Storage Room C was colder than the rest of the depot, its stone walls lined with shelves and crates stacked three high. Dust clung to the corners. Most of the boxes were sealed with wax runes, labeled in tight, looping script.

  Lina pried one open. Inside: five distinct components some metal, some crystal, some too complicated to name on sight.

  She stared at the parts, expression flat.

  “How does Herr Halwen expect children to assemble this?” she muttered.

  “This isn’t a twelve-year-old’s idea of fun,” Lina muttered, squinting into the box. Her hands rummaged past wires, crystal panels, and what looked like a miniaturized mana battery pack.

  Beside her, Vierna had already unfolded the manual. Her eyes scanned the page with surgical precision, brow furrowed.

  A soft pulse came from the page. When she placed her palm against the activation sigil, a glowing projection unfolded in midair—a step-by-step illusion showing the proper assembly.

  “Lina please pass me the arc lens”

  “The arc what?” Lina asked, frowning as she held up a curved metal piece.

  “The arc lens,” Vierna said while pointing, “it looks like a crescent with three socket points, like a claw, but smooth. The prongs face inward. It catches the ambient mana and refracts the image.”

  Lina squinted at the part again, then gave a short nod.

  “Oh. Yeah, okay, here it is your nerdiness”

  She handed it over without protest, watching as Vierna locked it into the triangular base.

  Not exactly simple. But not overwhelming either. With the projection guiding her, Vierna’s hands moved with more confidence. Each component clicked into place, one after another, the design starting to take shape as she followed the rotating diagrams.

  After a few minutes, the scrying eye device stood upright—sleek, polished, with faint runes humming beneath its surface.

  “This looks like the one we had in the lab,” Lina said, tilting her head.

  “Only one way to find out,” Vierna replied.

  A voice rang in both their heads. Sharp, unmistakable.

  “Are you done yet? I want the projector set at the meeting hall now.”

  Vierna exhaled slowly.

  “Well. Here goes nothing.”

  The two of them lifted the device and hurried toward the meeting hall, footsteps echoing down the polished stone corridor.

  The two of them ran, boots striking stone in sync as they weaved through the pulsing artery of the depot. The hallway was alive with motion—levies dragging crates, researchers checking sigils, someone shouting about a broken seal on a mana battery. Boxes scraped across the floor. Boots thudded. Voices overlapped.

  A handler snapped at two children near the corridor wall

  “That’s the wrong ammo type! Do you want the cannons to misfire?”

  One of the kids flinched, the other just nodded and started reshuffling the crates with trembling hands.

  A research assistant passed by hauling scroll-bundles, another grunted as she rolled a barrel of stabilizer toward the hospital wing.

  No one made room, but everyone moved with purpose.

  By the time they reached the meeting hall, Vierna’s breath was ragged and Lina was muttering about elbowing the next person who blocked her way.

  Halwen stood near the central table, surrounded by maps and rune-slates. He didn’t greet them—just extended his hand.

  Vierna passed over the device.

  Halwen barely glanced at it before nodding once. “Good.”

  He placed it at the center of the table, muttered an incantation under his breath, and tapped the top glyph with two fingers.

  The scrying lens flared to life. Then the war came into view.

  The herd had arrived.

  From the raised vantage of the wall, they appeared first as a ripple—dust and motion smudging the far horizon. But then the shapes emerged. Dozens. Hundreds. A tide of muscle, claw, and rippling arcana.

  Arkmarschall Leopold and the entire Unterkreis Division had already departed for their designated position. The Saturation Ray had been fired after the first defensive line was completed, its beam cutting through the grayish sky.

  Then they saw the mana beasts.

  Creatures spat from the depths of the Seventh Circle of Hell—mangled, deranged things that only half resembled canines. Crystallized bones jutted from unnatural angles, tearing through what little flesh clung to them. Some parts of their bodies were simply unfinished; bare bones carried their own weight outward where muscle should have been.

  The face was worst of all. A half-smile carved across the remnants of a canine’s jaw, as if the gods themselves mocked creation by shaping such a thing from mana.

  They limped, yet somehow moved unnaturally fast. Each lurch sprayed drool, saliva, and strips of half-eaten meat from their mock-smiling jaws, leaving a trail of carrion as they bounded forward on broken limbs.

  Larger forms lumbered behind them—hulking shapes that mimicked gorillas or chimps, but stretched too tall, too lean, as if their bodies had been pulled past breaking. Patches of stone and jagged quartz burst from their shoulders and forearms, veins of crystal splitting skin and muscle like growths that didn’t belong. Their claws sparked with residual mana, arcs of charge crawling over broken nails and shattered fingers that had fused into talons.

  Worst were the eyes. They didn’t blaze with fire but with something sharper—awareness. A predator’s gaze trapped inside a warped shell of stone and flesh, too focused, too knowing. As if whatever intelligence had shaped them still lingered, staring back through the ruin.

  A shardback leapt ahead of the pack—its spine a jagged ridge of pale green crystal, its mouth splitting open in three directions when it howled.

  The line of mana beasts surged forward, half-crawling, half-charging, their screeches echoing like a broken choir.

  General Berbaris stood at the barricade, eyes narrowed. Then, without turning:

  “They’re here,” he said. “Prepare the Orgelkanone.”

  Several Oberkreis mages peeled from the rampart lines, converging on a runic enclosure near the gun platform.

  The Orgelkanone—Einhartturm’s teeth.

  It resembled a clustered battery of organ pipes, each barrel reinforced with spiraling glyph-work and mounted on a swiveling carriage of stone and bronze. Unlike traditional cannons, it didn’t rely on powder-based explosions—too risky near mana traps. Instead, each barrel was spell-anchored, calibrated to detonate in precise, controlled bursts.

  Twenty small-bore launch tubes, aligned in a flat, single row, designed not to pierce—but to shred. Rapid ripple-fire.

  A weapon built for one thing: mass erasure.

  The mages began calibrating the angle, mana humming through their limbs as they traced firing sequences into the platform runes—fluid, practiced, grim.

  General Berbaris’s voice cracked through the winds.

  “SEND THEM TO HELL!”

  The Orgelkanone came alive with a searing hum. Then—detonation.

  A rippling volley burst from the clustered barrels, spell-bound rounds tearing across the field like arcane hail. The front ranks of the mana beast horde disintegrated—flesh shredded, limbs torn, crystal shards flying like shrapnel.

  Smoke belched from the weapon’s maw, clouding the kill zone in gray and red.

  The Oberkreis mages didn’t pause. Glyphs flared at their hands as they reloaded with practiced speed, resetting firing runes, adjusting elevation, reengaging targeting protocols. Another volley screamed outward.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The mana beasts thinned under the relentless rhythm of fire. Dozens fell, then hundreds—but it wasn’t enough.

  Some still made it.

  Snarling forms bigger, faster broke through the torn front and plunged into the minefield.

  The Aschezug commander barked—

  “Crossbowmen, at the ready!”

  Dozens responded at once.

  The Aschezug Division crossbowmen—adults, teens, even children—raised their enhanced weapons in sync. These weren’t ordinary crossbows. Reinforced with mana channels etched into the limbs and stock, each one could fire not just with precision, but in arcing volleys like longbows of old. The enchantments adjusted flight curves, tuned velocity mid-air, and stabilized the bolts against wind drift. These weapons had been refined not for hunters—but for war.

  The air shimmered faintly as mana gathered. Their weapons pulsed softly—ready. Fingers twitched over triggers. Eyes narrowed.

  They waited.

  A single breath stretched across the line.

  Then—

  “Release!”

  The sound of hundreds of triggers clicked like clockwork.

  Bolts soared—rising as one into the darkening sky, then curving downward in a lethal rain. They fell not like arrows, but like the judgment of a silver moon. Cold. Unwavering. Unforgiving.

  When they struck, they did not simply pierce—they tore. Dozens of mana beasts buckled where they stood, the enhanced bolts exploding with concussive force on impact. Smoke and crystalized gore splattered the kill zone. Still the bolts kept falling, streaks of death beneath the sky.

  Far behind the line, inside the depot’s command hall, the scrying lens flared—broadcasting the slaughter in real time. The room was silent save for the low hum of the device, the eerie glow washing over every face.

  Both Lina and Vierna stood near the projector, watching with wide eyes. The way the Orgelkanone fired—precision ripples of force—followed by the synchronized wave of crossbow bolts arcing high into the sky, it was almost beautiful in its coordination.

  It was like watching a symphony—only the instruments were loaded and the notes could kill.

  Then Halwen’s voice snapped them back.

  “Don’t just stand there. We need to contribute.”

  Lina spun on her heel, pointing toward the side corridor.

  “Tell the everyone at Storage B to prepare Orgelkanone ammo and crossbow bolts. Secure the boxes and get them ready to transport to the front!”

  Halwen’s gaze shifted.

  “Vierna. Go to Storage Room C and craft additional scrying-eye devices. I want full battlefield coverage—every corridor, every wing. Take a few of the children with you. Anyone idle.”

  “Move!”

  Just like that, Vierna and Lina bolted from the room, already splitting to carry out their orders.

  Outside, the volleys continued without pause. The Orgelkanone fired in perfect rhythm—each barrel reloading and rotating in tight mechanical unison. Crews worked with clockwork precision, cycling charges and aligning glyphs so fluidly that not a single breath passed without a shot in the air. Death fell in staggered rhythm, an unbroken roar of steel and spellfire.

  And yet it wasn’t enough.

  The tide kept pressing forward. The mana beasts did not waver. They were like a wave crashing against a jagged shore—only this wave was a wall of claws, fangs, and crystal-forged rage.

  They surged across the killing field in staggering numbers. Though hundreds fell, torn apart by concussive bolts and rippling salvos, more spilled over their corpses. Halfway through the minefield now. Close enough to see the glint of their eyes. Close enough to smell the reek of burnt flesh and scorched mana.

  On the wall, Rellgardt narrowed his eyes, watching the battlefield like a hawk. Then, he gave the signal.

  “It’s time, Cannon crew—fire at will. Target the center minefield.”

  The wall cannons were heavy iron constructs reinforced with silver-threaded runes along their barrels. Wider than a man’s shoulders, they squatted atop stone turrets like dormant beasts. When they fired, the air cracked like thunder.

  One after another, the cannons roared to life.

  Smoke belched skyward, thick and oily, cloaking the upper battlements in swirling gray. Below, their shells slammed into the herd’s belly—detonating amidst the mass of beasts. Flesh and crystal burst in unison. But then, the herd answered.

  The mana beasts began firing back.

  It wasn’t elegant. It didn’t need to be. Fireballs, stone hurls, rudimentary quills of hardened bone—anything they could launch, they did. The air turned violent, lit by crude magic and propelled shrapnel. Spells flared like wild stars, smashing into the barricades.

  On the walls and across the forward line, shield chants rose like a chorus of survival. Layered sigils bloomed to life, catching the incoming barrage in ripples of glowing light. Some shattered under pressure, others held just long enough for countermeasures to prepare.

  At the frontline, General Berbaris raised his hand.

  “Ghestalt’s Piercing Lance.”

  A vast runic array shimmered into being above the first layer, concentric circles rotating like celestial wheels, etched in black and red. The runes bled light, not bright but seething, pulsing like slow heartbeats of a buried god. Then came the weapons.

  One by one, spectral javelins slid into view emerging from the spinning runes as if drawn from mana itself. They hovered in place, angled downward, each one trembling with contained wrath. Rows upon rows, too many to count, suspended above the battlefield like the poised teeth of some colossal predator.

  Then it happened.

  They fell, not like lightning, but like divine punishment. Sharp. Unstoppable. Like the spears of forgotten gods cast down to reclaim a cursed land.

  Even as spectral javelins rained down from above, the mana beasts answered with their own crude fury. Fire bloomed from open maws, wild, unfocused gouts of flame that scorched trench lines and lit up barricades. Others conjured water, turning dirt to mud, soaking sigils and slowing movement. Sharp boulders erupted from the ground or were hurled like cannonballs, smashing into hastily raised cover. Some of the beasts, too simple for spell-work, simply grabbed whatever they could, broken timber, corpse limbs, torn metal and hurled them over the lines like savage artillery.

  The air turned violent. Flame collided with arcane barriers. Ice shards slammed into mage wards. And over it all, the spectral lances continued to fall, slicing through the chaos like divine razors—answering madness with annihilation.

  Staff sprinted between trenches and barricades, arms full of ammo crates and elixir satchels, their boots slipping on blood-slicked soil. The air was thick with shouts—some commands, some curses, all frantic.

  “Be careful with those mana grenades, you idiot!”

  “Where’s that damn ammo?!”

  “Damn piece of shit gun’s jamming again!”

  “I need a medic! Now!”

  It was chaos but with a hint of rhythm. A grim ballet of loading, patching, casting, screaming. Every second counted. Every delay cost blood. Smoke from the cannons hung low like a choking fog, and the ground trembled with each volley—mana, steel, and fury colliding in waves.

  The depot’s pulse hadn’t slowed. If anything, it beat faster now.

  “Get those crates to the outer corridor, now!”

  Lina snapped, her voice cracking above the grind of wood and metal.

  “I want those bolts sorted by type and ready for glyph sealing in two minutes!”

  Several test subjects jolted at her tone, though they still moved with a delay. The sorted bolts were checked again by the adult staff, who nodded curtly before sending them down the line. Overseeing everything were a handful of researchers in crisp coats, eyes flicking between charts and clipboards as they monitored runes and inventory flows. They didn’t stop Lina. They didn’t interrupt. They simply watched, taking notes, allowing her to lead the other test subjects without interference.

  After all, this was Einhartturm—where even the act of supplying a battlefront doubled as data collection. Multi-tasking wasn’t just expected. It was doctrine.

  Lina’s eyes narrowed. She never raised her voice at the researchers. But at the test subjects—her own kind—she didn’t hold back.

  “If we’re late, Herr Halwen’s going to make us his dessert.”

  She conjured a waterskin with a flick of her rune, took a quick gulp mid-shout, and tossed it aside without breaking stride.

  Then she dropped into a crouch beside one of the crates, yanked a sealing rune from her belt, and slapped it onto a half-packed case of bolt tips.

  “Like this,” Lina said

  “Rowed and braced. You’re not just stacking vegetables. These things explode if you misplace them.”

  She didn’t bark that part. She said it while helping, sleeves rolled, fingers fast. The test subjects hesitated—then moved faster.

  A few meters away, unnoticed by most in the chaos, Vierna worked differently.

  Vierna didn’t yell like Lina. She didn’t need to.

  While orders and curses bounced across the depot halls, she kept her head down and her hands moving.

  This was her third scrying eye today. The process had become muscle memory—arc lens, power coil, resonance prism. Click, rotate, seal. Click, rotate, seal.

  A few research staff worked alongside her, quieter but quicker. The other test subjects hadn’t been asked to assemble—just deliver. Most waited by the doorway, watching nervously, their gloves smudged with crate dust.

  One or two of the staff paused now and then to glance at Vierna. They didn’t speak, but their eyes followed her movements—precise, fast, careful. Pens scratched lightly against their tablets, jotting down observations in quiet shorthand as they watched her work.

  A shadow loomed at her side.

  One of the class-mutants, skin etched with visible graft lines—offered her a waterskin. He gave an innocent smile

  “Thank you,”

  Once the device was done, humming faintly with active glyphs, she stood and handed it carefully to the boy.

  “Take this to the southern corridor. East stairwell. Ask the handlers there where to place it. They'll know.”

  The boy nodded once, clutched the scrying eye with cautious reverence, and disappeared into the hall.

  Far from the clamor of the depot, where crates clattered and orders flew, the southeastern flatlands stretched quiet and pale beneath the rising mist.

  Arkmarschall Leopold rode ahead, his black half-cape snapping behind him. His armor was dulled to avoid reflection, but the pauldrons still bore the sigil of House Einhart. He was followed by a contingent of Silberschade knights

  A scout signaled from the left flank.

  “Sir—one o’clock. Another cluster of beasts. Larger, but close.”

  Leopold didn’t flinch.

  “Albrecht. Deal with it.”

  The lead knight peeled away, spurring their mounts without a word.

  Albrecht rode ahead of the group, his steed galloping low and fast across the brittle field. Then, without a signal, without a stir, he moved.

  In one seamless motion, he stepped onto the saddle, rising with a grace that defied the chaos beneath him. The horse didn’t slow. The wind didn’t catch him. He simply stood, tall, poised, as if the world itself had paused to accommodate the gesture.

  His silver armor caught the dying light, trailing tattered ribbons of dusk behind him. His half-cloak rippled like torn parchment in a silent breeze. From afar, he looked like a silhouette carved from metal and shadow, gliding over broken ground with the elegance of a ghost who knew he was being watched.

  Then he raised one hand. As he closed his eyes he called the spell’s name

  Regulus’s Punishing Stars.

  The sky above the cluster of mana beasts dimmed, not with storm clouds, but as if some ancient curtain had been drawn across the light. In its place, pinpricks of white shimmered into being—thousands of them—like a starry night etched into a dome of shadow. Yet the stillness felt unnatural. The stars were like eyes watching from above, silent, waiting to judge.

  Then, from that silence, a single point of white broke away.

  One fell. Then another. Then countless others followed.

  It was like a hard rain, but instead of raindrops, it was stars. White and mysteriously calming, their descent was silent. Anyone seeing the spell for the first time might have mistaken it for mere theatrics.

  When they struck their targets, there was no explosion, no sound to signal pain. Yet every mana beast they touched collapsed instantly, as if the light had reached inside and snuffed out something essential.

  Albrecht lowered his hand. The light vanished.

  He sat back down on the saddle in one fluid motion and turned his horse around, trotting back toward the group with the same silence he had left them in.

  Leopold raised a brow.

  “Next time, spare the theatrics.”

  “Yes, Arkmarschall.”

  The reply was obedient. The outcome inevitable.