The world behind Grim Hollow was breaking.

The earth shook in long, rolling pulses—like something enormous had woken beneath the soil—and the wind carried the scraped-bone hiss of a swarm running out of targets. The northern horizon was a blur of dust, broken trees, and skittering shadows.

But the workers didn't see any of that at first.

They saw only the torches—hundreds of them—moving in a frantic line away from Grim Hollow, carried by men and women whose faces were carved by exhaustion and panic. The north road was a river of fleeing bodies, a flood of terrified breath and shouts.

And in the middle of that panicked retreat—

Sergeant Tyven bellowed.

His lungs were fire. His legs threatened to give. But he kept driving the crowd forward, forcing them toward whatever safety they could still reach.

He was an Initiate, yes, but hardly some cream-of-the-crop prodigy—just another regular soldier in the Republic's army.

He was a normal man.

A normal man surrounded by people who were about to die.

"KEEP MOVING!" Tyven bellowed, grabbing a stumbling worker and dragging him upright. "DON'T TURN BACK! DON'T YOU FUCKING LOOK BACK!"

But some did.

And when they turned—

They screamed.

Because the forest behind them wasn't a forest anymore.

It moved.

Hundreds of bone shapes poured through the trees like a living thunderstorm. Bone Crawlers, their ribs clacking like chattering teeth, folded their wings and sprinted on all fours with unnatural speed. Burrowers tore through the ground and erupted beneath fleeing workers like living landmines.

Tyven didn't look back again.

He couldn't afford to.

He grabbed two younger workers and shoved them forward.

"RUN! RUN AND DON'T STOP!"

He didn't know where they were running to anymore.

Only where they were running from.

But while the workers fled blindly through the night—

—not everyone was running.

The fledglings—many untested, nerves still too new to the rhythm of battle—remained where they were, forming a thin, jittering line behind the barricades. Their knuckles whitened on weapon grips, breaths caught between fear and a desperate readiness for whatever might come thundering out of the Shroud's haze.

Most of them were republicans, and republicans prided themselves on thinking two steps ahead. They weren't staying back out of charity or some noble instinct to protect the workers. No—if anything, half of them had already calculated survival odds twice over. But fleeing with the workers would've been the true idiocy; a scattered retreat only invited the crawlers to peel them apart, one trembling straggler at a time.

Here, at least, they stayed together. Here, they could brace for the rumble instead of being hunted in silence.

Three hundred meters back, tucked into the shattered lip of a ravine, Bessia crouched low—bow drawn, breath steady, eyes narrowed on the congregation of monsters gathering beyond the churned earth. Her fingers trembled not from fear but anticipation, the kind that sharpened rather than dulled. She'd witnessed enough bloodshed in the past hours that whatever horror waited ahead barely stirred her anymore. She emptied her thoughts, steadying her mind for what she would unleash.

Duncan stood closer to the front, among the first to take position beside Sergeant Tyven. His armor clung to him in practiced layers, every strap and plate sitting just right, as if the battlefield itself had dressed him for the part. A spear rested firm in his right hand, its point angled forward, his stance thrumming with a restless energy. He wasn't just ready—he was hungry for the coming clash.

But while the sight of Duncan and the others readying for battle steadied the nerves of most, Adam chose a different path entirely. He volunteered—almost too quickly—to guide the workers toward Outpost Vester. With a brief, formal request to Sergeant Tyven and a nod of approval, Adam broke off from the group and sprinted away from the rising danger.

For all his faults, Adam possessed a cold, incisive logic that had saved them more than once. He understood the lay of the land better than most—knowledge gathered not from maps or patrols, but from the effortless conversations he struck with strangers. There was a strange charisma to him, a way he presented himself that made people talk, made them trust him, made them eager to share their little fragments of the world. And now, those fragments formed a path of escape he was confident he could carve open for the fleeing workers.

In the open space.

Atheon knelt among the shadows of the ravine's shattered stones, one hand resting on the ground, the other gripping the dislodged bone in his shoulder . Beside him crouched his handpicked elite—men and women who could move faster, strike harder, and react quicker than the average soldier. All Initiates. Some at the mid-tier.

All tense and waiting.

"Report," Atheon murmured.

The scout—Lieutenant Cress—lowered her spyglass, her face pale.

"It's confirmed, sir," she whispered. "A section of the swarm broke from the main cluster. They heading straight for the evacuation route."

Atheon's jaw tightened.

"Numbers?"

"Hundreds… maybe more."

She swallowed. "And something else. A big one was spotted far back."

Atheon didn't react outwardly, but his heartbeat ticked once—just once—faster.

Possibly an Adept-tier crawler.

The monarch of the swarm.

A creature, for all intents and purposes, that could think.

A being that strategized.

"Is it making any moves?" Atheon asked quietly.

"No sir … it's just hanging back," Cress answered. "Waiting."

Of course it was.

Adept-tier monsters were rarely the first to attack.

They let the wave soften prey, exhaust defenders, and create chaos.

Then they arrived.

And then they conquered.

Atheon stood slowly, brushing dust from his uniform. His silver cloak—the mark of a captain—hung heavily on his shoulders.

"Positions," he ordered.

The elite squad moved with silent precision.

Every soldier pulled free their weapons again—crude bone tools torn from the corpses of crawlers, hammers lacquered in drying blood, and swords so cracked they looked ready to snap under a hard breath.

Atheon waited for them to finish before speaking again.

"Our goal is not victory," he said.

The team stiffened.

"Our goal is survival," Atheon continued. "Survival of the workers. Survival of the Republic's northern force. And survival of our lives if possible."

He looked every soldier in the eye.

"Remember: we are not killing an Adept-tier crawler. We are stalling it. Redirecting it. Buying time."

A pause.

"Do not go hero on me. If you see death, you dodge it. If you see a chance to live, you take it. Orders?"

Their reply came as one.

"Buy time sir."

Atheon nodded.

"Let's begin."

On the north road

Bessia loosed her arrows in rough, unpolished bursts—no real training to lean on, just instinct and the fear sharpening it. But even raw instinct grew teeth. No one stayed the same when every enemy you faced promised a clean hundred percent chance of taking a limb.

The shots that landed—powered by her near-Initiate strength—punched through walkers, dropping some outright and crippling others enough for her squadmates to finish the job.

Duncan hardened his body with Boneguard and hurled himself into the enemy's line, spear gripped tight. His timing was flawless—every thrust found a throat, an eye, a weak seam—dropping crawlers to the left, right, and center.

Blows that would have shattered his peers slammed into him, but the Boneguard held, and he pushed on without hesitation.

Even as death stalked them with each passing second, the fledglings—Bright's squad included—couldn't look away.

Two fighters of their own rank tore through the enemy as if the crawlers were nothing but brittle twigs. The sight left them breathless, shaken, and painfully aware of the gulf in skill.

Still exhaustion was a constant reminder of the path they were headed, the steep they were forced to climb, for it did not matter to the crawlers how brave you were, how skilled your actions were, or how desperate your motives were, maybe some crawlers did care but the ones they faced at the moment left their emotional intelligence at home, but brought an endless hunger with them for the flesh bags they faced and planned to consume.

Sergeant Tyven on the other hand donned a comforting façade while at the head of the charge, at least to the fledglings watching him. They mistook steadiness for certainty.

He planted his feet, raised the spear, and braced himself for death as he felt the energy waves of the crawler,the equivalent of a high initiate brushing against his.

The crawler lunged.

Tyven thrust.

The spear barely slowed it.

The crawler slammed into him, sending him rolling across the dirt. His vision blurred. His back screamed. He sucked in a breath, forced himself up—

The crawler charged again.

Tyven lifted the spear in trembling hands—

A black knife flashed.

The crawler's skull split open.

Tyven blinked.

Standing where the crawler had been was—

"Verrick?!" Tyven gasped.

But no—this man was bigger. Older. Broader. A captain? No—his armor carried the markings of the Cavendish high command.

The warrior crushed another crawler with a one-handed axe swing.

"MOVE, SERGEANT!" the man barked.

Tyven did.

Behind them, the bone tide surged again.

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