They were already moving when the second explosion sounded.
Not behind them.
Ahead.
The tremor ran through the stone like a knuckle dragged along bone...short, sharp, wrong. Snow slid from ledges above the alley mouth, dust shaking loose from cracked brick.
Asha slowed for half a step.
"That one's closer," she said, already turning her head.
Kaavi didn't need to ask how she knew. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, reached upward...
The raven answered.
A street tearing itself apart.
A fireball that didn't bloom so much as rupture.
Barrels. Crude. Dragged too close, handled too roughly.
"South-east."
Kaavi opened his eyes. "Same direction as Edric, four streets off his flank."
Asha nodded once. No hesitation. "Then that's the real threat."
She looked at Kaavi...not asking permission, but confirming alignment.
"You take them to the Baron," she said.
"And you?" Liran asked, already knowing the answer.
Asha's expression didn't change. "I stop them."
Before anyone could argue, she moved.
Not a sprint. Not a spell.
Just motion sharpened to purpose.
Heat rippled where her boots struck snow. In three strides she was past them. In five, she was gone into smoke and falling ash, moving toward the explosions as if drawn there by gravity.
Kaavi watched her vanish, then exhaled once.
"Move," he said. "Now."
They ran.
Corners taken tight, debris vaulted without breaking stride. Kaavi let the raven's sight bleed into his awareness in flashes: a collapsed stair avoided, a narrow cut-through opened just long enough to matter.
Back at the square
Baron Edric felt the blast through his feet before he heard it.
The way the street responded. The way shields hummed and leather straps tightened under strain.
Dust drifted down from the shattered wall behind the line, settling across shoulders and helms like ash from a distant hearth.
Edric tightened his grip on the shield and did not turn his head.
"Steady," he said.
The word carried.
Men who had been awake too long heard it as instruction rather than comfort. The line held.
The pressure was constant now. Puppets pressed forward in waves that blurred together, bodies piling, rising again, breaking formation by sheer persistence rather than intent.
Edric stepped into a gap as it formed, shield first, sabre following.
One cut.
A second.
No flourish.
He withdrew before the bodies hit the ground.
Another tremor rolled through the square...closer this time. A wall farther down the street collapsed sideways due to the shockwave, stone crashing down onto the puppets beneath it.
Some stopped moving.
Others rose anyway.
Edric saw the shift immediately. Not relief…opportunity.
"Forward," he ordered.
Not a shout. A measured decision.
The line advanced by inches. Shields pressed. Boots ground forward. A fallen man was dragged back and replaced without a word.
Control clawed its way back from chaos.
Something fell from above.
The impact struck the square with a sound like a dropped anvil. Cobblestones fractured outward in a hard ring, snow lifting into the air before collapsing back down in silence. Several puppets nearest the point of impact were simply gone... reduced to scattered limbs and dark fragments pressed into the street.
For a moment, the figure at the centre did not rise.
Puppets moved around it.
Not toward it.
Around it.
They flowed past the crater, bodies shuffling and jerking onward toward the barricade, toward living flesh.
Then it stood.
Slowly.
Dust slid from broad shoulders. One boot shifted forward, grinding broken stone beneath its sole. A puppet stumbled into its path without turning.
The figure stopped.
Its hand closed around the puppet's skull.
There was a thick, muffled crack…not sharp, but final…followed by a wet collapse as the head caved inward like crushed fruit.
The body folded where it stood, twitching once before going still.
Another puppet brushed past its side.
The figure backhanded it without looking.
The impact sounded like a sack of meat thrown against a wall. The puppet skidded across the square, limbs flailing, until it struck stone and did not rise again.
The figure moved forward.
Each step carried weight. Each step crushed something that had once been human. It did not chase. It did not hurry. It cleared only what stood in its way, leaving the rest to shuffle past it toward the line.
Men stopped advancing.
Not from fear… but from instinct.
Baron Edric raised his shield a fraction higher.
The figure lifted its head.
Its gaze found him.
There was no anger in that look. No rage. No heat.
Only measurement.
Snow drifted through smoke and ash, settling on steel and stone alike. The square seemed to shrink around the distance between them.
Edric did not speak.
Neither did the figure.
Puppets continued to move...around them, between them...mindless, obedient, unworthy of notice.
The pause stretched.
Heavy.