The first volley came from Ronan's position—fifteen crossbow bolts, all enchanted, all aimed at the advancing cultists. Three found their marks. The rest clattered harmlessly off shadow barriers.
"Well, that's annoying," Ronan muttered into his communication crystal. "They've got better shields than last time."
"Adapt," Selene's voice crackled back. "All ranged units, target the creatures, not the mages. Let's see if those shields extend to their pets."
They didn't. The corrupted creatures—things that had once been dogs, wolves, maybe a few unfortunate horses—had no magical protection. The second volley dropped seven of them, their corrupted bodies dissolving into black mist.
Marcus didn't even slow down. He just kept walking, his forces spreading out into a practiced formation, like they'd drilled this a hundred times. Probably had.
"Contact in two minutes," someone reported. "They're taking the main avenue, exactly as predicted."
"Good," Selene said. "Spring trap three on my mark."
Kaelen watched from the rooftop as Marcus's forces advanced into the commercial district. The cultists moved with military precision, checking corners, watching rooftops, maintaining formation. These weren't the half-trained fanatics they'd fought before. These were professionals.
"There," Lia said, pointing. "See how they're moving? That's Valorian military doctrine. Marcus is using their own tactics against them."
She was right. The formation, the discipline, the methodical advance—all of it straight from Valorian's military academy textbooks. Marcus had been Arch-Mage of Valorian. Of course he knew how they thought, how they fought.
Of course he'd use that against them.
"Trap three, now!" Selene commanded.
The street Marcus's forces were on suddenly erupted. Not with fire or magic, but with mundane, clever engineering—pre-weakened cobblestones gave way, dropping half the cultists into a pit lined with sharpened stakes. The creatures, less cautious than their human masters, fell in droves.
The pit wouldn't kill trained shadow mages. But it would slow them down, break their formation, force them to waste magic escaping.
Marcus stopped, looking at the pit trap, and laughed. Actually laughed, the sound carrying across the district.
"Clever!" he called out, apparently speaking to anyone listening. "Ronan's work, I'd guess. He always did have a fondness for low-tech solutions. But surely you know I prepared for this?"
He raised Hearteater, and shadow magic poured from the blade in a torrent. The pit filled with solidified darkness, creating a ramp his forces could simply walk up and out of.
"Damn," Ronan said over the network. "That was supposed to buy us five minutes."
"Bought us thirty seconds," Selene replied. "Take it and move to fallback position beta. Everyone else, continue as planned."
The fighting retreat began in earnest. Shadow Hunters would fire from concealment, then fall back before Marcus's forces could respond. Guild mages triggered prepared spell arrays—walls of force, patches of ice, simple obstacles that slowed without trying to stop. The Iron Fangs set fire to pre-selected buildings, creating chokepoints and obscuring sight lines with smoke.
It was elegant, professional, and Marcus countered every single trick like he'd written the playbook himself.
Because he probably had. Thirty years of planning. He'd gamed out scenarios, prepared contingencies, anticipated their every move.
"We're not slowing him down," Kaelen said, frustrated.
"We're not supposed to," Lia replied. "Phase one is intelligence gathering, remember? We're learning how fast he moves, how his forces respond, where the weak points are. The real fight comes later."
Twenty minutes into the engagement, they learned something important: the shadow colossus Marcus had brought was slow. Powerful—it casually smashed through a three-story building with one arm—but slow. It had to take the wide streets, couldn't navigate the narrow alleys.
"That's a weakness," Captain Valdris noted. "We force the fight into confined spaces, that thing becomes useless."
"Noted," Selene said. "Alright, people, Marcus is two blocks from the first strongpoint. Time to make him think we're making our stand. Give him a real fight, make him commit resources, then retreat when he's overextended. Execute."
The first strongpoint was the old merchant hall—three stories of stone, reinforced with every defensive ward Kaelen and Lia had managed to inscribe. Twenty defenders held it, trying to make thirty minutes look like a last stand.
Marcus's forces hit it like a hammer. The shadow colossus punched through the outer wall while cultists swarmed the entrances. Corrupted creatures climbed the walls like spiders. It should have been overwhelming.
But the defenders had prepared. Every entrance was a killbox. Every hallway was trapped. Every room had a fallback position. The twenty defenders fought like fifty, and for fifteen glorious minutes, they held.
Then Marcus himself stepped into the building, and everything changed.
Kaelen felt it from the rooftop three blocks away—a surge of power that made his teeth ache and Soulrender howl with something between recognition and hunger. Marcus wasn't holding back anymore. He was demonstrating exactly why he'd been Valorian's Arch-Mage, why the Cult followed him, why everyone should be absolutely terrified.
"All defenders, evacuate the merchant hall immediately," Selene ordered. "He's going to collapse it."
They got out with seconds to spare. Marcus raised both Forbidden Blades—Hearteater and what had to be a fragment of Mindbreaker—and brought them down in a crossed slash that shouldn't have done anything from inside a building.
The merchant hall imploded. Not exploded—imploded, collapsing in on itself like reality had decided that space didn't belong there anymore. Three stories of reinforced stone just... ceased.
"Well," Ronan said into the silence that followed. "That's... concerning."
"Phase two is over," Selene announced. "All units fall back to strongpoint alpha. We're done being clever. Time to see if we can actually hurt him."
They regrouped at the warehouse—the primary stronghold, the most heavily defended position they had. Forty-three Shadow Hunters, fifteen City Guards, twenty Iron Fangs, eighteen guild mages. Just under a hundred defenders against Marcus's remaining forces.
The math still didn't work in their favor.
"Casualties?" Selene demanded.
"Three dead, seven wounded," someone reported. "Merchant hall collapse got two, corrupted creature got one. Could be worse."
"It's going to get worse," Selene said. "Marcus is done playing. He's heading straight for us, and this time he's not going to accept delays or tricks. This is the real fight."
Kaelen and Lia took their position on the main wall, Soulrender drawn, runes already glowing. Around them, defenders prepared for the assault everyone knew was coming.
Marcus's forces appeared at the end of the street—battered from the fighting retreat, but far from defeated. The shadow colossus loomed behind them, and Marcus stood at the front, both Forbidden Blades gleaming in the firelight from burning buildings.
"Kaelen Voss!" Marcus called out. "Impressive defense! You've actually managed to slow me down by..." He pulled out a pocket watch. "Nearly forty-five minutes. Well done. But I'm afraid this is where it ends. Surrender Soulrender, and you have my word your people will be spared. Fight, and everyone dies. Your choice."
Kaelen looked at Lia. At Ronan. At Selene. At all the defenders who'd chosen to stand against impossible odds.
"You talk too much!" he shouted back. "Either attack or go home!"
Marcus smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that."
He raised Hearteater high, and the assault began in earnest.
Shadow magic smashed against the warehouse's defensive wards like waves against a cliff. The wards held—Kaelen and Lia's work was solid—but the strain was immediate and obvious. Cracks appeared in the barriers, leaking shadow energy that had to be patched in real-time.
Cultists charged the walls. Defenders met them with arrows, spells, boiling oil. The Iron Fangs proved their reputation, fighting like professionals who'd done this a thousand times before. Bodies fell on both sides.
The shadow colossus approached the main gate.
"Kaelen!" Selene shouted. "That thing reaches the gate, we're done! Stop it!"
"How?" Kaelen demanded. "It's twenty feet tall and made of solid shadow magic!"
"Figure it out! You're the one with the Forbidden Blade!"
Right. The Forbidden Blade. The weapon that supposedly could match anything Marcus brought to bear.
Time to test that theory.
"Lia," Kaelen said. "Can you amplify me?"
"How much?"
"Everything you've got."
"That's—that could kill you if you can't handle it—"
"We die if that thing breaks through anyway. Amplify me!"
Lia's hands moved through patterns they'd practiced but never used in combat. Amplification runes appeared around Kaelen, each one linking to his shadow energy, to Soulrender's power, creating a network that would magnify everything he could do.
It was dangerous. If he lost control, the amplification would turn the loss catastrophic.
But they were out of safe options.
Kaelen channeled everything into Soulrender—the weeks of absorbed corruption, his trained skill, the desperate need to protect everyone behind him. The blade erupted with shadow energy like it had never done before, a pillar of darkness stretching toward the sky.
The shadow colossus paused, as if recognizing a threat.
Kaelen jumped from the wall, Soulrender leading, and met the colossus head-on.
The impact shook the entire district.
Shadow against shadow, Forbidden Blade against constructed magic, trained wielder against brute force. Kaelen carved into the colossus like it was made of paper, his amplified strikes tearing chunks of solidified darkness away.
But the colossus adapted, its massive fists coming down like hammers. Kaelen dodged the first, parried the second with a shadow barrier, got clipped by the third and went flying into a wall hard enough to crack stone.
"Kaelen!" Lia's voice, distant through the ringing in his ears.
He forced himself up. The colossus was advancing again, still mostly intact despite his attacks. You couldn't kill something that wasn't really alive. You had to—
"Disrupt its core," Matthias's voice crackled over the network. He was somewhere safe, providing tactical analysis. "That's constructed shadow magic, has to have a central binding point. Find it and destroy it, the whole thing falls apart."
Fine. Find the magical equivalent of a heart in a twenty-foot monster made of shadow. Easy.
Kaelen attacked again, this time not trying to destroy but to understand. Where were the energy flows strongest? Where did the power concentrate?
There—center of mass, protected by layers of solidified shadow.
He drove Soulrender straight through the colossus's torso, seeking that core. The creature tried to close around him, tried to crush him, but Lia's amplification runes gave him just enough strength to resist.
His blade found something solid. Something that resisted.
The core.
Kaelen poured everything into the blade, into that one strike, all the power Lia's amplification provided. Soulrender's edge met the binding core and shattered it.
The shadow colossus exploded into mist.
Kaelen landed hard, completely exhausted, the amplification runes burning out all at once. But the colossus was gone.
"And that," he gasped, "is why you don't bring constructs to a Forbidden Blade fight."
"Impressive," Marcus called from the street. He was clapping, genuinely impressed. "Very impressive. That colossus took me three months to create, and you destroyed it in under five minutes. Lia's amplification work, I assume? Clever girl."
He stopped clapping. His expression hardened.
"But I'm afraid clever isn't going to be enough."
Marcus raised both Forbidden Blades, and the real assault began.