“Sir!” came a sharp voice.

  A whip cracked through the air. A moment later, the blue leather slapped against the worm’s side.

  It almost did something, if a light flecking of frost really counted. In response to the attack, the worm’s head snapped toward his young squad mate, and Ana froze, its eyeless face locking onto her.

  He didn’t give it a chance.

  Wymon dived forward, blade slashing out twice—one crossing just behind its head, the second plunging for its face—but the worm simply swivelled, launching into the air and whipping out. He blocked with a cross. Sparks flew, and a clang resonated within his body. The damn weight of it forced him to take a step back.

  He must have gotten the toughest worm out of the lot of them, because just on the other side of the battlefield, a masked girl who gave him an odd sense of familiarity was moving through them with ease. Her longsword slashed, and the worm’s segmented body dropped. Then she’d claw apart any that came from her flanks; she’d even grab the things mid-lunge and use them like a hammer, sending chitin chunks skidding across cobblestone and splashing into puddles.

  It was a sight to behold, and at any other time, Wymon would have pulled out his flask and enjoyed the show. But right now, that was proving to be a little impossible, to say the least.

  The worm let out a sharp hiss before shooting toward him again.

  “Ana—you help the others and find Peter. I’ll keep this thing back—”

  The impact hit him mid-sentence.

  And the next thing he knew, his back slammed into the weapon stand with a crash that rattled through his spine, sending swords and spears scattering across the stone in a cascade of clanging steel. A pike clattered past his ear. A short sword spun away, its blade sinking into the mud. The rack itself splintered beneath him, wooden supports giving way as he collapsed into the wreckage, debris and wood chunks coating his hair.

  Around him, the sounds of battle roared. Swords screamed against carapace. Someone shouted orders—“hold the line, hold the damned line”—while fire burst in staccato flashes from a cultivator wasting a fair bit of fire talismans to his left, each gout illuminating the writhing mass of creatures flooding through the fortification courtyard. A mercenary went down screaming, his cries cutting off with wet finality. Boots slapped against mud and bounced off cobblestone as men and women rushed from the battlements.

  And through it all, the hissing. Everywhere, the hissing.

  His target, the large black worm, didn’t pause. It surged over the scattered weapons, segments bunching and releasing with terrible speed, its eyeless head fixed on him with singular purpose.

  Wonderful.

  He rolled, grabbed a fallen spear, and thrust it upward just as the creature struck. The point scraped along its carapace with a sound like nails on slate before skittering off uselessly.

  Right. Of course, that wouldn’t do anything.

  Admittedly, he’d been the only person to hurt this thing so far. The weaker ones were being handled by the less competent of the mercenary slum dwellers—men and women who’d never held a proper weapon before this trial realm began, now fighting for their lives with borrowed arms and borrowed courage. At any other time, this scene would have swelled his chest with pride. Slum dwellers were finally getting off their asses and doing something. Gaining cultivation and ascending.

  But at the rate this was going, it’d be a slaughter.

  He dived right. The worm crashed into the stone wall behind him, writhing around and letting out angry hisses that echoed off the walls. Dust rained from the overhang. Cracks spider-webbed from the impact point.

  And as he went to dive in, his gut sank as he caught some unusual movement from the corner of his eye.

  The dead worms—the ones the masked girl had cut down so efficiently—they weren’t staying dead. Their segmented corpses twitched. Writhed. Pieces that should have been cooling meat began moving, sliding across the blood-slicked mud and cobblestone of the courtyard toward each other with terrible purpose.

  Two bodies met. Merged. The segments fused with a wet squelch, carapace flowing together like water finding its level.

  Three more joined. Then four.

  The mass rose.

  Where there had been scattered corpses, now there was a larger worm as thick around as his torso and twice as long as the one hunting him. Its segments gleamed with fresh-formed chitin, darker and denser than its smaller kin. When it moved, it sloshed mud and dislodged stone.

  His eyes found his opponent again. The worm he’d been fighting. Gravity Forging-Five strength, he’d estimated. Though that was a little conservative. The way it was slapping him around, it wouldn’t have surprised him if someone told him it was late Gravity Forging-Six.

  And now he understood where that strength came from.

  It hadn’t grown. It had accumulated. Smaller worms were killed, then they merged and strengthened. An endless cycle of death feeding death.

  If he killed this one...

  Stolen novel; please report.

  It would just go on. Find a friend or two. Get even stronger. And then where would he be?

  Deep in its stomach, most likely. This thing was already pressing the upper limits of what he could handle. If it merged with something equal—if it hit anywhere late Gravity Forging—

  His eyes snapped to the girl with the mask, still dancing through the battlefield with her longsword singing. Still cutting down the smaller worms with efficient grace. Still feeding the cycle.

  She didn’t know. Couldn’t know. Every kill was making this worse.

  He opened his mouth to shout—

  The worm’s tail lashed in from the side.

  Pain sparked through his ribs as the impact lifted him off his feet. The world spun—sky, ground, wall, sky—and then stone met his back with enough force to crack something deep in his chest. He slid down the wall, gasping, vision swimming with black spots.

  A door creaked nearby. A head poked out—red robes, young enough to still be following after his mother, couldn’t be more than seventeen, face pale as curdled milk. He rarely questioned it, but why did the Phoenix company have to recruit so damn young? This kid might not even see his twentieth birthday—a life wasted.

  “Are you alright, Sir?” The kid’s voice cracked. “Are you—”

  “Battlements!” Wymon barked. The taste of iron coated his tongue. He couldn’t remember the initiate’s name; so many had died already, he wouldn’t be safe down here. “Get to the battlements now!“

  Thankfully, the worm ignored the boy and was already rushing toward Wymon. Its hisses had grown sharper—angrier—as if his continued survival was a personal insult. Its segments bunched and released in that horrible rhythm, eating the distance between them.

  He tightened his grip on Thirteenth Wick. If he was going to die here, he’d at least make sure this thing earned it.

  He spat the blood slicking his mouth onto the ground and tightened his grip on his mana armament. He then pulled on the mana within him, and it surged to life, his blade, Thirteenth Wick, igniting with a roar of fire.

  If he couldn’t kill this thing, then he’d have to find some way of disabling it.

  The beast launched at him, and he scythed to the right, timing it just as its underbelly was exposed. He plunged his sword up, breaking in—hoping he didn’t hit any vitals—and dragged the blade out with a sharp hiss as its underside split. Guts spilt onto the mud and stone with wet splotches, steaming where they met cold air. The whole thing slumped down and writhed in pain.

  Wymon pulled the blade free, eager to warn the girl to stop her pointless killing, when he caught sight of Ana.

  Her whips lashed in sharp arcs as she protected two injured mercenaries. Peter was nowhere to be seen—the big idiot shouldn’t have gotten himself killed, right? The girl’s weapon danced with several sharp cracks, each one sending smaller black worms retreating with sharp hisses, some of them even being split in half, ice dancing along the surface of their carapace.

  Ice that wouldn’t stop them from reforming.

  Each one she killed would only strengthen and form another annoying beast that he couldn’t kill—and if it somehow died, it would merge with the others. And that was without considering whether they could merge without being killed. By the great lake, he hoped that wasn’t the case.

  That notion alone sent a spark of fear through him.

  He had to stop them. They had to retreat.

  His legs carried him toward the masked girl before the thought fully formed, boots squelching through mud churned black with blood and ichor. She was several paces away. Her longsword sang through the air in a silver arc, and another worm dropped. A few more paces now.

  Then her cape snagged on something—a jutting piece of debris, a fallen weapon, he couldn’t tell—and the fabric yanked back from her head.

  Ginger hair spilt free, and Wymon’s feet stopped.

  The colour caught in the brief ray of sunlight peeking through the clouds like captured fire, copper and rust and autumn leaves all tied together in a ponytail that had come half-undone during the fighting. It whipped behind her as she pivoted, strands clinging to the sweat on her neck.

  That hair was familiar; but that alone meant nothing. Right?

  The way she moved, that dexterity, that seemingly unabashed arrogance in each of her swings, it couldn’t be her. Could it?

  Being a ginger woman within Middlec was hardly a rare thing. There were quite a few of them within the Flamelight family and even more in the Phoenix Company. But still. Coupled with that sense of familiarity and her fighting style...

  It couldn’t be the girl.

  Clang.

  Carapace met metal. Her blade raked through flesh with a sound like tearing an iron plate. A worm dropped at her feet, and she swivelled in the mud, catching his eye briefly.

  The white iridescence in her gaze held him.

  Not just looking—seeing. Through the mask’s eye-slits, those eyes burned with something that was not shackled by cultivation, could only be felt, not understood—something beyond logic. Battle intent. A power that was to be respected.

  In that moment, he became absolutely sure.

  A mask couldn’t hide the grace that battle intent provided. It couldn’t hide the power that thrummed through someone like a second heartbeat. It was her. She was here.

  And try though she might, her power was only making things worse.

  Wymon itched at his chest, eager to grip his flask and take the biggest gulps he’d taken in a while. How had he got this unlucky? With each kill, these worms would get stronger, and that meant that a future talent that the Phoenix Company needed would be wiped out within the trial realm.

  He had to save her.

  He had to—

  Movement. Corner of his eye. A black shape hurtled through the air with terrible speed.

  His mouth opened to shout a warning.

  Too slow.

  The form slammed into her side before she could turn. The impact sent her flying, crashing into the mud, hands scrambling, and then the worm was wrapping—segments coiling around her torso, her arms, her legs, black chitin flowing over her like a living shroud. In a heartbeat, she vanished beneath the writhing mass.

  The worm’s jaw gaped wide.

  Slammed down into its own body. Into where she was buried.

  Wymon’s stomach dropped through the mud beneath his feet.

  Dead.

  The word echoed through him, so hollow he could hardly believe it. A lie he refused to believe. He was expecting the sounds—the wet crunch of bone, the muffled cry cut short, the silence that followed when something that had been alive became meat. He braced for it.

  Instead—

  BOOM.

  The explosion rocked the air itself. A shockwave punched outward, throwing him back a step, and the worm simply came apart. Carapace shredded like wet paper. Chunks of chitin and gobbets of flesh sprayed in all directions—thwacking against the fortification walls, splattering into mud, clattering across stone in a rain of meaty debris.

  Something warm and wet struck his cheek. But he didn’t wipe it away, for he couldn’t move.

  Because where the worm had been—where there should have now been a corpse—she stood.

  The mask was gone. Her ginger hair streaming behind her, unbound now, whipping wildly in the wind. But that wasn’t what stole the breath from his lungs.

  Instead, it was what sat above her head, a burning halo.

  White energy, pure and blinding, spun in a slow circle like a crown made of captured sunlight. It cast no shadow. It ate them. The mud beneath her feet seemed brighter simply for being near her.

  And from her back—

  Wings. Or at least that was the most fitting comparison. No feathers, muscle, or bone. These were strands, thick ribbons of light that cascaded from her shoulder blades in impossible numbers. They moved like living things, like silk caught in water, undulating with a grace that hurt to follow. Some stretched toward the sky. Others curled protectively around her form. All of them pulsed with the same white radiance, bright enough to force him to squint.

  Silence washed over the battlefield.

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