their grasp.
"...NORTH! They’re attacking from the north!"
Alisha spun around, her eyes wide as saucers. She realized her mistake just as everything exploded.
It wasn’t gradual. It was imdiate.
She had been too focused on this part of the city, so she had unconsciously neglected the other areas by not sending enough knights and soldiers.
She had protected one spot... leaving others exposed.
And the enemy took full advantage of that small... yet catastrophic mistake. Many citizens died there horribly and miserably.
The attack wasn’t random. It was precise.
Alisha clenched her teeth as she began issuing orders to reinforce the various points and also called upon the city’s only mage.
She reacted imdiately.
Though it was already too late for many.
Too late...
BOOOM!
An explosion rocked the distant wall.
The sound wasn’t a simple bang, but a deep shockwave that rippled through the structure, making the stone vibrate beneath the soldiers’ feet and shattering any remaining sense of stability in the defense.
The impact was violent.
There was no warning and no ti to react; the force of the blow felt as if the wall itself had been struck from within, throwing everyone nearby off balance.
Rock fragnts flew through the air, striking the ground and nearby soldiers, so of whom barely managed to take cover before being hit by jagged shards that cut their skin and knocked them off balance.
A thick cloud rose, obscuring their vision and turning the area into a gray chaos, making it difficult to distinguish allies from enemies. At the sa ti, the air grew heavy and harsh, filling their lungs with particles that made them cough and breathe with difficulty.
The voices mingled into a chaotic din, with orders lost amid the chaos, soldiers calling out to their comrades, and others trying to regroup without fully understanding what had just happened.
And, in the midst of it all... the beginning of sothing worse.
Because the explosion wasn’t the end, but a beginning—a sign that whatever lay beyond that damaged wall was about to advance.
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