Marcus's attack wasn't the dramatic magical bombardment Kaelen had been expecting. It was worse—it was methodical.
He didn't charge the walls or unleash devastating spells. Instead, he divided his forces into three groups and sent them at different points of the warehouse defenses simultaneously, forcing the defenders to spread thin. The cultists didn't rush—they advanced with shields raised, testing for weak points, probing the wards.
"He's treating this like a siege," Ronan said, frustrated. "Could take hours to wear us down."
"We don't have hours," Selene replied. She was coordinating defenders from three different positions at once, and the strain was showing. "Our wards won't last past midnight at this rate of attrition."
Midnight. That was four hours away. Four hours of constant fighting, constant magical drain, constant casualties.
Kaelen had made it back to the wall, though his legs felt like jelly from the colossus fight. Lia immediately grabbed him, her diagnostic runes appearing before he could protest.
"You're an idiot," she said, not looking up from her examination.
"I'm alive," Kaelen countered.
"Barely. That amplification pushed you past safe limits. Your shadow corruption is spiking—not new Scars, but the existing ones are inflamed. You need to rest."
"Can't. Look." He pointed at the battlefield below, where Marcus's forces were systematically dismantling their outer defenses. "We rest, we die."
"You fight without recovering, you die anyway." But Lia was already pulling out potions and emergency treatments. "Ten minutes. Give yourself ten minutes to let your body stabilize, then you can go be heroic again."
It wasn't really a request. Kaelen sat while Lia worked, watching the battle unfold below.
The Iron Fangs were holding the western approach, and they were terrifyingly efficient. Captain Valdris fought like someone who'd forgotten how to lose—every strike precise, every movement economical. Her company moved like parts of a machine, covering each other, rotating positions, turning combat into something almost boring in its professionalism.
The guild mages were less impressive. Most of them had never been in real combat before, and it showed. Their spells were powerful but poorly timed. One apprentice panicked and threw a fireball that nearly hit friendly forces. An older mage exhausted his magical reserves in the first twenty minutes and had to be pulled from the line.
"We're going to lose people," Kaelen said quietly.
"We already have," Lia replied. She finished bandaging a cut on his arm he hadn't even noticed getting. "Five more dead since the colossus fight. Twelve wounded. And the night's just started."
A massive impact shook the wall beside them—one of Marcus's shadow mages had gotten close enough to launch a real attack. The defensive wards absorbed it, but the strain was visible. Cracks appeared in the magical structure, leaking shadow energy.
"I'll patch it," Lia said immediately, standing. "You stay here and—"
"I'm coming with you," Kaelen interrupted, already moving. "Those wards won't hold against another hit like that. You'll need me to reinforce them with shadow energy."
They worked quickly, Lia's purification magic and Kaelen's controlled shadow energy combining to repair the damaged wards. It was delicate work—too much of either and the ward would collapse entirely. Too little and it wouldn't hold.
"Almost... got it," Lia muttered, sweat beading on her forehead. "Just need to—"
Another impact, different section of wall. Then another. Marcus's forces had figured out the weak points and were systematically targeting them.
"We can't patch them all fast enough," Kaelen realized. "There's too many breach attempts."
"Then we prioritize," Selene's voice crackled over the network. "Main gate, eastern wall, and northern corner. Everything else, we abandon if we have to. Consolidate our defenses."
It was the right call tactically, but it meant ceding ground. Meant letting Marcus push them back. Meant one step closer to losing.
The fighting intensified around the three priority positions. Kaelen and Lia moved between them, patching wards, reinforcing barriers, occasionally taking direct shots at cultists who got too close. It was exhausting, endless work, and they were losing ground with every minute.
Around hour two, the eastern wall fell.
Not dramatically—there was no explosion or collapse. The wards just... failed. Too much damage, too much strain, too many repairs trying to hold together structure that had been compromised past saving. The defensive magic winked out, and suddenly there was just bare stone between the defenders and Marcus's forces.
"Eastern wall is compromised!" someone shouted. "We need—"
Cultists poured through the gap before anyone could finish that sentence. Twenty, thirty, maybe more. They crashed into the defenders like a wave, and suddenly it wasn't a siege anymore—it was close-quarters chaos.
The Iron Fangs pivoted immediately, their formation shifting to meet the new threat. Steel rang against steel, shadow magic flashed, people screamed. Kaelen saw one of the City Guards go down, then another. The guild mages tried to throw spells into the melee but risked hitting their own people.
"Resonance armor," Lia said urgently, grabbing Kaelen's arm. "We need to push them back before they establish a foothold."
They fell into the sequence—shadow from Kaelen, purification from Lia, spiraling together. The hybrid energy built faster now with all their practice, and the armor snapped into place around both of them in under ten seconds.
They charged into the breach together.
With the resonance armor active, they were untouchable. Cultist spells broke harmlessly against the hybrid energy field. Corrupted creatures tried to grab them and recoiled from the purification effect. Kaelen's strikes, amplified by the armor, sent enemies flying. Lia's runes appeared instantly, without the normal delay, creating barriers that herded the cultists back toward the breach.
They drove the invasion force back through the gap in ninety seconds flat.
"Seal it!" Selene commanded, and three guild mages combined their power to raise an earthen wall where the wards had failed. It wasn't as good as the original defenses, but it was something.
The resonance armor flickered and died, both Kaelen and Lia too exhausted to maintain it. They collapsed against the new earthen wall, gasping for breath.
"That's twice we've saved everyone's ass with that technique," Kaelen managed.
"Twice that we've nearly killed ourselves doing it," Lia corrected. "I count seven new echo-scars from that activation alone. We can't keep using it like this."
"What choice do we have?"
"I don't know. I just—" Lia's sentence was cut off by another impact, this one shaking the entire warehouse. "What the hell was that?"
They scrambled to their feet and looked out over the battlefield.
Marcus had stopped supervising his forces. Now he was walking toward the warehouse personally, both Forbidden Blades drawn, and with each step he took, reality seemed to bend slightly around him. The ground cracked. The air shimmered. Buildings near him developed frost on their stones despite the warm night.
"He's done playing," Ronan said over the network. "All defenders, brace for—"
Marcus raised Hearteater and slammed it into the ground.
A wave of pure shadow energy exploded outward from the impact point. It crashed against the warehouse like a physical force, and every single defensive ward shattered simultaneously. Not failed—shattered, the magical structure coming apart so violently that some of the guild mages actually cried out in pain from the backlash.
"Defenses down!" someone shouted unnecessarily. "All wards are down!"
"Then we hold the walls with steel and stubbornness," Selene commanded. "Archers, focus fire on Marcus himself. Everyone else, prepare for close combat. This is where we find out what we're really made of."
Marcus reached the outer wall and paused, looking up at the defenders. His eyes found Kaelen's across the distance.
"You've fought well," Marcus called up. "Better than I expected, honestly. The resonance armor technique is particularly impressive. But this has gone on long enough." He raised both blades. "Surrender Soulrender, or I bring this entire structure down on everyone's heads. Final offer."
Kaelen looked around at the defenders. At the Iron Fangs, battered but unbroken. At the Shadow Hunters, bleeding but defiant. At the guild mages, terrified but standing their ground. At Lia beside him, echo-scars darkening her skin but determination in her eyes.
At all the people who'd chosen to stand against impossible odds because it was the right thing to do.
"You know what?" Kaelen shouted back. "I'm getting really tired of your speeches. Either fight us or shut up!"
Marcus sighed. "I truly am sorry about this."
He brought both Forbidden Blades down in a crossed slash, and the warehouse's western wall exploded inward.
Not from shadow magic this time—from pure kinetic force, like he'd hit it with an invisible battering ram the size of a house. Stone and wood and defensive positions just... disintegrated. Five defenders died instantly, crushed under falling debris. Another dozen were buried in rubble.
"FALL BACK!" Selene's voice cut through the chaos. "All units fall back to the central stronghold! Abandon outer positions!"
The retreat was messy and desperate. Defenders scrambled over rubble, dragging wounded when they could, abandoning the dead when they couldn't. Marcus's forces poured through the gap, and suddenly the fight was inside the warehouse itself.
Kaelen and Lia ended up separated from the main group, cut off by a surge of corrupted creatures. They fought back-to-back, Kaelen's blade flashing while Lia's runes created a protective circle around them.
"This isn't working!" Lia shouted over the sounds of combat. "We can't hold like this!"
"Then we try something different!" Kaelen drove Soulrender through a creature's skull, twisted, pulled free. "The ritual site—where's Marcus planning to perform his convergence?"
"The Old Academy ruins, probably. It's the most corrupted—" Lia's eyes widened. "Wait. We cleansed that node. He can't use it anymore."
"Exactly. So where's his backup site?"
They both realized it at the same moment.
"Here," Lia said. "He's going to corrupt the warehouse itself, turn our stronghold into his ritual circle. That's why he's pushing so hard to take it intact rather than just leveling it from outside."
"So we don't let him have it," Kaelen said. "We deny him this position, force him to find another site, buy ourselves time."
"That means destroying our own stronghold."
"Better destroyed than corrupted." Kaelen cut down another creature. "Can you do it? Can you collapse the warehouse on a delay timer, give everyone time to evacuate?"
"Maybe. If I had about twenty minutes and ideal conditions, which—" Lia ducked under a swipe from a creature's claws. "—we definitely don't have."
"Then we make the conditions," Kaelen said. "I'll cover you. You work the magic. We end this on our terms, not his."
Lia looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. "This is insane."
"Yeah." Kaelen grinned despite everything. "But when has that stopped us?"
They fought their way to the warehouse's central support column—the main structural element the entire building depended on. Lia immediately began inscribing destabilization runes while Kaelen defended her, Soulrender moving in endless patterns to keep the creatures at bay.
"How long?" he called back.
"Ten minutes minimum!" Lia's hands moved frantically, tracing complex patterns. "I need to make sure the collapse is controlled, doesn't spread to the other buildings, gives everyone time to escape—"
"Eight minutes!" Kaelen interrupted, because he'd just seen Marcus enter the warehouse, pushing through his own forces with casual contempt, heading straight for them. "You get eight minutes, then we run whether it's ready or not!"
"That's not enough time!"
"It's what we have!"
Lia worked faster, sacrificing elegance for speed. Kaelen held the line, every muscle screaming, Soulrender drinking deep of corrupted souls, the Shadow Scars on his arm burning with strain.
Six minutes.
Marcus was three rooms away, destroying everything in his path.
Five minutes.
The defenders were in full retreat, streaming out through the back exits Ronan had prepared.
Four minutes.
Marcus entered the central chamber, saw what they were doing, and his expression shifted from confident to genuinely angry for the first time all night.
"You're going to destroy your own headquarters?" he demanded. "That's suicide!"
"That's determination!" Kaelen shouted back. "Lia, time!"
"Thirty seconds! I need thirty more seconds!"
Marcus raised Hearteater. "I'm not giving you thirty seconds."
He attacked, and Kaelen barely managed to parry the first strike. The impact sent shockwaves through his bones, made Soulrender ring like a bell. The second strike came too fast to fully block—Kaelen deflected it but took a slash across his shoulder that burned like acid.
Behind him, he could hear Lia chanting, finishing the destabilization spell. So close. Just a little longer.
Marcus's third strike would have taken Kaelen's head off.
Lia's emergency barrier caught it instead, materializing between them just in time.
"Done!" she shouted. "Collapse initiates in sixty seconds! Run!"
They ran.
Behind them, Marcus shouted something—fury or frustration or both. But he was smart enough not to chase them. Smart enough to recognize a lost position when he saw one.
Kaelen and Lia burst out of the warehouse's rear exit with maybe twenty seconds to spare. They kept running, joining the stream of defenders evacuating to the backup stronghold.
Behind them, the warehouse groaned like a dying animal.
Then it collapsed, the main support column failing exactly as Lia had designed, bringing down the entire structure in a controlled implosion that sent a massive cloud of dust billowing into the night sky.
When the dust settled, their primary stronghold was gone. Reduced to a pile of rubble that would take weeks to clear and would be useless as a ritual site for months.
Marcus stood in front of the ruins, and even from this distance, Kaelen could see he was furious.
"Phase three is over," Selene's voice crackled weakly over the communication network. "Fall back to strongpoint beta. We regroup, we count our losses, and we figure out what the hell we do next."
Kaelen collapsed against a wall, completely spent. Beside him, Lia was shaking with exhaustion and shock.
"We just destroyed our own headquarters," she said, slightly hysterical.
"We denied Marcus his ritual site," Kaelen corrected. "We're still in this fight."
"Are we?" Lia looked at him, and her eyes were haunted. "Kaelen, we're down to maybe sixty defenders, the warehouse is gone, Marcus has barely taken casualties, and the night isn't even half over. At what point do we admit we're not going to win this?"
Kaelen didn't have a good answer for that.
Because she might be right.
They might have just lost.
They just didn't know it yet.