[Current Time: 23:58]

[Operation Commencement: 2 Minutes]

The approach to the eastern route was worse than the maps suggested.

Liam pressed himself against rock that was still warm from the day's volcanic heat, his fingers finding purchase in cracks that felt too narrow, too shallow. Above him, forty demons moved in near-perfect silence - it told just how seriously they were taking this.

One sound. One dislodged stone. One moment of carelessness.

And fifty paladins would turn this approach into a shooting gallery.

The Cognitor painted the route in his mind's eye, overlaying probability matrices and danger zones. The path was a narrow ledge that skirted the ravine's eastern edge—barely three feet wide in places, sometimes less. To their right, solid rock. To their left, a drop that ended in broken stones and old corpses.

[Environmental Analysis: Extreme Risk]

[Recommended Party Size: 0]

[Current Party Size: 41]

Even the System thought this was stupid.

Liam ignored it, focused on the next handhold, the next footfall. One step. Then another. The same way you survived anything impossible—by refusing to think about the impossible part and just focusing on the next breath, the next movement, the next second of not falling.

Behind him, Koth moved with surprising grace for something so massive.

The Commander had removed his heaviest armor, trading protection for silence. If they were discovered on this approach, armor wouldn't save them anyway.

Further back, Skel'var climbed with the desperate precision of someone who'd already made peace with falling. His soldiers followed, each one a ghost in the darkness.

[Current Time: 23:59]

One minute.

In sixty seconds, Varg would lead his demonstration force on their suicide run. The western approach—obvious, exposed, exactly what a desperate garrison would try if they'd finally snapped.

The paladins would hear them coming. Would see torches. Would respond with the efficient brutality of soldiers who'd done this dance a hundred times before.

And while they were focused on the noise, on the obvious threat...

Forty demons would climb into their camp from the one direction no sane commander would risk.

The ledge narrowed. Liam's foot slipped slightly—just an inch, but in darkness, on a three-foot-wide path above a killing drop, an inch was eternity.

He caught himself, breathed then continued.

His shoulder still ached where holy magic had burned him at Krazax. The wound had healed, but the memory remained - a reminder that blessed fire could kill him just as easily as any demon.

More easily, maybe. Because he wasn't protected by infernal biology or centuries of adaptation.

He was just a man who'd learned to fake it well enough that reality was starting to believe the lie.

[Current Time: 00:00]

Midnight.

From the western approach, the sound of war cries shattered the night. Varg's voice rose above the others—raw, challenging, inhuman.

The paladins' camp erupted into disciplined chaos. Horns blew. Orders shouted. The clang of blessed armor and weapons as soldiers who'd been resting or sleeping scrambled to defensive positions.

All facing west.

All focused on the obvious threat.

Liam reached the end of the ledge—a point where it met the ravine's rim, where fifty feet of careful climbing deposited them at the edge of the enemy camp.

He could see them now. Thirty paladins forming defensive lines at the western approach. Another ten moving to support positions. The rest...

The rest were in tents. In the supply area. In positions that assumed safety because this camp had never been successfully assaulted.

Until tonight.

Liam's hand found Igar's Shard's hilt. Behind him, forty demons had completed the impossible climb. Forty sets of eyes gleamed in the darkness, watching him, waiting for the signal.

From the western approach, the sounds of combat. Steel on steel. Blessed fire flaring. Varg's voice, still audible, still fighting, buying them seconds with his life.

Liam drew his blade. Black metal that drank moonlight. Along its edge, Hell's Flame began to whisper - different from the roaring conflagration he'd used against Aldric, but something quieter. Controlled. A promise rather than a threat.

He raised it high enough that every demon could see.

Then he pointed it at the camp below.

And said one word:

"Now."

---

The Shadow Claws moved first.

They'd been hidden among the assault force—five of them, veterans from Krazax who'd volunteered for this mission.

They dropped into the camp like falling shadows, their filed horns and blackened armor making them nearly invisible in the dark.

The first paladin died without seeing his killer. One moment standing guard at the supply tent, the next on the ground with his throat opened, his blessed sigil still glowing on his chest as if confused about why its bearer had stopped moving.

The second died reaching for his weapon. The third died trying to raise the alarm.

Silent, efficient and brutally surgical.

Then the rest of the demons poured over the ravine's edge like a flood.

The paladins at the western approach heard it—the sudden eruption of combat behind them. Heard screams that came from the wrong direction. Heard their commander shouting orders that made no sense because the enemy was supposed to be in front of them, not behind them.

One of the younger paladins turned to look, his blessed sword half-raised.

Liam killed him before he completed the motion.

Igar's Shard took him through the gap between breastplate and helm—a precise thrust that severed spine and ended resistance instantly. No drama or theatrics. Just the cold efficiency of a blade meeting flesh.

[Soul-Drinker Activated: +8 EP]

The trickle of life force was minimal. The paladin had been young, barely trained. But it was enough.

A taste of the violence to come.

Koth crashed into the camp like an avalanche. His reduced armor didn't make him less dangerous—it made him faster.

His blade—a massive demon-forged cleaver—caught a paladin's shield and simply broke it, the blessed steel shattering under the force of three centuries of refined violence.

The paladin behind the shield died messily.

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