Orin moved.

He was precise, devastating precision that turned the courtyard into an abattoir in seconds.

A demon thrust a spear at his chest. The greatsword batted it aside, didn't block, just removed it from consideration - and the return stroke opened the demon from shoulder to hip.

The body was still falling as Orin pivoted, blade taking another demon's legs out from under him, then reversing to punch through the skull before the screaming even started.

Seven seconds. Four bloody bodies.

"FOCUS FIRE!" Koth bellowed, and twenty demons responded with trained discipline, arrows and spears converging on the Grand Commander from multiple angles.

Orin's free hand moved.

Golden light erupted from his palm, raw divine energy—and the projectiles disintegrated mid-flight.

Ash and molten metal raining harmlessly around him as he continued walking forward.

A massive demon, easily twice Orin's size, charged with a war hammer that could crack fortress walls. The Grand Commander didn't even slow.

He stepped into the charge, blade rising, and the demon's momentum carried him straight onto the greatsword.

The massive body slid down the length of blessed steel, still trying to swing the hammer even as life left its eyes.

Orin kicked the corpse off his blade and kept moving.

"He's too strong," Varg snarled, circling with three other demons, trying to find an opening. "They sent their best..."

The Grand Commander's eyes locked on him.

Then Orin blurred.

Pure, impossible speed. One moment he was fifteen feet away. The next his blade was through Varg's chest, the demon's words dying in a wet gurgle.

The three circling demons tried to capitalize on the opening. Got within striking distance.

Orin's armored elbow took the first in the throat, crushing windpipe and vertebrae simultaneously.

His off-hand caught the second demon's sword-arm at the wrist, squeezed, and bones shattered like dry kindling.

The greatsword never stopped moving—withdrew from Varg's collapsing body, swept horizontal, and two more demons discovered their armor was decorative.

Eleven seconds total. Eight more dead.

"FALL BACK!" Zara's voice cut through the chaos, cold and analytical even now. "Ranged positions! Don't engage in melee!"

The garrison tried. They were Thrak's soldiers - disciplined, efficient, capable of tactical adjustment under pressure.

It didn't matter.

Orin reached the eastern rampart where a group of archers had taken position. The stairs should have slowed him. Should have created a chokepoint.

He went through the wall instead.

Stone and mortar exploded inward as the Grand Commander's shoulder-charge opened a new entrance. Archers scattered. Some tried to draw blades. Others tried to run.

Running was smarter.

The ones who fought died in seconds—precise, economical strikes that wasted no movement. The ones who ran lasted slightly longer, making it almost to the far side of the rampart before the greatsword caught them.

Liam watched from across the courtyard, mind racing. Calculating. Trying to find the pattern, the weakness, the variable that could be changed.

There wasn't one.

Orin wasn't like Aldric Thorne. The paladin commander at Krazax had been skilled, experienced, dangerous. But still human. Still limited by reaction time and physical constraints.

This was different.

This had no visible weakness.

"Lord Azra!" Koth appeared at his side, bleeding from a dozen cuts, his armor scored and dented. "We need to evacuate. Now. This isn't a fight we can—"

"Everyone dies if we run," Liam interrupted. His grey eyes tracked Orin's movement through the fortress. "He's too fast. We'd be cut down before we reached the gates."

"Then what—"

"Then we buy time." Liam drew Igar's Shard.

The black blade felt inadequate suddenly. A child's weapon against something that killed like breathing.

"Get Zara. Get anyone still mobile. We hold him here while the wounded escape through the western passage."

"That's suicide."

"That's our only option." Liam's voice was flat. Empty. "Forty soldiers can't stop him. But three might slow him down."

Koth stared at him. Then, slowly, nodded.

"I'll get Zara."

He moved off, and Liam was alone in the center of the courtyard. Around him, Thrak's perfect fortress was coming apart. Bodies everywhere. Blood turning the dirt to mud.

The mechanical precision of three centuries destroyed in minutes.

And through it all, Orin continued killing.

A group of demons tried Zara's suggestion—stayed at range, used coordinated fire.

The Grand Commander's response was perfect.

He identified the heaviest concentration of ranged attackers, closed the distance in seconds that should have been impossible, and dismantled them swiftly.

Thrak himself appeared on the southern rampart, his ancient face showing no emotion as he watched his garrison die.

He raised a hand, and what looked like concentrated shadow erupted from his palm - some forgotten spell from centuries of warfare.

Orin walked through it.

The shadow-magic splashed against his golden armor and evaporated. Just ceased to exist, like darkness confronting daylight.

Thrak's pale eyes widened fractionally - the most emotion Liam had ever seen from him.

Then the Grand Commander was there, greatsword rising.

"NO!" The word tore from Liam's throat before he could stop it.

Thrak turned his head. Looked at Liam across the courtyard. And for just a moment, something flickered in his dead eyes.

Acknowledgment.

'I miscalculated,' that look said. 'The data was insufficient.'

The greatsword fell.

Thrak's body tumbled from the rampart, landing in the courtyard with a wet sound that was lost in the general chaos.

Three hundred years of tactical precision and mechanical survival ended in one perfect strike.

Something cold and terrible settled in Liam's chest.

[Commander Thrak - Deceased]

[Loyalty: 73%]

Even in death, calculating.

Even at the end, optimizing.

Liam's grey eyes locked on Orin as the Grand Commander descended from the rampart. Around them, the few remaining demons were breaking - not from cowardice, instead the simple recognition that continuing to fight was tactically unsound.

The mechanical discipline Thrak had instilled wasn't enough.

Nothing was enough.

"Lord Azra." Zara appeared beside him, her left arm hanging useless, blood streaming from a cut across her forehead.

"Koth is organizing a fighting retreat through the western passage. Seventeen survivors. Maybe twenty."

"Out of eighty-one."

"Yes." No emotion in her voice. Just data. "We need to leave. Now."

"You need to leave. I need to—"

"Die pointlessly?" Zara's good hand grabbed his arm. "That man is a Grand Commander. He's killed High Overseers. Great beasts. Entities that make us look like worms."

"I know."

"Then why are you still standing here?"

Because Thrak had died calculating how to save seventeen demons. Because Varg had died trying to find an opening that didn't exist.

Because this fortress that had survived three centuries of warfare was being torn apart in minutes, and someone needed to make it mean something.

"Because," Liam said quietly, "if I run, he chases. And seventeen becomes zero."

He could feel it in the way Orin moved. The Grand Commander wasn't here for the fortress. Wasn't here for the garrison.

He was here for Lord Azra.

Everything else was just... in the way.

Zara's analytical eyes held his for a long moment. Then she nodded once, released his arm, and ran toward the western passage without another word.

Smart.

Koth appeared from the smoke and chaos, his massive frame battered but unbowed.

"The survivors are moving. Zara's leading them." He planted himself beside Liam, weapon ready. "So. We doing this?"

"You should go with them."

"Tried that speech already. Didn't work." Koth's molten eyes tracked Orin's position. "Besides, I also want to do something heroic."

"This isn't heroic. It's just the best option."

"Same difference."

Across the courtyard, Orin finished killing the last cluster of defenders—three demons who'd tried to mount a coordinated assault.

They died like all the others. Clean and quick.

Then the Grand Commander turned.

Looked directly at Liam.

And smiled that terrible smile.

"Lord Azra." His voice was surprisingly calm. Almost pleasant. "The Demon god. The Queen's Weapon. The one who's been disrupting our tactical projections for two weeks."

He started walking forward. Just... approaching.

Like gravity. Like inevitability.

"You're smaller than I expected," Orin continued. "And weaker. I can see it in the way you hold that sword. In the way your essence flickers."

He gestured to the carnage around them.

"This is what real power looks like. Not tricks. Not tactical cleverness. Just absolute, overwhelming strength."

Twenty feet.

Liam's mind was racing, running through every skill, every advantage, every variable that could be changed.

[Essence: 2,847

Numbers that felt meaningless against what was walking toward him.

Fifteen feet.

"The Radiant Empire's leadership debated sending me," Orin said. "They thought you might be a trap. That Azrakul himself might be wearing a human mask, waiting to slaughter our forces."

He laughed—a sound like grinding stone.

"But I volunteered. Because I've killed seventeen High Overseers. And I wanted to see if you were number eighteen."

Ten feet.

Koth shifted beside Liam, muscles coiling. Ready.

"You're not," Orin finished. His scarred face held nothing except cold certainty. "You're just a man pretending to be a god. And now you're going to die like one."

Five feet.

The greatsword rose.

And Liam moved.

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