Raven couldn't shake the feeling in his chest. Something was off.

The generals he had seen before were nowhere in sight, and the soldiers on the wall… they didn't look tense at all.

Their faces were calm, almost lazy, like they weren't afraid of the attack at all.

That alone made Raven's stomach twist.

"They look relaxed… why?" he muttered, his frown deepening.

But he didn't have time to think.

The battalion pushed forward again, shields up, boots pounding the frozen ground.

They closed the distance fast until only a hundred meters remained.

Then Raven saw it clearly.

The soldiers on the wall were moving the cannons, slowly, steadily, turning the heavy mouths of iron straight toward his men.

Not panicked, not rushed… just calm, practiced motions.

The bad feeling in Raven's chest hit him harder than any arrow.

He shook his head sharply, pushing the unease down. This wasn't the time to freeze.

"Heavy armors!" Raven shouted, voice loud enough to shake the air.

"This is the last hurdle! Raise your shields and defend!"

"Understood!!" the heavy-armored soldiers answered at once.

They moved fast, forming a thick wall of shields in front.

The sound of metal slamming together echoed like thunder. Archers crouched behind them.

Knights pressed close, swords and spears in hand, eyes fixed on the cannons above.

The whole formation tightened.

Raven took one more step forward, hand on his sword, eyes locked on the wall.

The cannons finished turning.

And the soldiers up there smiled.

Raven crouched lower, eyes fixed on the cannon mouths as they aimed down at him.

His chest felt tight, like something inside him was warning him louder and louder with every breath.

The bad feeling kept growing, crawling up his spine like cold fingers.

Behind him, Manoj finally spoke, his usual wide grin still stuck on his face even in a moment like this. "Why are you so tense?" he asked, almost laughing.

Raven turned his head slightly. His voice wasn't loud, just heavy. "I'm getting a bad feeling…"

His brows were pulled together, his jaw tight.

Years of fighting had sharpened his instincts more than any sword, and right now every instinct he had was yelling at him.

Something was wrong. Very wrong. But he couldn't name it.

Manoj noticed the worry on Raven's face and reached out, patting Raven's shoulder plate.

"Don't worry. After this round of cannon shots, we'll reach the wall."

He sounded sure, too sure.

"And when we do, these—" he began, but the words died in his throat.

His eyes weren't on Raven anymore. They were locked behind him, toward the wall.

Something had changed. Something big.

Manoj's grin vanished as his pupils shrank. His face turned pale in a blink.

Raven felt his heart jolt. He snapped his head around to follow Manoj's gaze.

What he saw made his stomach drop.

At least a hundred cannons, maybe more, were all firing at the same moment.

A wall of fire burst from the muzzles.

Then the sound hit.

BOOM!!

The explosion rolled across the field like thunder tearing the world apart.

Raven's breath caught in his throat.

"What… is this?" he whispered.

His voice shook without him meaning it to.

The sight in front of him didn't make sense.

Cannons firing together, that was fine, that was normal, that was expected in any siege.

But what they fired was not normal at all.

It wasn't iron. It wasn't stone. It wasn't anything a cannon was meant to shoot.

And that was what froze the words on his tongue.

Manoj swallowed hard beside him. His voice had lost all its joking tone.

Not even a hint of his usual grin remained. "Raven… do you know what those are…?"

Suspicion, fear, disbelief, he sounded like a man seeing something he wished he hadn't.

Raven shook his head slowly, eyes glued to the sky. "I don't know…"

His voice was small. Honest. Confused.

Because flying toward them were not cannonballs.

They were green orbs, each the size of a real cannon shot, glowing faintly like lanterns made of mist and poison.

They spun through the air in smooth arcs, leaving thin trails of green light behind them.

They didn't make the sound of metal cutting wind.

They hummed. A low, strange hum that made Raven's skin crawl.

Raven's eyes widened even more.

"What kind of cannon fires these…?" he muttered.

But the orbs were already falling toward the shield wall.

Fast.

Too fast.

And there were a hundred of them.

The green orbs came closer and closer, and Raven felt his heart sink.

His eyes narrowed, his breath tightened, and that terrible feeling in his chest grew so strong it almost hurt.

The first orb hit the ground.

BOOM!!

The blast wasn't huge, but it shook the front line hard.

Half of the heavy-armor soldiers staggered back, shields slipping for a moment. Dirt and frost shot upward.

Men grunted as the shockwave hit their legs.

But Raven's fear didn't fade. It got worse.

One of the heavy armor soldiers walked toward an orb that had landed without breaking.

It was glowing faintly, rolling slowly on the ground like a strange fruit.

"This all you've got?" the soldier sneered.

He lifted his foot to kick it away.

Raven's blood turned cold.

"NO!!!" he shouted.

But the soldier's boot had already touched it.

BOOM!!

The orb exploded right under his foot, and at the same moment—

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

All the green orbs scattered around them erupted one after another.

The explosions were strange. They didn't throw out metal or fire. They didn't tear men apart.

Instead, a thick green gas burst out, spreading fast, rolling across the front lines like fog pouring from a broken pot.

The first row of heavy-armored soldiers breathed it in before they even understood what was happening.

Cough—cough—cough.

They dropped their shields. They fell to their knees.

"W-what is this…?" one of them choked, blood spilling from his mouth.

Another clawed at his helmet as green veins bulged under his skin.

A third tried to stand, but his legs shook and he fell face-first into the dirt.

In just a few seconds, around a thousand heavy-armored soldiers, every man in the very front row, collapsed together.

Their eyes turned up, their faces shifting from red to a sick, dark green.

Then their bodies went still.

No breath. No sound. No movement.

A thousand men gone at the same moment.

Raven stared in horror, the gas still creeping forward, and his mind realized something far worse than a cannon blast.

This wasn't a weapon meant to stop them.

It was a weapon meant to erase them.

Manoj grabbed Raven's shoulders hard, shaking him like he was trying to pull him out of a nightmare.

His face was twisted with pure horror.

"Raven!!! Snap out of it!"

Raven blinked, but his eyes were still wide, still staring at the thousand dead men lying in front of them.

They had died before even understanding what touched them. No scream, no warning, no chance to run. It was too sudden… too cruel.

"Give a command, you idiot!!" Manoj shouted, his voice cracking with panic. "We can't just stand here!"

That snapped something inside Raven.

"Ah—" He sucked in a sharp breath, like his mind finally clicked back into place.

He nodded once, then raised his voice as loud as he could.

"RETREAT!!!"

There was no other choice. Whatever those green orbs were, they could wipe out the entire army if they stayed even one more minute.

He spun around, heart pounding as he scanned the field.

To his right, Vice General Vincen's battalion was in the same chaos, men coughing, falling, shouting.

Panic spread through their ranks like fire. Their formation was breaking apart.

To his left, Eliza's battalion, thankfully, was mostly untouched.

Because her troops had stayed a hundred meters behind, the green gas hadn't reached them.

They were already pulling back, their lines still unbroken.

Raven exhaled shakily and looked farther back.

His stomach twisted.

Even as they retreated, soldiers were dropping.

Every few seconds, someone would fall clutching their throat, coughing green foam.

They hit the ground and didn't get back up.

In a few breaths, ten percent of his entire battalion was gone.

Raven's chest ached. These weren't numbers.

These were men who trusted him. Men who followed him. Men who believed in him.

But all he could do now was save the ones still breathing.

They pushed back, step by step, until they put two hundred meters between themselves and the wall.

The air was a little clearer here, the gas wasn't chasing them anymore.

Raven started to shout—

BOOM!!

BOOM!!

BOOM!!

BOOM!!

BOOM!!

BOOM!!

Six deafening blasts hit the air at once.

The sound rolled over them like thunder ripping the ground apart.

Every head snapped toward the wall.

Raven's eyes widened.

Because the cannons were firing again.

And this time…

the green orbs were bigger.

The sky turned dark again.

Not from clouds.

Not from arrows.

From hundreds of green cannon shots flying straight toward them.

The glow lit the air in sick waves of green. The sound was like a hundred storms breaking at once, each orb screaming as it cut through the sky.

Every soldier stopped for a moment.

Even the ones running.

Even the ones crying.

They all looked up.

Their eyes showed the same thing, fear so deep it hollowed them out.

A heavy-armored soldier standing right beside Raven whispered, voice weak and shaking,

"How… are we… supposed to survive this…?"

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