"Goddess, there's just no end to them!" Callum shouted, his voice raw with frustration as his pistol cracked one last time. The bullet drilled through an imp's skull, dropping it to the cobblestones—only for two more to leap forward, shrieking with sadistic glee.
"J-just keep fighting!" Vilak stammered from behind, his hands trembling as he commanded his skeletal retinue. His swordsman clashed against a drakorath, bony blade meeting metal, while the skeleton mage hurled a fireball skyward. It exploded against a cluster of veinblood cherubs, their porcelain-like bodies fracturing into shards that rained down. The knight, shield raised, held firm at Vilak's side, turning aside every demon that lunged close, while the archer loosed one arrow after another into the horde pressing from afar.
"Can't you use that weird magic you used on me? Or—hell—I don't know, raise the dead!?" Callum barked, now forced to fight with his sword. He ducked under the sweeping blades of a drakorath, grit his teeth, and rammed his steel up through its jaw, twisting until its thrashing body went limp.
"I can't waste that much energy this early!" Vilak snapped back, though panic edged his voice. "I don't have infinite power, and I don't even know if I can raise demons! Even if I could, we need more bodies on the ground—raising these few wouldn't make a difference!" He tripped backward, hitting the cobblestones hard, only to be shielded by his knight as a sharaykthun's heavy blade slammed down, sparks skittering from the parry.
"Then why aren't you transforming!?" Vilak demanded as he scrambled back to his feet.
"I don't know how smart these things are!" Callum roared, barely deflecting another sharaykthun's strike that nearly split him in two. He shoved the demon's blade aside and stumbled back a few paces, sweat streaking down his face. "If they figure out what I am, they'll know how to kill me!" His sword came back up, steady despite his words, ready to meet the next swing.
The street around them was painted with carnage, littered with demon corpses piled in broken heaps, yet still the tide pressed in from both ends.
"Then let's just focus on surviving for now!" Vilak cried, voice cracking as he steadied himself.
"Agreed," Callum muttered, his eyes locked on the advancing horde as the two men tightened their defenses, steel and bone standing together against the endless horde.
— — —
Elsewhere in the city, on the narrow stone bridge that arched toward the park, Gurion and Hittag stood their ground against the tide of demons. Gurion surged forward first, his body moving in sharp bursts of speed. He drove his heel into the skull of an imp, spun with the motion, and brought his other foot down like a hammer onto another. Using its collapsing body as a springboard, he vaulted high, his fist smashing straight through a cherub's face before he dropped from the air, knees slamming into the chest of a drakorath. The creature folded under the impact, and Gurion retreated back to the center of the bridge, chest heaving.
Behind him, Hittag was a wall of destruction. The massive fighter's towering frame gave every swing of his fists crushing weight, each strike obliterating three or four imps at once. He grabbed up their limp bodies and hurled them like boulders into the cherubs—so fast and heavy that even their telekinesis failed to slow the oncoming corpses before the impacts shattered bodies. Not even the drakoraths, taller than most men, looked large beside him; he seized one by its legs and swung it down with brutal force, smashing it across another until both crumpled in a heap of broken flesh. But the sharaykthuns were the problem. Their slick, twisting bodies slid between blows, their movements too slippery to land a solid strike.
"How are you holding up?" Gurion called from behind, voice tight with fatigue.
"Well enough to keep going. What about you?" Hittag grunted back, barely looking over his shoulder.
Gurion let out a tired breath. "Exhausted. I can't take them down in one hit like you can."
Hittag huffed, eyeing the park just ahead. "Then we move there. You'll fight better with the trees at your side."
"Yeah… makes sense," Gurion agreed quickly.
Hittag crouched low, muscles coiling, then charged through the cluster of demons. His massive frame barreled forward like a living battering ram, scattering demons in his path. Gurion stayed close behind, slipping into the wake of broken bodies, while the horde roared and gave chase toward the park.
— — —
Meanwhile, inside the coliseum, tension hung heavy.
"Absolutely not!" Nori scrawled in his notebook and thrust the page toward Xain's face.
"But I have to go out there!" Xain shot back, his voice strained with urgency. "I can't just sit here while everyone else is fighting."
Nori shook his head sharply and scribbled again, flipping the notebook for Xain to see. "Not alone! You'll die if you do that!"
Xain's shoulders sagged, a sigh escaping him. "But everyone else is already out there. Even's too injured to move, Quincy can't leave—she has to defend this place. Who am I supposed to go with?" His frustration came through in every word.
Nori wanted to answer that he could go with Xain, but that risked revealing who he was. He froze for a moment, then a thought struck him. He quickly wrote again: "Why isn't Even just going back to the Healing Springs to recover?"
Xain blinked, caught off guard. "The door's jammed, I think. And they can't break through it—it's built strong, and enchanted on top of that." He rubbed the back of his head, brow furrowed.
"That's strange," Nori scribbled, the words quick and deliberate.
Before Xain could respond, a hesitant voice broke through. "H-hey…"
Both turned to see Clara standing there, Elsa beside her with arms folded.
"What's wrong?" Xain asked, concern edging his voice.
Elsa gave a small sigh, gesturing toward Clara. "She has something she wants to tell you."
Clara hesitated, glancing down before forcing herself to meet Xain's eyes. She drew in a deep breath. "We overheard you two talking… well, with Nerissa it's not really talking, but—" She cut herself off, realizing she was rambling, then steadied herself. "What I mean is… Xain, I can go with you."