Chapter XVII – The Shattered Line
Lucian leaned on the wreck of a wagon and whispered, "Then we hold."
No one heard him. But when the next tremor rolled through the valley, every man still breathing lifted his weapon. Not because they believed in victory, but because there was nowhere left to run.
The Beastborn charged towards them.
They poured from the fog in uneven ranks, dozens strong, howling and scraping across the broken ice. Their silhouettes flickered in the ruin light, claws glinting, breath thick as smoke. The ground beneath them sizzled with corruption.
Lucian drew the ceremonial blade from his belt. It was not meant for war. A commander's sword, more symbol than weapon. Its edge was dulled, its weight uneven, but it was still steel. He raised it in trembling hands. "Form up! Shields front!"
Taren limped to his side, the haft of a shattered spear clutched in both hands. Rhel stumbled forward next to him, face smeared with blood, a dent in his helm where something massive had struck. They formed the line's center, breath ragged, eyes hollow.
The first Beastborn hit.
Lucian caught the strike with his blade, the shock rattling his arms. The creature snarled and lunged again. He sidestepped, thrust forward, and felt the sword slide between ribs. The blade caught, refusing to pull free.
He let go, grabbed frost from the air, and drove a burst of magic into the beast's face. Its head froze mid-roar, then shattered.
"Left flank!" Taren shouted. He swung the broken spear haft like a club, striking another across the jaw. Bone cracked. Rhel's blade followed through the gap, splitting its throat. Blood steamed against the cold air.
They were not soldiers now. They were cornered animals, fighting because their bodies refused to die.
Lucian's mana was almost gone. He tried to cast again, and nothing came. His core felt hollow, scraped clean. He switched to raw instinct, blocking with his forearm, kicking off bodies, using his ceremonial sword as a lever instead of a weapon.
The runes beneath his skin glimmered faintly, pulsing with every strike.
A shriek tore through the din. A small voice.
"Sir Lucian!"
He turned. Finn, the youngest squire, barely sixteen, stumbled through the smoke with a short blade in hand. His face was gray with fear, but his eyes were steady. He cut down a wounded Beastborn from behind and smiled, wild with relief.
"Get back!" Lucian shouted.
Finn turned to run. He never made it.
A spear burst through his stomach. He gasped, eyes wide, hands reaching for something that wasn't there. The Beastborn wrenched the weapon free, and the boy collapsed beside Lucian's boots.
The lucian's world narrowed to silence.
He lunged forward, fury driving strength into his dead limbs. The next strike split the Beastborn's skull.
He wrenched the sword free and kept swinging widly, every blow clumsy and desperate. Blood covered his hands, slick and black against the silver light that bled from his arm.
"Lucian!" Taren's voice cut through the haze. "We can't hold!"
He looked up and saw Asad Al.
The divine champion was winning.
Ursa's great form reeled beneath each blow. The frost that once devoured the ground now flickered, unstable. Asad's armor glowed brighter with every strike, veins of molten gold crawling across its surface. The divine rot spread, consuming the battlefield, forcing the primal beast back step by step.
Each clash was louder, closer, heavier. The air rippled with heat. Ursa's roar faltered, fading from wrath to pain.
Lucian felt it in his bones. They were losing. Even gods could die so what made the ursa unkillable?
And then a shadow moved through the smoke.
The vice leader of the Beastborn emerged. Taller than the rest, his body was half-human, half-wolf, plated in black bone that shimmered with divine corruption. His weapon was a crescent axe, its blade marked with the same golden veins that pulsed from Asad's armor.
his name was Khalid.
He stopped in front of Auron.
The young warrior had barely recovered from the last assault. His breath came in shallow gasps. His sword hand trembled. he was extremely exhausted from running away from the ursa.
Then khalid tilted his head. "You," he said, his voice like stone grinding against itself. "The one who woke the beast."
He charged.
Auron blocked the first strike, but the force sent him skidding backward through the mud. The next blow came faster.
Vowkeeper met the crescent axe, sparks scattering like falling stars. The sound of each clash drowned out the screams around them.
Lucian turned, shouting orders he could barely hear. The line was collapsing. Rhel was bleeding from a cut to the thigh. Taren's arm hung useless at his side. The Beastborn pressed harder.
And above it all, Auron was facing someone out of his league.
He parried high, ducked low, rolled through the next swing. khalid moved with inhuman grace, every strike measured, precise, cruel.
Auron's arms shook. His chest burned. He felt something crack inside; his body, his will, his faith.
He saw Finn's body in the mud.
And in that instant, everything broke.
He thought of Godfrey the quiet mornings in the courtyard, the laughter, the shared bread and talk of peace. The way the world had felt simple then.
He had wanted to live a small life. He had wanted to have a family, he just wanted a belonging. But the gods had stolen that future. They had made him a killer.
"I never asked for this," he whispered.
The voice inside him stirred.
Let me in
He stopped fighting it.
The resonance began as pain. His Dantian and Heart-Circle collided, forcing breath from his lungs. The mana within him surged outward, then snapped into alignment. The world sharpened.
His veins burned gold. His pulse throbbed silver. The air shimmered around him, folding like heat above fire.
A wolf's howl rose in his chest, low and deep.
A spectral shape appeared behind him, vast and luminous;vthe wolf spirit, jaws open, eyes blazing with primal light. Its form bled into his own until there was no line between man and beast. His pupils slit. His teeth bared.
Auron exhaled once.
The vice leader Khalid attacked at him noticing the change.
Auron vanished from sight.
He reappeared inside the monster's guard, Vowkeeper already in motion. The first strike shattered the axe haft.
The second opened the creature's chest. Black blood hissed against the frost. The Beast-born roared and swung again, its broken weapon still deadly.
Auron ducked beneath it, turned, and cut upward, cleaving through armor, through bone.
The air filled with sparks of gold and silver. Every motion was fluid, every strike perfect. He moved like water, like wind, like something born of both. His aura expanded, a storm of light and shadow.
The vice leader Khalid staggered, dropping to one knee, ichor pouring from a dozen wounds.
Auron stood over him, panting, Vowkeeper raised for the final blow.
And then the world turned gold.
Asad Al struck.
The divine champion had abandoned Ursa, his focus locked on the new anomaly that dared to challenge him. His blade descended in a vertical arc, light bending around it.
Auron turned too late.
The blow hit the ground beside him and exploded.
The shockwave tore through the battlefield, flinging both Auron and the dying vice leader apart. Ursa roared in the distance, its fury fading into something mournful.
Asad straightened, golden light dripping from his armor like blood. His gaze locked on Auron.
"Interesting," he said, his voice echoing through the ruin. "A beast in man's flesh. A prize worth claiming."
And then he advanced.