I. The Collapse of the Gilded Cage
The City of Voluptas was gone. In forty-eight hours, the "Jewel of the South" had become a hive of the Malum.
The Velox (Tier I) poured from the sewers. The Union Ministry's mercenaries were slaughtered. Panic spread like a contagion. The roads leading North and East were choked with refugees—tens of thousands of terrified souls fleeing the darkness. They carried the infection in their bodies and the terror in their eyes.
The Swarm followed. It didn't sleep. It didn't eat. It only hunted.
II. The Gate of Judgment
Three days later, the human wave hit the border of Observa Divisio.
The refugee column was a miles-long scar of misery. Legion Commander Heda stood atop the gatehouse. She activated the Gate Chambers.
"Enter!" Heda's voice boomed. "We offer sanctuary, but we do not admit the Rot. You must pass the Trial."
The refugees flooded into the chambers. The Obsidian Trial began. The innocent were cleansed, their grey boils hissing and vanishing under the violet light. The guilty—the merchants who had profited from the city's depravity—were purged, their bodies petrified and dropped into the incinerators.
The Cost: Among the survivors were hundreds of children, walking alone, their hands empty. Their parents had fallen on the road or been taken by the swarm. They lagged at the rear of the column, too small and too tired to keep pace.
III. The Thunder of the Fifty
South of the city, the evacuation was running out of time. The main body of the Velox Swarm crashed against the shield wall of the Legions.
But the Swarm was cunning. A pack of Alpha Velox—leaner, faster nightmares mutated for pure speed—broke away from the main engagement. They ignored the soldiers. They flanked wide, their eyeless heads tracking the scent of the weakest prey.
They targeted the rear of the column. The orphans.
A little girl, no older than six, stumbled in the dust. An older boy tried to pull her up, but the Alphas were already there. They moved in a blur of black tar and jagged bone, shrieking as they closed the distance.
The children screamed, huddling together, waiting for the end. The monsters were fifty yards away. Thirty. Ten.
Then, the earth began to shake.
It wasn't a marching cadence. It was a low, rhythmic thunder that vibrated in the teeth. The Alphas hesitated, confused by the tremor.
From the flank, cresting the rise just as the monsters prepared to leap, they appeared.
Fifty Obsidian Dark Destriers.
These were not mere horses. They were massive war-beasts, weighing over 1500 pounds each, their muscles dense from the Dark Harvest. Both horse and rider were encased in thick Obsidian Plate that drank the sunlight.
The front barding of every horse was adorned with vicious, serrated obsidian spikes, turning their chests into battering rams.
They didn't slow down. They hit the Alpha pack at a full, thundering gallop right in front of the huddled children.
CRASH.
The impact was sickeningly violent. The massive Destriers slammed into the Velox like iron mountains. The serrated spikes on their chest armor shredded the monsters on contact. The Anti-Regeneration magic flared violet, turning the black sludge instantly into ash.
Riders, huge men of the First Circle, Step Two, swung heavy obsidian lances, impaling the creatures that survived the initial impact.
The fifty riders carved a path of absolute destruction, wheeling their massive mounts with impossible agility. The Alpha pack was annihilated in seconds, trampled under hooves of black steel.
The orphans looked up from the dust, wide-eyed, as the towering black knights wheeled their steaming horses around them, forming a wall of iron and muscle between them and the abyss.
IV. The Wall of Iron
With the flank secured by thunder, the main battle raged.
Commander Sol roared, "Hold the Crescent!"
The Raven Legion—9,000 strong—dug in their heels. The main body of the Velox Swarm crashed time and again into the Obsidian Scutums. It was a test of the Inevectus Realm, and the Legionnaires held.
The Obsidian Hastas stabbed out, unraveling the monsters faster than they could reform.
V. The Fluidity of Command (Corvin's Intervention)
In the Sanctum, Corvin Nyx felt the strain. The sheer volume of the swarm was pushing the Legion back toward the processing lines.
He reached out through the Triad. His power was fluid now.
He pushed his will into the earth beneath the battlefield. He didn't just crack the ground; he caused the Via Obsidia to ripple. The stone road under the rear ranks of the monster army turned into obsidian quicksand. Thousands of Velox sank, trapped by the earth itself.
"Finish them!" Corvin whispered.
Sol saw the enemy flounder. "Advance! Grind them to dust!"
The Legion marched forward, slaughtering the trapped nightmares.