(Pov King Strider a month later)

  “We have lost another one,” Viper said.

  The words settled into the council chamber like embers from a burning fire.

  I did not respond immediately. My gaze remained fixed on the stone map carved into the table before me. Cities marked in brass and steel. Trade routes etched deep by centuries of use and war alike.

  Too many markers had been removed.

  “Which city?” I asked.

  “Eldryn,” Viper replied. “The western quarter fell first. Evacuation passageways collapsed shortly after. The Asharkith breach followed within the hour.”

  A murmur rippled through the chamber.

  “That city was well fortified,” Alric said, commander of the martial branch. He leaned forward, fingers digging into the stone edge of the table. “It was meant to hold for at least another week.”

  “It should have,” Wraith the second member of the Hand said from where he stood against the wall. “But it did not.”

  I closed my eyes for a brief moment.

  Eldryn had not been weak. Veteran legions had manned its walls. Battlemages sworn directly to the Crown had fortified them. If Eldryn had fallen, then Aurelith truly was the last hope of Velmine.

  Hunter, the third member of the Hand, stepped forward and placed a stack of reports onto the table. “That confirms it. The Velmine Empire has fallen in every direction except the northwest.”

  That pulled my attention from the map.

  Around the table sat what remained of the Empire’s spine. Two of my sons, Falcor and Haldar. Commanders from the martial, magic, and engineering branches who had not slept properly in weeks. And three of the five members of the Hand.

  Viper stood calm as ever. Wraith watched from the shadows, arms crossed, unreadable. Hunter rested his fingers on the reports as if anchoring himself to something solid.

  “The northwest holds,” Hunter continued. “Barely.”

  “Because of Asher,” I said.

  “And those with him,” Viper added. “The Wild Wardens primarily. But my informants tell me that Sirius, Milo, Bryn, Malorn, and their bonded companions are proving to be quite the team, though.”

  Hearing my son’s name spoken so plainly tightened something in my chest. I knew he had surrounded himself with a good team and it seemed to be exactly what I hope based on Viper’s report.

  I kept my expression still.

  “They are still engaging Asharkith dungeons directly?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Viper said. “Asher’s oreowls are largely responsible for their success. Once we identified the structural flaw, with cores forming close to the entrance rather than deep within, what would normally be a suicidal gambit became a viable option. Destroying those cores causes a full collapse and kills nearby nidus whose cores are linked to the hive.”

  Several of the nobles shifted uneasily at that.

  “They are not reclaiming territory,” Wraith said. “But they are buying time.”

  “Time is invaluable to us at the moment,” I replied.

  Wraith inclined his head.

  Hunter gestured toward the map. “Their retreat has been methodical. They carved a strip through the northwest. The Wild Wardens are escorting refugees behind them. Entire towns are moving toward Aurelith under their protection.”

  “We cannot house them all,” the engineering marshal said quietly.

  “We will,” I said without hesitation.

  A noble lord shifted in his seat. “Your Majesty, the capital is already strained.”

  I met his gaze.

  “There is no Velmine without its people,” I said. “If Aurelith stands while the rest of the Empire burns, then we open the gates.”

  No one argued.

  It was then when gazing at the noble’s section that the Arroganes seat was empty. That would need to be addressed at another time.

  The martial commander cleared his throat. “If the Empire has fallen everywhere else, then the capital becomes the final line. We must finish preparations for siege conditions. Full mobilization. Curfews. Layered defenses.”

  “Do whatever is necessary,” I said. “Coordinate with the Hand and every branch so we can be as efficient and effective as possible.”

  Silence followed.

  “There is more,” Viper said.

  I looked to him. “Speak.”

  “The Asharkith are adapting,” he said. “Dungeon formations are shifting faster. Patrol patterns are changing. Whatever intelligence binds them is learning. Scouts have also reported new entities. Behemoths, aerial creatures and land monster variants not seen on the front lines.”

  My hands tightened against the edge of the table.

  “I believe they will identify the core weakness if they have not already,” Alric said. “Once that happens, destroying dungeons will become far more costly.”

  I leaned back slowly, the weight of the crown pressing heavier than ever before.

  “We cannot stop that now,” I said. “Viper, learn everything you can about these new creatures. Send whoever you need. Even if it must be you and Wraith.”

  Wraith’s mouth curved slightly.

  “We only get one chance,” I continued. “This is where we make our stand. Together, we rise or we fall. For Velmine.”

  I finished with a salute.

  One by one, they returned it before turning to their duties. Orders were already being issued. Messengers rushed from the chamber. The machinery of a final defense began to turn.

  When the room emptied, I remained.

  I looked at my sons, committing their faces to memory. Then my thoughts drifted to Sirius, fighting far from these walls.

  I prayed we would all survive what was coming.

  I feared we would not.

  —

  The road was already choked with people when the first scream cut through the dusk.

  It came from the front of the line. The shrieks of the dying. Then another from farther back. Panic rippled through the refugees like a living thing, carts grinding to a halt as people stumbled into one another.

  I felt it before the noise reached me.

  The world whispered their movement. Too many points, too fast, and not deep enough to be another behemoth. Not scattered enough to be just maggots.

  “Incoming,” I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. “Multiple directions. Air and ground.”

  Sirius was already turning, twin spears glowing faintly as vines crept up their shafts and wrapped around his forearms. “I see them.”

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  Malorn had climbed onto the remains of a fallen wagon for height. His bow came up smoothly, eyes tracking the tree line. “Dire wolf variant,” he said. “At least six. More behind them.”

  The forest on both sides of the road exploded into motion.

  They burst from the undergrowth low and fast, bodies stretched lean and predatory. The dire wolf forms were larger than the ones we had faced days earlier. Their frames were longer, reinforced with layered fungal plates that shifted as they ran. Their jaws split too wide, inner mandibles clicking wetly as they closed the distance.

  Above them, the air hummed.

  Something peeled free from the darkening clouds and dove.

  “Down,” Malorn shouted.

  This time the civilians reacted instantly.

  They dropped. Parents dragged children beneath wagons. Traders tipped carts on their sides and crawled behind the wheels. The road became a tangle of bodies pressed low to the dirt.

  Fern flashed into visibility overhead, tails spreading wide. Light bent around him, forming a shimmering veil that dulled the silhouettes of those beneath it.

  The first aerial nidus hit the road hard enough to crater the packed earth.

  It had wings, but they were malformed. Too many joints. Membranes stretched thin and veined with glowing fungal rot. It screamed as it landed, talons carving trenches as it twisted and lunged.

  I moved before it could rise.

  My tremor sense flared fully, the world snapping into sharp focus. Every footstep became a line of intent. Every shift of weight a warning.

  I slipped past its initial strike, ducked beneath a wing that scraped sparks from the road, and drove a blade up under its jaw. I felt resistance, then the soft pulse of the core.

  It detonated in my hand.

  The body collapsed inward, dissolving into wet ash that splattered my boots.

  “Left side is breaking,” Sirius called.

  Roots erupted from the ground as he slammed one of his spears down, thickening and twisting into living barriers that snared the first wave of dire wolfs. Two of them tore free, ripping vines apart with brute force.

  Malorn’s bow thrummed.

  An arrow punched clean through a dire wolf’s skull. Another followed half a heartbeat later, burying itself in a second creature’s chest and bursting its core in a spray of green-black ichor.

  More shapes dropped from above.

  I counted at least four aerial forms circling now, their cries echoing too loudly for their size.

  “Catch this,” Milo muttered beside me.

  He was pale, still recovering from a recent wound received while trying to set a trap.

  He flicked a vial across the road. It shattered on impact, spreading a viscous line that ignited a second later. Alchemical flame crawled outward, clinging to anything it touched.

  Two dire wolfs veered away, shrieking as the fire ate into their plates.

  “Try not to step in that,” Milo added. “It sticks.”

  Maggots poured from the underbrush next.

  Dozens of them. Pale, swollen things that burst if struck too hard, spraying spores and rot. They wriggled toward the refugees like a living tide.

  I flicked throwing blades into my hand.

  Each toss was precise with just enough force to pierce and rupture their small cores without triggering explosions. There had been a lot of practice these last six weeks. Their bodies fell apart mid-crawl, spreading more fungal growth across the ground.

  Dusk erupted from the ground near the wagons, her massive form rising like a wave of hope.

  A dire wolf slammed into her side and as they rolled it vanished beneath flashes of magma and stone. Another leapt, jaws wide, and caught an illusory Fern in midair. Giving the real fox the time to dive at its side, tails propelling the creature down as he tore its core free with series of slashes and bites.

  The ground shook again.

  This time tremors rolled across the field of battle. Each step sent a pressure wave through the earth that rattled my teeth.

  A behemoth.

  I did not need to look to know where it was.

  Behind us, far off the road, Asher was holding the line.

  Hundreds of sharp impacts flickered at the edge of my awareness as oreowls struck and peeled away in coordinated bursts. Arrow impacts followed, continually with perfect precision. The behemoth roared, the sound carrying even through the chaos here.

  We did not turn back.

  We could not.

  “Advance!” Malorn shouted. “Keep them moving.”

  We fell back in controlled bursts.

  Sirius anchored the center, nature magic flaring brighter as he overextended again and again. Roots, thorns, bursts of green light that slowed and entangled anything that pushed too close.

  Milo covered the rear, every step leaving behind traps, fire, or something worse that he could set off with his wrist board after had had passed.

  I stayed mobile, filling gaps, intercepting anything that slipped through.

  An aerial nidus screamed and folded its wings, slamming down ahead of us.

  Malorn met it head-on.

  He slid beneath its first strike, rolled, and came up inside its guard. He drove an arrow straight into its chest at point-blank range.

  The creature disintegrated mid-scream.

  “Move,” he said to trembling civilians, already turning.

  Another shockwave rolled through the ground.

  Asher’s fight was still raging.

  I spared a single glance back.

  In the distance, the behemoth reared. A towering mass of chitin and rot, fungal limbs like siege engines. Oreowls swarmed it in a glittering storm. Asher stood at its feet, bow drawn, utterly still amid the chaos.

  Then the road dipped, and the view vanished.

  “Next ridge,” I said. “Almost there.”

  The civilians ran when they could. Walked when they had to. We bled ground slowly, step by step, blood mixing with the creeping parasitic growth into the dirt beneath our feet.

  The capital was still days away.

  But we were still standing.

  —

  The walls of Aurelith finally came into view through the smoke.

  Grey stone rose above the treeline, scarred and blackened in places where siege impacts had already landed. Aether flared along the battlements as defensive wards cycled and failed, then reignited. Even from here I could hear it. The distant thunder of magic, the crack of artillery, the scream of something too large to belong to this world.

  The capital was already under siege.

  My legs felt like stone as I kept moving, each step driven more by momentum than strength. The interface bars in the corner of my vision told the story clearly enough. Red dipped low and climbed back up from regeneration. Green stayed stubbornly near empty. Blue was being rationed by instinct rather than planning.

  Over six weeks.

  Six weeks of near constant fighting, retreating mile by mile, never stopping long enough to rest properly. Eating when we could. Sleeping in fragments when exhaustion finally forced it.

  Ahead of us, civilians stumbled through the mud and broken undergrowth, driven forward by fear and the promise of the walls. Sirius and I held the rear while Malorn ranged wide, Fern flickering in and out of sight as he harried anything that tried to flank.

  Milo stayed near the center now, fully healed but running on fumes like the rest of us. His traps had become smaller, quicker, meant to delay rather than destroy. He was having to create stuff from the scraps he found along the way.

  The Asharkith, as Asher called them, did not give us space.

  Dire wolf-forms burst from the treeline in packs, bodies twisted into something between beast and fungal monstrosity. Hardened plates jutted from their shoulders and skulls. Their mouths splitting too wide as they charged.

  “Left,” I called out.

  Malorn’s bow sang. Three arrows split into shimmering constructs mid-flight, each one punching through a charging dire wolf with surgical precision. Fern appeared above another, jaws closing on its neck and twisting before vanishing again.

  The Wild Wardens had provided him a soul bound quiver that regenerated arrows with aether. Fern had gathers valuable shards for him to continue making his powerful arrows when time allowed.

  From above, the air screamed.

  Aerial nidus dropped out of the smoke, wings buzzing with a sound that crawled along my spine. Milo fired upward, glass vials bursting into clouds of corrosive mist that ate through membranes and sent bodies tumbling.

  Dusk erupted from the ground beneath one of the dire wolfs, tearing upward and pulling it into the earth with her before reemerging as another one clawed at her flank and immediately paid for it, molten blood spilling across the forest floor as she twisted and tore it apart.

  We kept moving.

  Always forward.

  Then the ground shook from somewhere along the walls around a corner I couldn’t see.

  A massive displacement rolling through the stone beneath the city. Whatever was battering the capital was enormous. A behemoth branch for sure, if Asher’s earlier messages were anything to go by.

  A shadow crossed the smoke-filled sky.

  oreowls. So many had died, yet they seemed endless. I now knew why everyone feared the Razorwing.

  Dozens of them flew around the battlements.

  Asher’s murder swept overhead in gleaming arcs of metal and feather, their forms reflecting firelight and aether as they dove toward something massive beyond the walls. I caught a glimpse of Asher himself standing atop a broken tower section, bow drawn, his presence a rallying the troops.

  The Asharkith noticed too.

  They surged toward him.

  Everything came at once.

  Dire wolfs hit the flanks. Maggots poured from ruptured ground, their presence leeching life with every inch they crawled. Aerial forms screamed down toward the refugees.

  And then the Hand arrived.

  Viper struck first.

  His whips cracked through the air, spike-tipped ends embedding into Asharkith flesh before snapping back. Where they cut, poison spread instantly. Dire wolfs convulsed and collapsed mid-charge, their momentum carrying lifeless bodies into the dirt.

  Hunter followed, wolves flowing around him like living shadows. They slammed into the enemy line, dragging creatures down and tearing gaps open. Hunter’s axes rose and fell in brutal arcs, each strike ending something cleanly.

  Wraith appeared among the maggots.

  One moment they swarmed. The next, shadows tore through them as his scythe reaped in wide, silent sweeps. He vanished and reappeared again and again, thinning the infestation faster than my map could update.

  Solar advanced straight toward the heaviest pressure point, shield raised, sword blazing. Sunlight burned through Asharkith ranks, searing corruption into ash. Refugees clustered instinctively behind him, the air around him feeling cleaner, safer.

  Above us, Wing claimed the sky.

  He cut through aerial nidus with dancer’s precision, blades flashing as he spun and redirected midair. Bodies fell in pieces long before they reached the ground.

  The path opened.

  “Move!” Sirius shouted.

  We pushed with the last of our strength.

  The Hand held the line as we surged forward, civilians pouring between Solar and Hunter, wolves snapping and driving anything that got too close back into Wraith’s shadows.

  The gates loomed ahead.

  Engineering teams were already working them open under fire, guild mages reinforcing the approach with flickering wards. As we crossed the final stretch, something massive screamed causing the walls and ground to shake again.

  We crossed the threshold as the gates slammed shut behind us, sunlight flaring as Solar turned and planted his shield. The impact rattled the stone beneath my feet.

  Inside the walls, soldiers swarmed forward to take over, hauling civilians deeper into the city. I finally slowed, lungs burning, vision swimming.

  I leaned against the stone and slid down until I was sitting.

  For the first time in weeks, the map ahead of me was empty of red.

  Aurelith still stood.

  And as the roar of battle continued beyond the walls, I couldn’t help but wonder how long we could hold them.