The goblin waves had broken like filth against stone. First, then second. Shattered by Stormguard discipline and the disciples' fury. The field was slick with green ichor, the air heavy with the stench of blood and smoke.
Then the orc warlord roared.
Steel rang. The earth trembled.
The orcs charged.
A tide of muscle and fang, they came in waves. Shoulders colliding, axes raised, tusked mouths open in roars of hate. Blood sprayed from their own front ranks as they trampled fallen goblins, using corpses as stepping stones toward the Stormguard line.
The first orc rush met a storm of arrows. Squires loosing shafts from the hill. Fire danced from war mages, lancing into the horde. Still they came.
The clash.
Steel met shields.
"Hold the line!" Bruga's voice thundered.
He was the anchor, planted like a mountain beneath a tide. Orcs crashed against his shield like surf against rock. Bruga did not give ground. Beside him, Kael, Ryoku, and Nyzekh fought as extensions of the wall, each an edge of death.
Kael's sword flashed, parrying, cleaving. Ryoku danced between blades, his Echo Step a blur that turned strikes to dust. His shimmer trails left mirrored shadows where he had stood a breath ago, splitting perception with every feint. Nyzekh vanished and reappeared, sabers claiming necks and eyes in silence.
The orcs regrouped. Not broken, not scattered, but shaped into a single brutal purpose.
A wedge charged.
Tight. Disciplined. Built to punch through lines and spill blood. Shields overlapped. Axes and spears jutted from the sides. At the point, a chieftain in blackened iron led the thrust like a battering ram.
The tip of the wedge slammed into Bruga's center.
The crash was thunder. Wood cracked, steel rang, and men groaned under the sudden shock. Bruga locked his shield, knees bent, leather boots sliding an inch before biting into the churned mud. His greaves shivered with the weight of impact, but he did not yield.
Wen Tu moved. Fingers twisted through a mudra of anchoring, and a luminous shield burst across the line. Not a wall, but a wave of earth-shaped energy flowing through armor and bone.
Kael shouted over the chaos, voice like a blade. "One hundred Stormguard, left flank! Another hundred, right! Circle wide and collapse! Cut the wedge down!"
Bruga bared his teeth. "I'll hold center."
"Do it!" Saran barked, already peeling off to direct the wings. "Break their spine!"
As Kael's flank maneuver began, Ryoku and Nyzekh each broke away, their movements swift and coordinated. Ten Stormguard ran with Ryoku on the left, ten more with Nyzekh on the right. Small, elite units trained for deadly strikes. They slipped through the tall grass and churned earth like shadows.
While the main wings curved in, Ryoku and his squad darted past the wedge's exposed edge and vanished into the smoke and noise of battle. Nyzekh mirrored him, disappearing into the chaos, sabers low.
Bruga stood immovable, the keystone of the line. Blades hammered his shield. Tusks gnashed within reach. He roared and rammed his shield forward, breaking an orc's jaw with a wet crack.
And then the trap closed fully.
Kael's wings struck from both sides, slamming into the wedge's flanks. At the same moment, Ryoku and Nyzekh struck from behind. Stormguard blades fell upon orcs who didn't even know they were exposed. Ryoku blinked forward, slicing through tendon and spine. Nyzekh moved like a ghost, cutting throats with twin arcs of silence.
Surrounded on all sides, the wedge fractured.
"Break!" Bruga roared again. And the center surged with him, spears and swords thrusting in rhythm. The wedge collapsed.
Orcs fell back. Staggering. Bleeding. Bodies heaped where the wedge had once driven forward like a spearpoint.
The field went quiet for a heartbeat.
They had stopped the charge.
It didn't shatter in a scream, nor splinter in glory. It sagged. Buckled. Then fell under pressure, blood, and steel. The Stormguard wings had collapsed inward, scissoring into the orc wedge like jaws. Orc bodies piled at the center, their cohesion turned to chaos.
Bruga panted, blood-smeared, holding ground in the middle of a ruin. Ryoku spun once more, deflecting a heavy axe before slicing its bearer down the spine. Wen Tu extended a hand. Roots surged from the trampled earth, dragging wounded orcs into the dirt.
Then silence. A beat of it. A breath.
The orcs drew back for the first time. Snarling, regrouping.
That's when Nyzekh stepped forward.
His sabers dripped. His eyes were empty of emotion, full of thought.
"We have the momentum," he said quietly. "Take the fight to them."
Kael met his gaze. "You're sure?"
"They're disoriented. This was their spear. It snapped."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. Every disciple heard him. Every Stormguard nearby caught the change in air.
Kael exhaled and nodded once.
"We go," he said.
"We kill the warlord," Nyzekh added, voice barely louder than breath. "Or we die playing defense."
Kael didn't hesitate. "Agreed."
He turned sharply. "Saran! Fist-Captain of the Iron Hands!"
A gauntleted fist slammed against chestplate. "Command, commander!"
"Choose one hundred Stormguards. Shieldborn. Iron-nerved. Pull from your finest ranks. We're cutting the head off this swarm."
"Yes, commander!" Saran's voice rang clear.
Kael raised Windskin above his head, its blade whistling once in the wind. "Wedge formation! We drive through the horde!"
The chosen Stormguards assembled in seconds. Shields locked. Swords drawn. Breaths measured.
Then came the tip.
The disciples stepped forward.
Nyzekh took point, cloaked in nulllight, sabers ready. He would be the ghost at the forefront, the storm's invisible eye. Behind him, Kael held the center, focus absolute. Flanking him: Ryoku to the right, Kensho raised, stance crisp and narrow as a sword's edge; Bruga to the left, a living furnace, steam coiling from his Emberplate.
Wen Tu stood behind them, the living pulse of the formation. His Verdance war staff shimmered with layers of barksteel aura. As they advanced, his roots sank into trampled earth, channeling qi into the forward ranks, rejuvenating limbs, sealing wounds, strengthening bone and will alike. A shield bloomed over them at each clash, flickering with green and gold.
"FORWARD!" Kael roared.
The wedge moved.
The Stormguards surged behind the disciples, armor groaning under pressure. The horde saw it and screamed, but too late.
Nyzekh vanished in a blink, then reappeared within the orc line. One saber sheared a throat. The second carved a gash through three skulls in one swing. Before their blood hit the dirt, he was already gone again.
Kael followed behind, parrying a downward cleaver and cutting into a throat with Windskin. Ryoku's steps left shimmer trails. His Echo Step technique disoriented the orcs, their strikes landing in mirrored air as he countered with punishing precision.
Bruga was fire. His axe swung in molten arcs, cleaving through ribs, breaking skulls, each impact detonating with stored heat. He threw an ember hatchet into a charging orc's face, then caught it on the rebound to bury it in another's spine.
Wen Tu's staff rang faintly, shielding Bruga from a thrown spear, then anchoring the flank with a bark-hardened root barrier. Vines lashed out like limbs, dragging a shrieking orc to the ground where his neck snapped on stone.
And the Stormguards behind them pushed in rhythm, step by bloody step, crushing the fallen, thrusting through gaps, defending the flanks.
The wedge drove deep.
And then Kael saw him.
The warlord.
He towered above the ranks, easily seven feet tall. His face was a ruined mosaic of scars and war paint, tusks like daggers, and eyes filled with malice. His armor was stitched from bone and sinew. He raised a cleaver forged from petrified beast bone, its edge glowing from searing enchantment.
Kael pointed through the press of bodies and smoke. "There. Tip of the spear. We break him, we break their will."
The formation surged.
But the horde tightened, forming a wall of fury and hate. Blades clanged, arrows flew, bodies screamed. The path to the warlord was closing.
Then Nyzekh stepped forward.
Not just ahead, but into something else.
A deeper rhythm. A different layer of reality.
He exhaled and let go.
The Fold took him.
Not the First. Not the Second.
The Third.
Thirty-two truths collapsed into his breath. Space. Depth. Time.
His movements no longer reacted. They preceded.
One saber carved into the air a second before an orc swung. The second stroke opened a throat of an enemy who hadn't yet realized they were charging. His body moved before meaning formed in his foes' minds.
Kael saw it happen. The moment the battle bent around him.
"He's folded it," he murmured. "Third Tier. Thirty-two truths."
Ryoku's grip tightened on Kensho. "I'm not there yet."
Wen Tu's voice was quiet behind them. "None of us are."
But they moved.
Following the gap Nyzekh created, the wedge burst forward again. Bruga a hammer of heat, Ryoku a shadow echo, Kael an unrelenting storm, Wen Tu the lifeblood holding them upright.
The Stormguards thundered in behind them, renewed by Wen Tu's blossoms of protection.
Through broken bodies, across torn ground, down the corridor carved by action born of understanding,they charged the warlord.
Atop a ridge of shattered stone, Stormwake stood beside Altan.
Below them, the carnage sprawled like a bleeding tapestry. Corpses heaped. Banners burned. Screams lost in wind.
Stormwake broke the silence. "What kind of monsters did you create?"
Altan watched in silence for a breath, eyes fixed on the figures carving through the horde.
"The crucible forged them," he said at last. "And the chasm unleashed them."
Stormwake's voice lowered. "Will you intervene?"
Altan's gaze did not waver. "No. We will watch. Their final battle."