I wasn't supposed to be in this part of the story.
I was a moss-hauler. Wall patcher. The kind of kobold they trained because they needed bodies between smarter ones. My spear had never touched blood. My orders had never been shouted by anyone higher than Hoarder.
But the horn blew. And the air shifted. And the fire stopped being warm.
I didn't run because I was brave. I ran because the Sovereign had once said, "When the line forms, stand in it." So I did.
Trenches. Eastern slope. Mid-row. Not front, not flank. I told myself I'd survive there.
Then the Hero's squad crested the ridge. And every part of me that still believed in survival cracked. They didn't roar. Didn't grandstand. Just moved. Like they were cleaning something up. Like we were the leftover stain they'd been sent to erase.
One golem vaporized before it finished standing. A shouter two trenches down went down with a silent arrow to the chest. I heard Embergleam scream. Not from pain. From fury. The kind that means: keep fighting or I'll kill you myself.
I wanted to run. I didn't. I remembered what Quicktongue had said during drills. "If your knees are shaking, fine. That's what the trench is for. It holds you up."
So I stood. Even as the line buckled. Even as the smoke thickened. Even as Bitterstack called for a mossfire detonation and the heat nearly took my fur off.
The Sovereign didn't shout commands. She just moved forward. Through the chaos. Every step of hers steadied someone else's.
It wasn't magic.
We were scared.
And maybe she was too—maybe she wasn't.
But that's what held us.
That's why we didn't run when the mage started burning paths through the second line.
Or when the ranger vanished and reappeared right behind Splitjaw.
Or when the Hero stepped into view—
And everything stopped.
You don't understand power until it doesn't need to announce itself. He didn't glow. He didn't smirk. He didn't carry arrogance like a flag. He just was.
And the system felt it. We all did.
[Combat Threat Level: Red – Warning: Entity Class Unknown]
[Morale Surge: Inverted – Sovereign Presence Stabilizing Thread]
The Sovereign stood between us and the Hero.
Not behind the front line. In front of it. Blade out. Shoulders even. No flair. Just her.
I couldn't hear her voice. I was too far. But I remember her turning slightly, just enough for us to see her face.
She wasn't smiling. She wasn't afraid. She was ready.
The last thing I saw before the fight began was the way the Hero tilted his blade—just slightly. That scared me more than anything else. He wasn't here to prove something. He was here to end it.
The Sovereign moved first. Not fast. Not slow. Like she knew time belonged to her until it didn't.
She cut once—clean, perfect, wide. Her blade carried heat but no light, like she was fighting with the idea of a fire instead of fire itself. The Hero parried. Barely moved his wrist. And the sound it made—it didn't ring. It folded. Like the world had blinked.
I couldn't follow most of it. I'm not ashamed of that. They weren't fighting like people. They were concepts wearing bodies. Ideologies colliding. We were just lucky enough to breathe the same air.
Every time her blade struck, the trench got warmer. Every time his sword moved, someone in the backline flinched. He didn't talk. Neither did she. It wasn't silence. It was language in a form I wasn't smart enough to read. But I understood what it meant. Don't interrupt. Don't interfere. Just witness.
At one point I think she hit him. Really hit him. He staggered. We all surged forward—some of us, anyway. Hope is stupid like that.
Then he looked at her. And moved. And that was the end of it.
She didn't fly backward. She didn't shatter. She just stopped standing. Like the flame had gone out from the inside. One second she was there. The next, the Sovereign of Ashring was a shape in the dirt, smoke curling off her shoulders, sword half-buried in the moss.
We didn't run. We didn't understand.
I heard Quicktongue say something. I saw Scribbles drop to his knees. Splitjaw didn't move. Not even to breathe.
I watched the Hero stare down at her for a long time. Then he turned away. And walked. No words. No signal. Just footsteps. Like the fire had never happened at all.
The system didn't speak. For the first time since I bonded to this trench, since I was told where to stand and what to carry, since she taught us how to mean something with nothing but kindling—It was silent. No morale pings. No formation updates. Just wind. And cold.
I sat down. Right there. In the mud. And waited for the world to decide what it wanted to be now.