CHAPTER 24: DUSKFALL FALLS, THE TRUE POWER OF THE DEMON KING’S LIEUTENANTS!!

The ground trembled beneath my boots. Each explosion shredded my eardrums, each impact made my ribs vibrate as if I were hollow. The walls spat lightning, flaming arrows rained down in waves, but in front of us... it was the black tide. Thousands. A fucking black tide.

The passage Maeron had opened still gaped, a glowing furrow cutting through the mass like a sickle through a field of wheat. But already, the demons rushed to fill the gap, their squirming flesh reforming like waves of mud. If we lingered, we’d be swallowed.

— "RUN!"

I screamed, my lungs on fire. Elyra led the way. Her lance pulsed with a crimson glow, and each strike tore chunks of flesh as if she were splitting air. An entire demon folded, gutted in a single motion, its guts splattering against my legs.

— "I’m making a path!" she shouted without turning back. "Follow, and don’t waste time killing! Defend only!"

Her voice cracked louder than the bombardments. Her red aura ignited the night and her gray eyes gleamed with icy rage.

At her side, Kael was nothing but a moving blur. His daggers, two flashes of steel, spun so fast my eyes lost their trace. Every time a demon lunged from the flank, its throat burst, its eyes popped from its skull, its head rolled into the mud. Kael laughed, fuck. A low, nervous laugh that chilled me more than the tide of monsters.

Around us, the Black Hounds leapt, scarlet jaws, muscles swollen with rage. They tore off arms with a snap of their fangs, ripped open chests in a spray of black blood. Their howls mingled with the screams of demons, and sometimes I no longer knew who was devouring who.

I was in the center, pressed to Ayame. Her hand gripped my arm as if she held my life on a leash. Her voice cracked through the chaos:

— "RIGHT!"

And without thinking, I pivoted. The whole group shifted as one body. The discipline wasn’t thought-out, it was animal. The Black Hounds pivoted too, biting into the hips of demons trying to trap us. Behind us, Thorn roared.

The colossus swept the rear with a sword as wide as a door. Each blow launched limbs, heads, shards of skull. Demons hurled themselves at him screaming, and he chopped them like logs. Black blood spattered on our necks, hot, thick, the stench of iron clinging to our throats.

I struck in turn, Aurelia vibrating in my hands. The spear pierced a demon’s chest, bursting out its back in a rain of viscera. Its body collapsed, but already its limbs convulsed, its eyes burst, then a dark flame reignited its carcass. Undead. Again.

— "Fucking hell!" I spat, finishing it with a heel strike that shattered its jaw.

A mana shell landed a few meters away. The explosion threw up a rain of flesh and mud, my body pitched forward, my ears ringing. A flaming arrow buried itself in the eye of a demon about to cut me down, its head exploded like a ripe fruit. Archers on the wall still fired, covering our advance.

But every meter gained cost an eternity. My breath scorched my throat, my legs screamed to stop. All I saw were gaping maws, rusted blades, yellow eyes. I was a puppet in a never-ending nightmare.

Ayame screamed again, her hair soaked in blood stuck to her torn kimono:

— "RIGHT AGAIN!"

And we all shifted, like a wave refusing to break. Elyra cleaved the tide ahead, Kael carved the flanks, Thorn hacked the rear, and we, in the center, glued to Ayame, had only one obsession: move forward.

One meter. Two meters. Ten. A hundred left. A hundred fucking meters to cross in this ocean of flesh. And each step pounded in my chest as if the war itself was dragging me in.

We’ll never get out of here alive.

But my legs still ran.

Bodies fell, but the horde never stopped. For every demon gutted, three more surged from the flanks, screaming, claws reaching. The path tightened like a black maw. My boots slipped in the bloody mud, my hands shook on Aurelia, and each breath tore my throat.

We weren’t advancing anymore, we were sinking.

— "Kael!" Elyra shouted, her voice raw with the din. "Clear us some space around!"

He raised his eyes, and I swear I saw a mad gleam in his pupils. His body twisted, his outlines blurred, and suddenly he was nothing but a shifting shadow, an aberrant silhouette. A heartbeat — he vanished.

I blinked. Gone. Then a scream to the left. A head exploded in a black spray. Then to the right, a gush of blood erupted out of nowhere. Behind me, a body split in two, cleaved clean. Kael reappeared only to vanish again, as if the night itself swallowed him to spit him out wherever it pleased.

He emerged, struck, hacked legs, slit throats, then plunged back into darkness. And each time, his smile widened a little more.

Fuck. He wasn’t an assassin anymore. He was a specter.

The procession lightened. Monsters shrieked, recoiling despite themselves, cut down by an enemy they couldn’t even follow with their eyes.

Then Ayame’s voice cracked, sharp:

— "LEFT!!"

Without thinking, I pivoted. The whole group shifted in a single motion. But Elyra roared, her gray eyes lit with a furious gleam:

— "Then he’s fleeing us! He sees our direction through the dead! FOLLOW AYAME’S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER!!"

Her lance pulsed, glowing red, and cleaved three demons at once, their guts splattering my face. The stench of iron and shit hit my nose, I nearly retched, but my arms kept moving.

Aurelia pierced a thorax, shattered a ribcage, burst out in a black geyser. My motion was fluid. More sure. I felt it. A week of training, and my arms finally knew what to do. I was more than a raging puppet, I was becoming a lancer.

A demon roared, lunging at us. I raised my arms, ready to focus my mana— but a hand gripped my wrist and forced Aurelia down.

Ayame.

Her brown gaze cut through the chaos, her voice low but firm, covering the howls:

— "No. Not now. You must absolutely conserve your mana, Kaito. We’ll need it later. Let them handle this for now."

I choked, unable to reply. Her fingers left my arm, but her voice stayed within me, relentless.

She spun at once, and her scythe carved a black arc. The blade hissed, and the head of the orc that had just appeared rolled into the mud. Its massive body crashed to the side, still twitching with spasms. Blood splattered across Ayame’s thigh, staining the torn silk of her kimono.

The world had become a living trench. With each step, our boots sank into still-warm corpses, and arrows kept whistling overhead. Some pierced demons, others ricocheted off their armor to end in another’s flesh, it didn’t matter.

Thorn roared behind us, his sword striking so hard demons literally exploded in showers of viscera. Elyra tore the path open with iron will, Kael carved in the shadows, and Ayame... Ayame guided us with a voice stronger than the drums of war.

And me?

I followed, guts in my throat, Aurelia in my trembling hands, praying my legs would last one more step. Then another. Then more.

The breakthrough continued.

Our bodies were nothing but living mud. Black blood everywhere. On our hands, on our faces, matted in our hair, dripping down our thighs. My soaked clothes clung to my skin, heavy as lead, and my fingers slipped on Aurelia’s shaft, my grip slimy.

Kael had slaughtered... what? A thousand? Maybe more. I couldn’t even count them anymore. Every time I turned my head, he emerged from a shadow, slit throats, shredded, butchered. And the bodies piled up behind us, but the unit held. We held.

Ayame cried out, her vibrant voice cutting through the chaos:

— "We’re almost there, ahead!"

Her words burst like a gulp of air in this mire of flesh. But no sooner had I raised my eyes than a monstrous crash erupted behind us. A boom so violent the ground lifted beneath my feet.

I turned, and my guts froze.

The giant.

His monstrous fist slammed into Duskfall’s wall. The stone, centuries old, rang like a bell before exploding in a storm of debris. Blocks as large as houses crashed into the crowd, crushing men and demons alike. Dust rose in a choking cloud, but through it, we saw.

The breach.

Gaped like a yawning maw, the entrails of the fortress exposed to the world. The enemy army roared, tens of thousands of demonic voices already surging into the wound. Internal catapults flared, archers screamed, but it stopped nothing. It was a torrent. A black tide pouring into Duskfall.

My stomach twisted, my legs buckled.

Fuck... we’re done for.

But Elyra roared, her gray eyes blazing:

— "TRUST THE OTHERS!" Her crimson arm cleaved a demon in two, its entrails splattering our faces. "OUR MISSION IS PRIORITY! We must kill the necromancer!"

Her order cracked like a whip. My guts stayed frozen, but my body marched on.

And she was right. By now, more than half the army wasn’t even alive. They were corpses. Rotten flesh dragged up by black magic, shuffling forward, screaming from throats that shouldn’t make a sound. The entire battlefield reeked of recycled death.

I turned my head for a moment, to the walls where the silhouettes of Reina, Hikari and Miyu still shone amid flames and arrows.

Be careful... I beg you.

And then we were there.

The necromancer.

I recognized him instantly: Necroth. Already, his name had made the fortress shudder when it was spoken. His gaunt body was wrapped in rusted chains that writhed on their own, striking the ground like serpents. His hollow eyes glowed with a sickly green, and his mouth, sewn shut with black threads, still opened to utter words.

At his side, three dragons of rotting flesh. Their scales had decayed, exposing red muscles hanging in strips. Their fetid breath rolled in waves of bloody steam. Further back, two armored Oni advanced, giants clad in integrated armor: a shield as wide as a tower, and a sword that could split a ship in two.

Necroth looked at us. And he looked only at her.

Ayame.

— "So... you managed to make it here after all." His voice grated like a rusty door.

The ground exploded beneath our feet. Black hands burst from the mud, dozens, clutching our legs, dragging our bodies down. I barely had time to react before a blade surged, grazing my ribs. Two soldiers from the unit fell screaming, claws dragging them into the bowels of the earth.

I screamed, Aurelia ripping through the ground. But Kael came, shadow leaping from the darkness. His daggers severed the hands clutching me, then those holding Ayame. She landed back on her feet, gasping, scythe raised.

I barely had time to lift my head.

And I saw the horror.

All this... it was just a setup.

The time we struggled, lost men, the dragons had taken position. Their rotten maws opened in unison, a hideous rumble vibrating in my bones.

And then, hell.

Three torrents of black flames burst in arcs, consuming the very air.

Fuck.