The fire didn't give orders.
It just pulsed—once.
And Ashring moved.
Splitjaw was the first in.
He launched from the trench like he'd been waiting for years, not days, and met the shieldbearer mid-slope. No speech. No test swing. He just slammed his whole weight into her shield, bounced off, rolled, and came back up with blood in his teeth.
"Left flank's mine!" he shouted.
And then it wasn't a battle anymore.
It was a brawl.
The goblins swarmed in from the east slope with bone picks and stitched armor, flanking the mage who'd been setting suppression runes. He snapped a spell into their path, scattering three—but Bitterstack was already behind him.
She didn't fight. She threw.
Crates. Rocks. A whole bucket of moss-reactive powder.
The explosion wasn't clean.
Neither was what came after.
Hoarder and the ranger met at the upper ridge, both already bleeding. She fired. He dodged. She vanished into mist and reappeared behind him.
He expected that.
Turned.
And stabbed upward with a poison shard from a trap cache.
It missed her heart.
Hit her hip.
She cursed and fell back—and Hoarder collapsed with a grin like he'd just broken a rule and gotten away with it.
Quicktongue wasn't on the front lines.
She was everywhere else.
Shoutlines flared. Orders shifted. Units realigned. When one squad went down, another took its place before the system could even finish the morale ping.
Ashring didn't hold the line.
It became the line.
Scribbles was screaming and laughing and crying as he burned five glyphs into one single moss slab—overcharged, unbalanced, dangerously unstable.
The ranger saw him.
Fired.
Embergleam stepped in the way.
Took the arrow through the shoulder. Didn't fall.
"You done yet?" she said.
"Almost," Scribbles whispered.
Three golems surged forward in a V formation.
The Hero cut one down in a single swing.
The other two tackled him. Forced him to pause. Just for a second.
And that was enough.
"NOW!" Quicktongue roared.
The center line collapsed inward.
Not from failure.
From design.
Ten kobolds fell on the Hero's squad with spears, nets, rocks, and claws. Not coordinated. Not beautiful.
But unstoppable.
For thirty full seconds, Ashring dragged the Hero's squad backward.
Then the tide turned.
The mage pulsed a wave.
The shieldbearer roared, shield glowing bright.
The ranger's next arrow was tipped in fire.
And they pushed back.
But it wasn't clean anymore.
It wasn't surgical.
It was war.
And we were still standing.
The battlefield was still breathing.
But only just.
Moss smoldered under broken golems. Embergleam was propped against a wall, one hand pressed to her chest, still whispering healing glyphs. Splitjaw was on one knee, face blank, blade gone. Scribbles stood halfway between the trench and me, clutching a half-lit sigil that couldn't save anyone fast enough.
And then he walked through the smoke.
Sir Edrin Vale or whatever his name is.
Sword low. Pace calm. Armor dull from soot and blood. A man-shaped inevitability.
He didn't look angry.
Didn't look tired.
He looked like someone who'd already made peace with what this moment meant.
He stopped ten paces away.
The system didn't speak.
It didn't need to.
This was always coming.
So I stepped forward.
The flame in my spine burned low.
I drew my weapon.
Not because it would stop him.
Because he would keep walking if I didn't.
I raised the blade.
He raised his.
Then we moved.
The first clash didn't spark.
It just exploded.
Sound fell out of the world. The trench behind me cracked. My claws screamed with pressure. His swing came fast—horizontal, wide, perfect for breaking stances. I dropped under it, slashed low.
He pivoted.
Steel kissed stone.
He was already behind me.
I turned. Parried. Took a step back.
He didn't follow.
He just waited.
Measured.
This wasn't aggression.
It was gravity.
I charged.
Feinted high.
He didn't blink.
His counter cut air where my throat had been half a second earlier. I spun, slashed toward his side, pushed my flame into the edge. The blade screamed red.
He angled his sword.
The flames died.
The swing that followed didn't hit me.
It erased a meter of moss and knocked me off balance.
Still no words.
Still no mercy.
Just motion.
I screamed and drove my blade forward with both hands.
It struck his pauldron. Hard.
Finally.
A break.
He staggered.
Then he looked at me.
And that was the end of it.
His next step crossed ten feet like it was one.
The blow came down with no buildup. No shout. Just inevitability.
I tried to move.
Too slow.
The sword landed.
It didn't split me.
It just stopped me.
I hit the ground.
Everything blurred.
My fingers twitched.
The system flared red.
Scribbles was shouting.
Embergleam was trying to crawl.
The fire—
The fire flickered.
Then it went dark.
System offline.
Recognition severed.
Vital thread: gone.
And Ashring?
Ashring screamed.