A rain washed over the battlefield—but instead of water, it was blood, bodies, and bones. The line held. Not by strength alone, but by the will of those who stood in its way—and the steady trickle of supplies flowing from behind.
The herd, once like sand across a beach, began to waver. With most Cloakers slain, cohesion crumbled. Mana beasts turned feral. Some gnawed on fallen kin. Others snapped at anything that moved—even their own. A different fur color was all it took to provoke blood. But the Saturation Array still burned, and that meant most of the horde still surged toward it—like flies to a rotting carcass.
General Berbaris finally looked around him. Tired faces, drawn tight with focus. Cracked armor held together by straps, cloth, and stubborn will. Hands trembling from exhaustion still reloaded muskets. Lips muttered spells through dry, cracked mouths.
Supplies hadn’t blinked in through shimmering arrays—they had been dragged by hand, through blood and ruin, by those far too young and far too small for the burdens they bore.
He had wanted to pull them back. But doing so now would mean asking some to lay down their lives while others fell back. It risked breaking the hard-won solidarity holding the line together. And once that snapped, it wouldn’t matter how high the walls stood or how deep the trenches ran. A force without unity was like a body without bones—bound to collapse under its own weight.
Hours passed. And the fatigue hit harder than tooth or claw.
Child soldiers dropped not from wounds, but from the weight of their own gear.
Senior mages vomited blood between castings. The shield wall buckled in places, its bearers too tired to lift their arms. Medics collapsed beside the wounded, too spent to move.
And yet, while the body failed, the spirit endured. A boy propped up his musket, arms trembling helped by another too weak to stand. A maimed soldier hurled himself into the horde with a live grenade clutched to his chest. One man, unarmed, half-blind sank his bare hands into the throat of a screeching beast and didn’t let go.
It was clear to everyone if nothing changed, they would break and die. It was like accepting one’s inevitable fate: that death comes to us all, embracing everyone in its ever-loving arms.
But such a cold embrace was denied by a single, blinding light on the horizon.
Unlike a falling star that grants wishes, this light came not from the sky, but from the ground— signifying that wishes don’t fall from starry heaven. They rise from scarred earth. Such light could only mean one thing.
The Arkmarschall had slain the evolving daemon.
Berbaris reached out with his mind. “Rellgardt. Do you see that flare?”
“Yes. It’s finally over.”
“Yeah, finally. Now kill that damn bonfire. We’ve already got enough campers out here.”
Like moonlight swallowed by a veiled sky, the Saturation Array dimmed—then vanished. Only the red, broken moon remained.
With the beacon gone, whatever cohesion the mana beasts had left unraveled in an instant.
As the final mana beast was pierced through by a spear, there were no cheers. Only the thud of bodies and the rasp of breath. The ground cold, blood-slick, hard felt like a feather mattress to those who had survived.
Not far from the front, Vierna and Lina lay on blood-soaked soil. Their hands were blistered from burdens too old for them to carry. Their feet bled, washed in red and brown sludge. Lina fell asleep the moment her back hit the ground. But sleep didn’t come as easily for Vierna.
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Under the grim light of the red moon, with the stench of blood and rot choking her lungs and gore staining her skin, she couldn’t stop thinking of the orphanage.
It had been warm. Comfortable. No one let her bleed or collapse from exhaustion there. If only it hadn’t been tainted by pitying gazes and masked compassion, it might’ve been perfect. It should have been perfect. But she couldn’t bear the lie of it.
The blood-soaked moon, fractured and red, was more beautiful than any she had seen before. The stench of rot and iron stirred something in her chest something deeper than the warmth of a shared meal at the orphanage. Here, in this place where she moved until she could no longer, there was a certain honesty. Not the kind wrapped in pity, but the kind carved from brutal truth: that it didn’t matter who you were, what you'd lost, or where you came from only that you served.
This place was where Alice—her real name—died, and where Subject Number 4, servant of House Einhart, Vierna, was finally whole.
Sometimes, a brutal truth is better than a sweet lie.
And as her wholeness settled into the hollow Alice left behind, she remembered what she was meant to do.
Serve.
The battle was over. The screaming had stopped. But suffering hadn’t.
With a strength born of that clarity, she rose.
She staggered toward the battered supply trolley, one wheel sagging and frame splattered with dried blood. She grabbed a leather waterskin.
But she didn’t drink.
She walked. A thirsty teen received the water. An injured mage got his bandages tightened. A fainted child was covered with linen.
While the battlefield slept, Vierna stayed awake—serving in every small way she could.
The battle had ended. The defense had held.
Leopold rode ahead of the Silberschade, his armor still caked in the blood of the evolving daemon. He made no turn toward the gates of Einhartturm. Instead, his path angled north, toward the line that had borne the weight of it all.
What greeted him was carnage.
Mangled mana beasts, their mutations grotesque and still twitching, lay torn by every method known to man. Some were riddled with crystal-tipped bullets. Others had been frozen mid-charge, their corpses shattered by concussive force. A few had been impaled—by conjured pikes, by jagged earth, by makeshift spears forced through gaps in scale and bone.
Scattered among them were the dead of Einhartturm.
A boy with his ribs exposed, teeth marks still fresh. A woman torn in half, her upper body still clutching a crossbow. Faces that were no longer faces—just pulp beneath beast claws. The stench of blood and ruptured flesh hung thick, but the worst part was the silence.
Past the bodies, beyond the pools of carcasses and bile, stood what remained of the shield formation.
They hadn't broken.
Their line held even now—collapsed where they stood, leaning against each other, some barely conscious, some still gripping shields slick with blood. Not all were alive. Not all were dead.
Leopold dismounted. His boots sank into the blood-soaked ground as he approached. General Berbaris met him halfway, helm under his arm, armor split at the shoulder, face smeared with soot.
“Arkmarschall.”
Leopold’s eyes swept the battlefield
“Let them rest where they are,” he said.
Berbaris nodded once.
Beyond the formation that had laid itself to sleep beyond the grunts, the shallow breaths, the quiet weeping of those too stubborn to die—Leopold saw it.
A small figure moved between bodies, barely more than a silhouette in the blood-drenched dark. Her hair caught the fractured moonlight, silver against the rot. She carried no rank. No banner. Only a waterskin and linen, soaked with old blood and effort.
She tied makeshift tourniquets. Covered shivering shoulders. Adjusted fainted soldiers. Like she didn’t know how to stop.
“Vierna,” he said.
The figure stopped.
She turned. And in that moment, he saw not the half-dead child from the reports, not the trembling girl someone had dragged here but a light that didn’t flicker.
Her eyes didn’t ask what he needed. They waited for orders.
“You serve House Einhart well,” Leopold said, “now I command you.”
He paused.
“Sleep.”
She swayed, just once. Then lay down. Collapsed like a marionette whose strings had finally been allowed to go slack.
She curled against the earth, cheek against mud and blood, breathing slow and even. At last, sleep came—quiet, gentle—embracing her from behind like a mother holding a long-lost child.
Leopold said nothing for a moment. His gaze lingered on the collapsed figure curled in the dirt—mud-streaked, bloodstained, unmoving.
Then, without looking away, he spoke.
“Gather everyone at the plaza. Tomorrow afternoon. I have an announcement to make.”
Berbaris gave a sharp nod.
He turned, mounted his steed once more, and began the slow ride toward the inner citadel. The Silberschade parted silently for him as he passed.
Berbaris followed behind.
The breeze of the night wind passed over the soldier. Carrying them deeper into their slumber
Which is Better? Vierna or Alice?
