Before we had a chance to respond, a tidal wave of water appeared from thin air and washed them off the wall as Headmistress Aurelia appeared.

  Luceran and his dragon tumbled several times before gaining purchase and launching into the sky.

  “Come quickly!” she shouted to us.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice!” Milo said as we rushed toward her.

  She cleared a path for us with her unrivaled aquatic powers.

  In no time, we were through the gates and into the courtyard of the academy.

  Headmaster Stovall was on the other side of the academy, helping others reach the limited safety of the academy walls.

  Others who worked at the academy were funneling people toward aetheric doors leading to the other academy locations. Refugees would have to be sorted later. Many nations still didn’t want to take in an influx of people, but we had no choice but to help as many as we could now.

  As our party took in the scene around us, we looked at each other for a moment before, without a word, we turned to the stairs and headed for the walls next to Aurelia.

  We were able to help get as many to safety as possible, and we would do just that.

  —

  “Malorn, on the left,” Sirius said through party chat. “How much longer, Milo?”

  Malorn spun a flail in each hand, coated with some of the remaining entropy salt. He flipped to the left over a pile of debris and clashed with several charging quadruped nidus. Fern continued creating illusions to confuse them.

  “I’ve almost got it!” Milo replied as he put the finishing touches on the entropy wall.

  Sirius’s only reply was the whistle of another spear throw. “Bryn, what do you see?”

  “More civilians coming from there and there, nidus at their heels.” Dusk sent a shockwave into another group of nidus trying to cut off their escape to safety.

  The last hour had been pure chaos as we were fending off waves of nidus and creating channels for the few surviving civilians to flee through.

  The walls had slowly filled with more combatants as they too sought safety here. We couldn’t hold on much longer. The city was completely overrun, and the dragons had almost completely cleared the skies, leaving them unfettered to kill indiscriminately.

  “Finished!” Milo brought the chain wall over to me. It was coated in the last of the salt we had. We hoped to close off one of the paths the hordes were coming through.

  I learned that, due to merging with an entropy shard, Dusk and I were immune to its effects, which was exactly what we needed for this.

  I grabbed the metal net and jumped from the wall, diving into the rock below. Raptor’s Leap and Lithocurrent negated any injuries from a fall that distance.

  There was an alley nearby that we agreed to cut off. I sent some mental images to Dusk, who took to them with glee. She began to carve out an area of relative safety for me to work.

  I used my knives to carve slots into the rock on either side of the passage before jamming the anchors Milo gave me into the holds. They quickly melded into the walls, and I attached the chain wall to them.

  “Got it,” I said through the party, while simultaneously letting Dusk know she was good to shift back to helping civilians.

  She had saved more children than any of us. Our upgraded Lithocurrent trait granted us the ability to bring someone with us through the stone, but for some reason, hers was far stronger than mine.

  Dusk had seen it as her mission to save as many as she could, while defending those running for the academy walls.

  Asher still fought above us, and it looked like Viper had transformed into a wyvern of some kind. They were holding the dragons at bay… just barely.

  Several times Luceran had returned, taunting us and leaving a trail of destruction, but Stovall and Aurelia made it hard for any of them to get close without paying a price.

  As I returned to the walls, my tremor sense painted a clear picture of nidus running into the entropy wall, none the wiser, before being shredded to pieces by the trap. Their cores were even destroyed on impact.

  Another quake shook the foundations of Aurelith, and cracks crawled their way up the walls around us, but Stovall used his considerable power to seal them nearly as quickly as they formed.

  The others may not have been able to tell, but my senses left nothing to the imagination. The Headmasters were on their last legs, having carried this battle nearly on their own against unimaginable odds.

  Aurelia looked over to me, sapphire eyes looking straight into my soul.

  “It is time for you to go. We have done what we can… we must look to the future now. That future is not here.”

  As she finished, her body melted into crystal-clear water that washed through the surrounding area, buying time for the last few civilians to get inside the walls.

  Our team began retreating toward the aetheric door chamber.

  As if waiting for this moment, Luceran descended close to the ground before dismounting his dragon, crashing into the stone. His armor pulsed with amber veins to the beat of his cursed heart.

  He held his sword and shield loosely, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I have waited a long time for this.” He flipped his helmet visor up, revealing too-perfect teeth. “This kingdom was always meant for the Arroganes. The Velmines took it from us. It is only right that we return the favor.”

  “There is nothing left to rule. You have destroyed everything!” Sirius shouted in anger, hot tears trailing down his face.

  “Well, this kingdom was filled with your taint, and the Asharkith promised to help us cleanse it. And they have.” As he spoke, he used his sword to cut his wrist at a gap in his armor.

  Maggots and parasites flooded out before forming into what must have been his familiar — a giant Cerberus, a three-headed hound larger than any dire wolf I had ever seen.

  Dusk’s eyes locked onto the creature, ready to pounce.

  Luceran’s eyes flicked to me. “I see that you still have your orphan pet following you around. It will be nice to deal with both of you at once, to start the eternal rule of the Arroganes.”

  Almost quicker than my senses could track, Malorn lifted, drew, and fired his bow. At the same moment that Fern vanished from sight. Luceran casually lifted his shield to deflect the arrow.

  “Why are we listening to him talk?” Malorn questioned as he continued firing arrows.

  That seemed to break the moment and sent us all into combat mode.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Dusk launched straight toward the Cerberus familiar. Sirius and I charged Luceran while Milo began prepping alchemical attacks and traps.

  Malorn never stopped firing from his bottomless quiver. He had long run out of specialty arrows, and we had no time for crafting.

  When Luceran entered my aura range, his smile faltered slightly as Gravitational Entropy began its work.

  For a second, I thought I saw a flash of uncertainty, but it was gone so quickly that I could have been seeing things.

  His visor fell back over his face, and he dashed forward to meet our charge. Dust kicked up under his boots, the stones shivering beneath the impact of his steps. Sparks flew from the cracked ground as the sheer force of his presence seemed to warp the air around him.

  Sirius jammed his spear into the ground, creating ruptures in the stone that shot toward Luceran like jagged blades. He vaulted with the momentum behind the attack, his body a blur of grace and precision. The stone groaned and cracked under the strain, fragments spraying outward as he launched himself into the air.

  I sent blades at any weak points my aura highlighted, following the subtle shifts of Luceran’s stance, the micro-adjustments in his posture. His body moved in inhuman ways, contorting and twisting around my strikes with a fluidity that defied reason. Each swing of my knife met only empty air as he flowed past, almost anticipating the attack before it came.

  He spun around one of my knives and timed a jump over the rupturing ground to meet Sirius in midair. The impact echoed like thunder, a clash of metal and force that shook my arms and reverberated through the academy's walls.

  Sirius narrowly avoided Luceran’s sword, the spear glancing off his shield with a screech of metal, before he was flung backward. He tumbled across the fractured ground, stones bouncing off him as he flipped and channeled aether to recover.

  I had closed the distance during their brief exchange. Summoning my new shadow claws, I unleashed a torrent of attacks. Dark energy arced across my limbs, slashing at Luceran’s armor with the hiss of friction and sparks. Malorn’s bow sang behind me, arrows whistling through the air, and I timed my strikes to their cadence, using the rhythm to press the attack.

  Luceran moved like a predator born of nightmares, evading everything with impossible speed. He took one arrow to the shoulder, which his regeneration pushed outward in a shimmer of sickly light. I scored two hits in tiny gaps between his armor, but the damage was minor.

  Each strike I landed seemed to fuel his resolve, and I was being outclassed; every hit I made was countered with near-perfect precision. Blood painted my armor, quickly healed, leaving me streaked with red as if I were a living canvas of the fight.

  “His blade has some kind of poison,” I said in the party chat. My words were clipped, and urgent.

  Thankfully, my regeneration could handle it. I wasn’t sure if the others could fight it off with potions alone.

  By now, Sirius had recovered and created a vine shield wrapped around plated stone, a living wall of green twisting over the cracks in the ground. He moved with it like a shadow of the earth itself, parrying and deflecting Luceran’s strikes, waiting for moments to thrust his spear into vulnerable openings.

  To the side, Milo had pinned one of the Cerberus’s legs in a quick-drying substance. The cursed dog thrashed violently, claws gouging the stone and sending splinters flying as it tried to free itself.

  Its heads snarled and snapped; each mouth lined with rows of teeth glinting like jagged obsidian. This created the perfect opening for Dusk. She slashed with precise ferocity, claws glowing with aetheric energy, stacking Rend and Scar over each wound. Black, putrid blood seeped from the cuts, hissing and smoking as it tried to coagulate and heal.

  The Cerberus roared, the sound shaking the surrounding rubble. It ripped its leg free, sending chunks of the quick-drying substance flying, and one of its heads bit into Dusk’s side as she dodged. She screamed in pain, diving into the earth to regenerate as Milo stood alone, only a dozen paces from the monstrous hound.

  “Good boy… nice doggy,” Milo whispered as its attention locked on him. The massive creature advanced, claws gouging the fractured ground, saliva dripping from its snarling maw.

  He reached into his pouch and grabbed some life-infused salt. It wouldn’t do long-term damage, but it could buy him a precious moment. He dusted the air between them. The salt coated the Cerberus’s eyes and nose, halting its advance as it thrashed violently, trying to claw the substance away.

  Milo seized the moment. He launched a pair of hand crossbow bolts layered in paralytic fluid into its side, retreating to Malorn’s position as the creature staggered. Dusk reemerged, sending out a shockwave that knocked the Cerberus off balance, its limbs stiffened by the paralytic. That is when Fern joined the fight slashing with his claws.

  Sirius and I were fighting a losing battle even with Malorn’s aid. Luceran moved like a nightmare made flesh. He was faster than any human, stronger than any warrior, and every one of his movements carried the weight of unnatural power.

  His body adapted instantly to our attacks, his regeneration closing wounds almost as soon as they appeared. Every strike we landed was met with countermeasures we could barely comprehend, as though he was learning faster than we could act.

  The battlefield around us was chaos incarnate. Dust and debris swirled in the air, punctuated by flashes of magic, the hiss of blades, and the monstrous cries of the Cerberus. Stones shattered underfoot, sparks leapt from clashing steel, and the ground itself seemed to rebel against our every step.

  Luceran’s eyes burned with inhuman light as he moved. Each step, each swing, each parry was deliberate, almost effortless. He was a storm, relentless and precise, a predator born of darkness and Asharkith corruption. The world around us seemed to shrink into his rhythm, and the only certainty was that we were outmatched.

  As we continued our losing battle, I said, “We need to get out of here. He is too strong. There is no way we can win.”

  “I don’t want to agree with you…but you’re right,” Sirius replied between clashes with Luceran.

  “I’m not sure our friend is going to give us enough time to escape,” Malorn added.

  It was at that moment that Asher, in his Razorwing form, crashed into Luceran, sending them tumbling across the courtyard. Dust and rubble flew with their impact, stones cracking under the force.

  The Cerberus, which had been continuing its fight with Dusk, must have sensed the danger Luceran was in. It rapidly fled toward the site of their landing, teeth snapping and claws gouging the stone.

  Emerilia soared out of the sky and landed on a stone fragment beside us. She sent a clear mental image to all of us, telling us to flee to Fayrwynn.

  “Seems like we should listen to the wise oreowl,” Milo said, his tone half-joking but urgent.

  “My family would welcome us. Let’s go!” Malorn replied, sprinting toward the exit. Sirius turned to follow before noticing my hesitation.

  I looked back to where Asher was now fighting both Luceran and his familiar in an impressive display, but he was also taking a fair share of wounds.

  “We have to go, Bryn,” Sirius said. “He is buying us time.”

  “I… I can’t leave him. He’s family,” I barely got out.

  “If you stay, so do I.” He walked up next to me, bumping me with his shield. “Let’s give them everything we’ve got.”

  Dusk smiled, fangs glinting in the tainted light overhead.

  I dove into the stone with Dusk, outpacing Sirius to aid Asher. Dust shot out from the ground, coating the Cerberus in a fine gray powder as Dusk’s claws tore across its back, pulling it away from the fight with Asher.

  I emerged, using Raptor’s Leap to control my flight, landing with just enough space to adjust and begin attacking in time with Asher’s strikes. I added him to the party interface. His health, stamina, and aether bars appeared for me to see. He was not in good shape.

  Before I could say anything, Asher yelled, “Get out of here!”

  “I can’t leave—”

  “You can and will!” he interrupted.

  Sirius had just joined the fight. His spear sought openings while my shadow claws slashed at Luceran, creating small gaps in his armor. Asher’s short swords whistled through the air, striking between our attacks with uncanny precision.

  Luceran somehow managed to avoid nearly all of our combined assaults. He slid gracefully around our strikes, contorting his body, shifting his shield and armor to make devastating attacks glance harmlessly off.

  When Asher set eyes on Sirius, sorrow filled his gaze. “Sirius, you’re the last one. Get out of here.”

  “What do you mean, the last one?” Sirius shouted, dodging one of Luceran’s slashes.

  “Your father and brothers… they’re gone.”

  Sirius cried out in grief. The sound cut through the chaos, halting his fight as he fell back to the ground, grief-stricken.

  As if sensing Sirius’s despair, Luceran laughed. It was a cold, cruel sound that carried across the courtyard.

  “I told you the time for the Arrogane’s rule has come. With your coming death, the Velmine line will be ended,” he continued, laughing again.

  Before he could finish, Asher launched himself back into the fray, attacks renewed with ferocious intensity. Steel and aether collided in a symphony of violence as the battlefield shook under the weight of their power.

  “Take him and run!” he said one last time to me.

  Looking at the state of my best friend and the news we had just received, I knew I had to get him out of here. No matter how much I wanted to stay.

  Dusk had managed to hold her own against the Cerberus, but not without injury. At my command to retreat, there was no hesitation from her, which I had never experienced before.

  I gripped Sirius, who was too torn with grief to move on his own, and dove into the earth using Lithocurrent to make our escape. I surfaced at the end of the courtyard and turned back.

  The last thing I saw was Luceran’s sword piercing straight through Asher’s chest. Emerilia let out a cry from the skies above that shook my soul.

  Tears fell freely from my eyes as I opened the door, and we ran toward the Fayrwynn, keyed the aetheric door.

  Malorn and Milo were waiting for us, having already keyed in the coordinates. Their grief was apparent, having heard everything through the party interface and seen Asher’s readouts vanish upon his death.

  We stepped through the door and into the Fayrwynn woods, leaving behind a world that no longer existed.

  As the doorway shut behind us, we collapsed as a group, grief washing over us in full.

  The last thing I saw before exhaustion and sorrow overwhelmed me was Elorian and the survivors of his team running toward us.