The administrative district of Anticourt barely held.
Stone buildings formed a wide lane that should've been a parade route for merchants and tax collectors. Tonight it was a choke point: torchlight, core-crystal lamps, and a line of exhausted men trying to keep the dark from swallowing them.
Sir Deimos stood in the brightest pool of light and made the line behave like a line.
"Shields tight," he ordered. "If you step out, you die alone."
The Anticourt Guard captain answered with a clenched jaw and a quick nod. He looked like a man who'd been taught to keep order during tavern brawls, and got handed Arcanists instead.
Phobos worked the rim of the formation, whip in hand, eyes never stopping. A few minutes had passed since their arrival at the council building. Deimos had now had taken full command. While the Anticourt guard had experience with bandit skirmishes. The Blackfyre guard were the elite of bren, each of the knights are capable of leading a detachment under heavy strain. With their strength and their ability to command they would boost morale.
Somewhere between the time they left Evan and Galwell in the council building and the melee that ensued, he had decided to separate the Blackfyre Guard and have them lead a detachment of Anticourt guards.
Rycharde, Oswyn, Dynham, and Evered were thrown into different knots of defenders when the inn fight spilled into the street. Now they stood with the Guard as troop leaders whether the town liked it or not.
In their gambeson, they looked like moving blurs in the torchlight.
Ahead, the enemy pressed closer.
Bandits—disciplined, armored in mismatched gear—moved with intent rather than greed. Behind them, shadows shifted in pools that refused the light the way normal darkness did. Shadow Walkers worked inside those pools, hard to see until they were already too close.
Deimos lifted his voice.
"Again! Find more hay," he said. "Bales. Carts. Anything dry. You saw they, put out the burning hay cart awhile ago. They're afraid. "
The guards scrambled as the other commanders barked the same orders.
A guard lieutenant seconded."Hay here. NOW. Anything that can burn easy!"
Men ran. Someone dragged a hay cart into the lane, wheels clattering over cobbles. Another group hauled bales from a nearby storehouse that had been half-ransacked already.
Phobos pointed. "Light them."
A handful of pyromancers stepped forward—too few for the amount of fuel being stacked.
Rycharde raised a palm.
"[Fire Ball]."
The spell formed clean, tight, and bright. It slammed into the first bale. Dry stalks caught instantly. Flame ran through the bundle with a hungry crackle. A second fireball hit another bale. The street's air warmed and sharpened with smoke.
Across the lane, the enemy reacted in coordinated fashion.
Hydromancers in the bandit line stepped as water burst in controlled splashes, enough to smother without flooding. The fires dimmed, then fought back, then dimmed again under repeated dousing.
Shadow Walkers took positions higher—on second-story windows, rooftops, and the angles between eaves and smoke. Their arrows did not rain as a volley. They came in singles. Targeted. Timed.
A Guard soldier raised his shield to shove a bandit back. but an arrow suddenly took him in the elbow joint and shield arm went dead.
Another man started a chant. An arrow flew to his throat. He dropped the spell with a wet cough.
Deimos saw it and didn't flinch. He adjusted.
"Stop chasing," he snapped. "Hold the lit ground. If you step into shadow, you'll get picked."
The captain grimaced. "They're too organized," he said, loud enough that Deimos heard. "Bandits don't fight like this. Not with Arcanists. I still can't believe this bastards are working with Arcanists."
Deimos kept his eyes on the wall of darkness and the men using it as cover.
He had no time to argue the point. He already knew.
The bandits surged again.
They came as a block. Shadow Walkers moved behind them and raised something like a walking screen—darkness thick enough to hide bodies and blade.
A black wall advanced down the lane.
Rycharde and the few other pyromancers in the district threw [Fire Ball] after [Fire Ball] into the dark. The impact points glowed for a heartbeat—then water took them, or darkness swallowed the light.
Deimos's jaw tightened.
The Guard captain's voice came again. "We can't fight without incendiaries. We don't have enough fire casters for this."
"We need something that can break them. That damned black curtain is overwhelming the men."
Rycharde caught his arm for a moment. "Change plans," he said. "The Anticourt Guard can't deal with that thing. We need an elite team to charge in and break the formation."
Deimos's eyes stayed on the black wall. "Agreed. Execution?"
"We break the bandits first," Rycharde said. "Create a gap. Then you and Phobos rip open the shadow."
Deimos nodded once. "We need a disruption spell. Something heavy. [Rock Launch] could—"
"No need," Rycharde cut in. "Evered and I. We go in. The others follow the space. Once the wall is disrupted, you use your whip and Phobos uses his. Tear it apart."
Deimos exhaled once. "Fine. We do it your way."
They regrouped quickly—tight, close, in the brightest light they could find.
Evered stepped forward and planted his palm to the street.
"[Earth Wall]."
Stone surged up in a thin slab, just high enough to hide the group's approach for two breaths. It cost him hard; Evered's shoulders stiffened, his mana reserves took the hit.
Bandits on the far side hesitated, confused by the sudden barrier.
Then their earth mages answered. A boulder lifted from the street and flew.
It struck the wall and shattered it like cheap pottery. Stone fragments sprayed. The barrier collapsed.
They found their opening.
Rycharde moved.
He launched forward with mana in his legs, a blunt, controlled leap that ate distance. He landed in the bandit front line and swung his warhammer in a short arc. It made contact with a bandits skull.
Evered followed into the gap, mace up, and smashed a lightly armored rogue across the chest. Armor buckled and the man flew and dented the mail underneath. His heart caved in.
Space opened—just enough.
Deimos and Phobos entered the cavity Rycharde and Evered had punched into the block.
The air turned cold at the edge of the shadow wall. Darkness pressed forward like a living thing.
Phobos's whip snapped. Deimos's whip answered. Two black cords struck into the darkness and pulled.
For a heartbeat, faces showed inside it—pale skin, tight eyes, teeth clenched in effort.
"Fire!" Deimos barked.
Rycharde didn't need the reminder. He threw [Fire Ball] into the exposed point.
Light seared and the shadow shrivelled.
He screamed—a short, strangled sound—and the dark peeled back as if someone had torn cloth.
Dynham and Oswyn arrived with the real gamble: burning hay carts.
They had waited for the opening and then committed.
The first cart hit the torn edge of the shadow wall. Fire caught on grease and dry stalk. The second slammed in right behind it. The flame rolled across the darkness, lighting it from inside.
The wall buckled as Shadow users broke formation to avoid burning, and the bandit line lost its backstop.
Cheers broke from the Anticourt Guard.
The sound mattered. Men who'd been giving ground started to press in.
With the wall gone, the fight stopped being an invisible execution and became a brawl.
One-on-one fights erupted across the lane. Steel rang. Spells flashed. [Stone Bullet] snapped through air and chipped walls. Torches fell, got kicked aside, then got planted again by hands that understood Deimos's doctrine.
Deimos and Phobos pushed deeper—chasing Shadow Walkers as they retreated, but refusing to get pulled into side alleys.
"Don't get encircled," Phobos barked.
"I see it," Deimos replied, and kept to open light.
Rycharde stayed near them with two knights proficient in fire. Not enough for a true barrage—enough to punish any shadow that Deimos's whip exposed.
Phobos's whip cracked again.
A howl came from inside a clump of darkness ahead.
Rycharde's [Fire Ball] followed the sound immediately.
Three arrows arrived at almost the same time.
The darkness thinned.
A Shadow Walker collapsed onto the street with three shafts in his chest—one through the heart.
The body twitched once and went still.
A shout rose from the Guard line.
"These things can be killed after all!"
Another voice answered, breathless. "Aye! The Demon Hunters do a good job. Without them we'd be dead!"
"And those four—look at them," someone said, pointing toward the knights. "Think they're Demon Hunters too?"
"No," another Guardman said, watching Dynham gut a bandit with a clean thrust. "Armor's wrong. I have a hunch though."
Dynham and Oswyn held a side lane where bandits kept trying to regroup.
Dynham fought like someone comfortable in mess. A bandit rushed him from behind—Dynham saw the tell in the man's shoulders and turned, blade punching through the torso. Entrails spilled. Dynham didn't pause to watch the man die.
Oswyn's halberd worked like a gate. He denied the approach with calm, corrective footwork, hacking down anyone who tried to push the lane.
Compared to Anticourt's knights, the Blackfyre Guard moved with sharper economy. Less show. More outcome.
"With every visible Shadow Walker corpse, the Guard held to the well-lit zones and let Deimos's party do the shadow work."
Bandit cohesion degraded. Some tried to retreat. Others charged in frustration. A few attempted to form ranks again.
Dynham and Oswyn ruined every attempt with precision strikes.
Fire arrows from Anticourt's archers began to find rhythm—burning shafts aimed at rooftops and window ledges where Shadow Walkers had been nesting. Smoke and flame forced them down into light.
In a narrow back lane, away from the direct street roar, the shadow leader watched.
"The spy is not among the combatants," his attendant said.
The leader's voice stayed level. "Where is he?"
"In the administrative building district."
"Why is he there? What credentials does he have?"
The attendant angled his chin toward the brighter district. "Looks like the Daeva are protecting him."
The leader's eyes narrowed. "Our employer wants that man dead. Killing the Daeva is an added bonus."
He paused, then decided. "Let the lieutenant wreak havoc first. Then we proceed."
A huge figure emerged from the alley's deeper shadow, stepping into the thin spill of streetlight like a moving wall—six feet tall with a broad chin and a bulging frame, an axe laid casual across his shoulder, and a grim expression carved so deep it looked permanent. He was bald, not a natural baldness, his head wore a permanent scar, if you looked closely you could see some patches where hair should have grown out.
The attendant swallowed. "Sir Orst," he said carefully, "have you dealt with the messenger post?"
Orst didn't answer. He nodded once and grunted.
"The spy is there," the shadow leader continued. "We need your aid. Wreak havoc. Destroy their lighting so we can reach the building and dispose of him."
Orst stared for a beat, then nodded again.
In the administrative building, Ezra lay asleep.
A gemlamp in the wall made the room bright. Guards stood outside. Evan stayed inside but Ezra continued to dream.
Ezra's hands worked at a block of wood with a small knife. The carving was precise despite his toddler grip, and it didn't help; he'd fought with Aerwyna earlier—words sharp, both of them too tired to soften them—and now he wanted out, materials, control over his own time.
Instead: library, room, library, courtyard, library, room.
He felt detained.
On Earth he'd been introverted by choice. Here, introversion felt like confinement.
Aerwyna refused him common minerals he knew had to exist in this world—simple things he could turn into controlled experiments. Under her watch, he only got wood. Safe. Clean. Useless.
In her zeal to protect him from spies, she built an intelligence force and tightened routines.
The result: she protected him and alienated him at the same time.
Ezra chipped a sliver of wood too hard and snapped it.
"I hate this," he shouted, and slammed the knife tip into the block again.
Evan watched him for a moment, then crouched.
"Calm down, Lord Ezra."
Ezra glared at the wood like it had personally betrayed him.
Evan had started to understand him. Adult knowledge in a toddler body. A brain that ran ahead of emotion and still got hit by toddler chemistry anyway.
Evan had asked other knights about their own children. The stories matched: happy one moment, furious the next, for reasons that made no sense to adults.
Ezra fit the pattern.
He just did it with advanced vocabulary and mana control.
"Don't worry, milord," Evan said, voice steady. "She'll allow you to get them eventually."
Ezra breathed hard, cheeks hot.
"Why doesn't she understand I'm not like other babies?" he snapped. "I'm not dumb enough to put random things in my mouth."
Evan held the line. "Lady Blackfyre prohibits you because she does not want you to grow up yet."
Ezra's head jerked. "What?"
Evan's smile turned small and tired. "Mothers are baffling creatures," he said. "But they care. They want you to live long enough to become what you are meant to become. I know this. I had a mother too."
Ezra's anger faltered. It didn't vanish. It shifted.
"Fine," Ezra muttered. "But if I'm trapped here all the time, don't blame me if I do something extreme. Or stupid."
He pouted, then added with a stubborn lift of his chin, "Next time I might actually go out even if you get punished."
Evan's expression didn't harden. It softened.
He reached out and adjusted Ezra's grip on the knife like it was a normal lesson.
"Whatever happens, Lord Ezra," Evan said quietly, "I will always find you and bring you home."