Captain Rian wiped his dagger on the dead wolf’s fur and flicked it, sending bck ichor spttering into the dirt. He was already sick of this. Another routine patrol, another pack of corrupted beasts. Killing them was a chore; there was no thrill, no threat. He was starting to get tired of pretending they were still worth worrying about.

  “Last one,” he mumbled to himself, already turning away.

  The thing had been fast. Now it was just another pale corpse bleeding bck into the ash, veins swollen and dark beneath sickly skin. Same as the others.

  “That’s the st of them, Captain!” A soldier called from the treeline.

  “Good,” Rian replied. “Form up. Ten minutes, then we head back.”

  His company was spread out, finishing the cleanup with precision. A few final stabs. Fme spells to cremate the remains. Nothing fancy. No injuries. No sweat.

  Rian scanned the area out of habit, letting his Aspect work for him. He activated [Panorama], the familiar pull stretching his awareness outward. He saw a Private checking bodies to his left. He saw an approaching gust of wind swaying trees a mile behind them. He saw the fading signatures of the wolves they’d just put down. But he didn’t see any more corrupted. Yet something felt different today. Not wrong, exactly. Just... quiet.

  “Clear,” Rian yelled out.

  Seraphia didn’t always look like this. Devoid of color. Layers of Ash. Swathes of dead flora. And a perpetually gloomy sky. The sight used to feel ominous. Now it was typical.

  “Another pack drifting in from the south,” one of the soldiers grumbled as he rejoined the group. “Third this week.”

  “Figures,” another replied. “We’ve been thinning the area pretty hard.”

  Rian nodded in agreement. That was the point of the patrols. Keep the numbers low. Break up anything that lingered too long. As long as the density nearby stayed low, the corrupted wouldn’t have time to gather into something more dangerous.

  It was a good strategy on paper. Worked well enough in practice, too, judging by the st year that Rian had been stationed here. It wasn’t stopping the horde problem. Just deying it. But tely, the time between attacks had been getting longer.

  He sheathed his dagger and motioned them forward. “Five minutes to burn the corpses, then we’re gone. I want hot food before the evening brawl wrecks the mess hall.”

  They moved out in a formation of three hundred, trudging through the slurry of ash and snow. The forest gradually dwindled as they headed north, dead trees giving way to dead, hilly pins. The air in this region always smelled unusual, not foul, but unfamiliar, something Rian had taken for granted in Valoria.

  Eventually, death gave way to life. The monotone scenery faded. Vibrant colors returned. Grass rose from the ground. Moss clung to rocks. Leafy trees dotted the fields. The air felt cleaner. And the sinister sky faded into a soft blue hue.

  Hytul Fortress rose ahead in the distance. The transition was abrupt. A few thousand feet outside its walls, Seraphia was dead. Inside, life was as he knew it.

  Pale stone walls reinforced with bck alloy struts. Watchtowers studded with sigils and artillery. Above it all, an all-encompassing barrier shimmered in the light—barely visible from a distance unless you knew where to look.

  Rian crossed the boundary and felt the pressure ease. The static that always fought his Aspect went quiet. The corrupted mana couldn’t bleed through here.

  He always paused for a second when the pressure lifted. Like he had to check that the world was still real on the other side.

  “Always a strange feeling,” one of the soldiers beside him muttered. “Like stepping into another world.”

  Rian had the same thoughts when he’d first arrived, but he’d gotten used to it after the first six months. More than twenty thousand lived and worked inside Hytul. Troops. Researchers. Support staff. All inside a fortress that should have been swallowed by the corruption years ago.

  Hytul wasn’t a bastion meant to recim Seraphia from the corruption. No, it was just a stronghold with the singur purpose of helping humanity understand it.

  They passed through the gate, wards fred briefly as each soldier crossed. A clerk marked their return and waved them through.

  “Captain Rian,” the clerk greeted him as he passed. The man was eating an apple, feet propped up on a crate of supplies. “Back early? Run out of targets?”

  “Something like that,” Rian said, signing the patrol log. “Sector eight is clear. Just a few scavengers.”

  “Good. Maybe the General will let us rotate out early,” the man said, still chewing. “I heard the logistics team brought in fresh meat from Aegis today. Real steaks. Not that salted leather we’re forced to eat.”

  Rian’s stomach growled at the mention. “Save one for me.”

  “You’ve got a briefing first, Captain,” the clerk pointed his pen toward the central keep. “General Hadrun is in a mood. Him and the mage are arguing again.”

  Rian exhaled his frustrations. Politics. The only thing more exhausting than a patrol.

  He left the frigid air outside and headed into the warmth of the officers’ briefing room. The fortress bustled with activity—smiths hammering out repairs, squads running drills, couriers weaving through the halls with urgent messages.

  Rian pushed the door open and walked straight into a heated argument and the smell of parchment. Maps lined the walls, with a massive magitech tactical table dominating the center of the room, projecting the Seraphian wastends with a glowing light.

  General Hardrun stood at the head of the table, a mountain of a man with a thick neck and broad shoulders. He was in his usual heavy pte that he always wore instead of an officer’s uniform.

  Opposite him stood Scarlette Zahrasia, the Archmage pced in command of Hytul’s Mage Battalion. Long, wavy red hair that converged into a single thick braid, sharp features set in a constant scowl. Scarlette was striking in every way—good posture, a shapely figure, porcein skin. The kind of presence that drew eyes wherever she went. And Rian was no exception. She shot him a gre, unimpressed. He straightened immediately and fixed his attention on the map.

  “—innovative? Hardly,” Scarlette argued, waving a hand at the map. “They’re mimics, copying giant boars and dire wolves because that is what they remember eating. Biological echoes, General. Not strategists.”

  “They are organizing,” Hadrun rumbled with a bassy voice. “Patrols in sector two reported coordinated ambushes.”

  “Just residual instinct,” Scarlette shot back. “Wolves hunt in packs. Ants build colonies. That doesn’t make them a civilization. Dammit. We haven’t had a breakthrough since that erratic woman, Bliss, got herself transferred.”

  Hadrun snorted. “I can agree on that. Bliss was crazy. But she did good work.”

  Rian remembered the woman; he couldn’t forget her maniacal ughter. She’d been the one who argued that observing the corruption from a distance wasn’t enough. Bliss wanted boots on the ground.

  She’d insisted the Bck Pools couldn’t be understood from behind wards and barriers. That samples taken at the edge were already compromised. To learn anything real, she’d said, someone had to go in. Close enough to be crushed by corrupted mana. Close enough to risk turning.

  It was reckless. Expensive. And highly productive.

  “She had eyes,” Scarlette muttered, tapping the table. “She requested a transfer because she missed her adorable little niece, who she says enrolled at Aegis. Can you imagine? Abandoning her critical research to babysit.”

  “Aegis?” A Major piped up from the side. “Isn’t the Apex Bde Summit happening right now?”

  The tension in the room broke instantly. The officers shifted, the looming threat of the war forgotten for the comfort of sports.

  “Of course it is,” someone else scoffed. “Hard to miss. Half the continent’s watching.”

  “Aegis has the edge this year,” a Captain added. “Velstrad’s youngest is fighting. Girl’s a prodigy.”

  “I agree, my coin is on the Velstrad girl,” someone said. “Victoria. Youngest daughter of a Grandmaster. She’s been trained since birth.”

  “Waste of coin.” Hadrun scoffed, crossing his massive arms. “I served with Darius Deylin. His boy, Asher? A true soldier. Fights like an experienced vet. Brutal and efficient. He’ll be a great boon to the Alliance. We could use a recruit like that here.”

  Scarlette waved a hand in dismissal. “If he survives long enough to matter.”

  A few low chuckles moved around the table. Someone started arguing numbers, dueling records, house backing, odds being traded in mess halls and guard towers alike.

  Rian leaned against the wall, listening. He’d learned early that speaking in rooms like this only made you memorable. Memorability was useful for promotions and bme. He preferred neither.

  It was a familiar sight. A room full of capable people arguing about distant glory instead of the ground beneath their feet.

  A soldier suddenly burst through the door, breath ragged. “Sirs—there is a report of a rge horde gathering from the eastern sectors.”

  The room went still. Heads turned. Then, almost as one, their gazes shifted to Rian by the door.

  “I came in from the south today,” Rian tried to shrug away the suspicion.

  Then the arms bred. A screaming wail that none of them had heard in months.

  “Standard alert,” someone muttered. “Probably another group of stragglers wandering too close.”

  General Hadrun didn’t react to the arm. He leaned forward on the table, staring down at the projection as if he saw something. “Full Report,” he asked the messenger.

  The soldier stepped forward, posture tight. “Eastern sectors reported a mass movement. Pattern matches a horde migration. Size estimate pending.”

  Scarlette groaned and threw herself into a nearby chair. “Of course it is. Every time we rex—”

  “Pending?” Hadrun interrupted.

  “They’re not engaging,” the soldier said. “They’re a small scouting ptoon. Keeping a distance for safety.”

  That statement garnered a few concerned looks.

  Hadrun looked over to Rian. “You were out there today. What did you see?”

  Rian straightened off the wall. “Nothing.”

  He stared at Rian in silence, expecting a better answer.

  “No tracks,” Rian continued. “No residuals. Just a few scattered packs. The southern sectors were mostly clear. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Scarlette frowned at him. “That’s not possible. Even scattered corrupted leave something.”

  “They didn’t,” Rian said. “Whatever’s out there, it didn’t form from the corrupted in the south.”

  General Hadrun reached for the edge of the table and shut the projection down. “Get me eyes on the wall,” he ordered, grabbing his helmet from the table. “Now.”