The ridge cracked under Bruga's boots as he stepped forward, eyes locked on the valley below. Smoke curled in lazy columns. The shaman fires were dim. The drums had fallen. Confusion rippled across the horde like a disease with no cure.
But that was not enough.
Now they would make it bleed.
Bruga grunted and rolled his shoulders. Heat poured off him in waves. His armor steamed, streaked with dried blood and scorched handprints. He turned his head and spat onto the ground.
The Stormguard detachment behind him stood ready. Fifty men and women, iron-eyed and dust-covered. Five wolves, growling low. Two Qorjin-Ke scouts crouched with spears in hand, sniffing the wind.
Bruga didn't give a speech. He didn't believe in words before killing.
He raised his axe.
Then he ran.
The charge cracked the ridge. Stone split beneath his boots. The Stormguard followed, not in perfect formation but in brutal momentum. They descended like an avalanche wrapped in flesh and fury.
The horde never saw them coming.
The southern flank of the orc camp was built for holding prisoners, storing weapons, stacking corpses. It was not made to repel a warhammer.
The first orc to spot Bruga died before it could shout. The axe took half its torso in a single swing. Blood sprayed across the tents. A goblin turned to flee and was crushed beneath Bruga's second blow, spine snapping like dry reeds.
Then the Stormguard hit the line.
Screams rose.
The southern camp erupted into chaos. Goblins scrambled from tents, half-naked and shrieking. Orcs fumbled for weapons. Bruga didn't wait. He stormed through three more like they were brush, his axe catching in one ribcage. He didn't slow. He yanked it free with a wet crack, spraying red mist in all directions.
A warcaller blew a horn from the tower above. Bruga grabbed a broken spear, hurled it skyward, and nailed the goblin to the parapet. The horn gurgled and died.
Behind him, the Stormguard split into squads, driving into the makeshift defenses. Blade met bone. Arrows hissed through air. Wolves pounced and dragged goblins screaming into the dirt. Blood slicked the grass. Bodies fell in twitching piles.
Bruga moved like a living siege.
He burst through a tent, swung blind, and took off a head he hadn't seen. Fire bloomed from a corner. He grabbed a burning cask and hurled it into a rack of spears. It exploded. Metal and flame rained over screaming orcs.
A brute came at him, twice his size, covered in spiked armor, wielding a flail made of chained jaws. It roared and charged.
Bruga met it head-on.
The first blow knocked the air from his lungs. He didn't care.
The second shattered his pauldron.
Bruga grabbed the flail and pulled.
The orc stumbled forward.
Bruga slammed his head into the orc's face. Bone broke. The brute reeled. Bruga gripped its throat and lifted, roaring.
"Burn."
His fist erupted with fire.
The Coreburst Knuckle hit the orc's chest like a thunderclap. Fire exploded inward. The creature's ribs caved. Flesh ruptured. It flew backward ten feet and didn't rise again.
Behind him, the Stormguard pressed the advantage.
Kael's voice echoed from the northern slope.
"Drums are down!"
Wen Tu's mist curled from the east, bringing blindness and death in silence.
From the western ridge, Nyzekh's sabers glinted like falling stars.
But here, at the breach, there were no symbols. No chants. No whispers.
Only violence.
A goblin fire-handler lit a fuse near the supply crates. Bruga saw it and hurled his axe. It struck the goblin's head and pinned it to a crate. The fuse sputtered out against its twitching face.
He stormed forward, retrieved his axe, and split a second goblin in half as it tried to run.
The ground trembled.
Three orcs pushed forward with tower shields. Discipline. Formation. Training. Rare in a horde like this.
Bruga respected it.
Then he broke it.
He charged the shields and leapt. His boots struck the middle one, cracking its spine. He landed in their midst, swinging. One fell with a scream, leg severed. Another tried to raise its shield. Bruga headbutted him and chopped down. The last screamed something in a lost dialect.
Bruga caught its face and slammed it into the earth until it stopped.
"Not enough," he growled. "Bring me more."
They came.
Dozens.
He smiled.
The Stormguard formed around him, circling the breach. Firelight shimmered on soaked blades. Blood steamed from armor. Goblins tried to regroup. Orcs snarled and charged with flanged maces and rusted swords.
The clash came again.
One Stormguard was disemboweled. Another drove his spear into a goblin's mouth and kept going until the shaft snapped. Wolves tore at knees and throats. Qorjin-Ke scouts disappeared and reappeared behind orcs, driving blades into kidneys and vanishing again.
Bruga kept moving.
His body was battered. His blood flowed freely now, a line of red streaking from his side. But he didn't fall. Not here.
His resonance flared.
Earth and fire surged together. His strikes became heavier. Slower. Irresistible. A single backhand caught an orc's jaw and sent it flying into a rack of cages. Bones shattered. The cage collapsed.
He found another brute and grappled it, slammed it through a wooden support beam. Then he turned and drove his elbow into a goblin's skull, caving it inward.
Voices called out.
"Bruga!"
"Hold the line!"
"On me! Pull wide!"
But Bruga was already gone, past the barricade, axe whirling, a trail of corpses in his wake.
At the heart of the breach, the orcs hesitated.
They didn't run. Not yet.
But they flinched.
And in their flinch was the shape of defeat.
Above them, perched on a burning frame, a goblin scout cried out in terror.
"The ground bleeds!"
Bruga looked up, face soaked, grin savage.
"No. This is not the ground."
He raised his axe.
"This is me."
And then he charged again.