The ground split.
Not all at once, but in agonizing cracks and shudders, like the land itself groaned under the weight of ancient sins.
Marcel barely had time to shout a warning before a rift tore open before him, swallowing beasts and men alike into a chasm lit by a sickly, greenish glow.
Screams filled the air—not from wounds of flesh, but from the terror of falling into something unknown.
Tarin grabbed Marcel by the collar and yanked him backward just as the ground under his feet crumbled.
"Stay alive!" Tarin roared, voice raw. "We hold together or we die alone!"
They stumbled back toward the more stable ground, regrouping with Lira and Veyla. Emberjaw snarled, his massive claws digging into the quaking earth to keep from slipping.
All around them, battle lines shattered. Order collapsed.
From the cracked earth, the second army rose.
They were not beasts.
They were not men.
They were something else entirely.
Twisted shapes dragged themselves into the dying light—hulking abominations with half-rotted hides, fused bone armor, and eyes like sunken coals. Some bore remnants of old weapons grafted into their limbs, as if they had been forged for war and then buried alive.
The first of these horrors lunged at a cluster of warriors. Blades and arrows punched into its flesh—but it barely flinched, swinging a massive, malformed arm to crush three men in a single blow.
"New orders!" Captain Velka Renn shouted, her voice slicing through the chaos. "Form defensive rings! Prioritize survival!"
Magic crackled violently now. Lightning leapt from the hands of desperate mages. Fire blossomed in wide, frantic bursts.
But it was not enough.
These things—they were older than beasts, older than any enemy Mireholt had faced.
A primal terror seeped into the hearts of the living.
---
At the command post, General Blackmane barked into the fray. "Focus the front! Hold the gully walls! If they reach the camp, we're finished!"
Commander Halrix, blood streaming from a gash in his forehead, stabbed his sword into the ground to steady himself. "Where did these come from?" he snarled.
Elder Vess alone seemed unsurprised. His eyes closed briefly, whispering old words lost to most.
"They were buried for a reason," he murmured. "We forgot. Now the debt is due."
---
Marcel could barely breathe, the shard in his palm burning hot enough to sear. Visions battered his senses:
A black city crumbling under siege.
A king bound in chains, whispering to something beneath his throne.
A ritual unfinished.
The meaning hit him like a hammer:
This battlefield was a tomb.
And someone... had opened it.
He staggered, gripping Tarin's shoulder for balance.
"They're not just fighting us," Marcel rasped. "They're fighting to finish something they started centuries ago."
Tarin's eyes narrowed. "Then we end it before they do."
"How?" Lira snapped, slashing another beast-thing across the neck. "We can barely hold the line!"
Marcel forced the words out, heavy and sure:
"We find the one who woke them."
All eyes turned toward the distant hill—where the blind old man still stood. Unmoving. Watching. Smiling.
---
Around them, the nightmare worsened.
The beasts—terrified of the new horrors—turned on their former allies in sheer panic. Roars became shrieks. Herds broke apart. Some tried to flee, only to be dragged into the newly torn chasms by skeletal claws.
The battlefield devolved into an every-creature-for-itself massacre.
Above, the skies darkened further—not from clouds, but from something swarming high in the mist. Black, winged shapes circled, waiting.
"We need to move!" Veyla shouted over the din, Emberjaw crouched low and ready. "Before we're trapped between two fronts!"
Marcel nodded, grim.
He could feel the shard pulling him forward—toward the hill, toward the old man, toward answers.
"With me!" he bellowed, rallying those nearby. Warriors responded instinctively, clumping toward him: ragged survivors with bloodied armor and broken weapons, but fierce light still burning in their eyes.
They had seen the worst. They had survived it.
They would not break now.
---
At the rear, General Blackmane slammed his axe into a charging abomination, splitting it in half with sheer force.
He turned to Velka, Halrix, Ellan Vest.
"You see them," he growled, pointing to Marcel's group carving a path toward the hill. "They move to the root of this. We cover them."
Velka grinned, teeth bared like a wolf.
"Finally. A real target."
The elite of Mireholt surged forward, shields locking, magic roaring, carving a brutal corridor through the chaos.
---
Marcel ran, side by side with his siblings and Veyla, straight into the heart of the madness.
Toward the ancient evil stirring awake.
Toward the old man whose smile deepened as they came closer.
Around them, the gully burned and bled and screamed.
But ahead—on that blasted, cursed hill—the true battle waited.
And what rose from beneath might not just decide the fate of the battlefield.
It might decide the fate of Mireholt itself.
__________________________________________
Marcel stumbled as the air thickened—heavy, charged, almost sentient.
The shard in his palm flared violently, its heat searing up his arm.
A cold message cut through the chaos and rang in Marcel's head, a razor of logic in a battlefield of madness.
> [Warning: Catastrophic Entity Detected.]
[Threat Rank: SS-Class | Domain: 8th]
[Recommendation: Disengage Immediately. Survival Probability: 3.7%]
Marcel gritted his teeth.
The shard pulled at his mind, harder now—no longer whispering, but demanding.
Visions blurred his sight: shattered thrones, seas of blood, power unbound.
The shard promised strength beyond imagination—at the cost of his soul.
The shard was reacting to the entity action ahead.
He fought it.
> [Alert: Shard Corruption Rising — 14%]
Tarin fought near him, hacking down a mutated beast with savage precision.
"Marcel! Stay with us!" he barked.
"I'm trying," Marcel rasped, staggering forward.
He wasn't sure if he spoke aloud or only thought it.
> [Alert: Shard Corruption Rising — 18%]
[System Note: Prolonged exposure will result in permanent overwrite.]
---
All around, the field had become a killing ground.
When the rift split the earth, every low tier D-rank and lower fighter both human and beast alike had been the first to fall.
The energies ripped their bodies apart, their souls shredded in an instant.
Thousands wiped away as though they had never existed.
Now only the Mid tier D rank and higher remained—bloodied, battered, and badly outnumbered. Some C rank died immediately. They couldn't bear the force of the rift coupled with the exhaustion of the battle before the rift appeared.
And the path to the old man was a gauntlet:
Twisted beings with acid-dripping maws surged from the fissures.
Dead zones of warped magic floated in the air, shredding anything that passed.
Collapsing earth turned footing into a deathtrap.
Every step cost blood.
Every breath tasted of ash and fear.
---
Atop the far hill, the old man waited—silent, immovable.
He was no ordinary enemy.
The truth hit Marcel in a flash of system-fed knowledge:
> [Entity Designation: Unknown.]
[Historical Record: City of Hollow Crown — Destroyed by the Nine.]
[Status: Awakened Artifact Guardian.]
[Warning: Entity is not bound by mortal laws.]
The Nine—those ancient powers most people still feared and revered—had betrayed him just like the did their Creator trust.
Burned his city to cinders.
Chained him to an endless death.
Now, he had returned—not just to fight, but to end everything.
---
The shard on Marcel palm pulsed hungrily.
It wanted him to surrender.
It wanted him to become something else.
> [Alert: Shard Corruption Rising — 22%]
Marcel drove his blood-slick boots into the broken earth and pushed forward.
One step. Then another.
Not for glory.
Not for power.
For Mireholt.
For the friends still standing beside him.
---
The mist thickened.
The rift widened.
The ground beneath them cracked open with a groaning shriek as something massive stirred in the deep.
Not just beasts.
Not just corruption.
Something ancient.
Something hungry.
...
The system flared again:
> [Immediate Threat Escalation: Cataclysm-Class Ritual Initiated.]
[Six Minutes Until Event Horizon Engulfment.]
[Shard Corruption Rising — 29%]
Tarin slashed down another abomination, panting.
"We don't have time!" he roared.
Veyla, her face pale with exhaustion, urged Emberjaw into a desperate charge.
The beast snarled, flames wreathing its broken form.
The last handful of Mireholt's warriors surged behind them, a tattered, bleeding line.
---
The old man lifted his staff.
The mist solidified into towering figures behind him—hulking shapes formed from grief and rage.
The battlefield groaned as the very land twisted against the living.
Marcel felt the shard tear at him, trying to rip free, to take control.> [Warning: Critical Threshold Approaching — 34%]
Marcel screamed—part fury, part defiance—and raised his weapon.
"FORWARD!" he shouted, voice raw.
Tarin, Lira, Veyla—they charged with him.
Toward death.
Toward fate.
Toward whatever waited in the mist beyond.
And from the hilltop, the old man smiled.
The first of the colossal guardians stepped forward, each stride shaking the dying land.
The battle hadn't even truly begun.