The following weeks became an incessant back-and-forth of skirmishes and open confrontations. Forces clashed in the dead of night, at dawn, at midday. They wore each other down, without truce or hope of surrender. Both sides were too committed: retreating first meant exposing one's chest, losing the initiative, and perhaps, the war.
After a month of constant fighting, only one order remained fixed on the strategy map: Resist at all costs.
The only stable thing on the front was the relentless advance of winter. Day by day the air grew colder, and light snowfalls began to cover the valley with a white veil. The frost now bit not only into the bones, but also into the spirits.
Dyan crossed the camp towards the commander's tent. The voices of the soldiers, once full of life around the fire, were now barely murmurs. He passed between tents where some huddled by smoking braziers, wrapped in improvised blankets, with gazes that could not lie: "I don't want to be here."
Amidst that gray climate, Volka's shouts pierced the camp like blades. Her fury was noisy, raging, but Dyan had already grown accustomed to it. It was her way of resisting.
The guards greeted him with a slight bow when he entered the tent. Inside, the tension could be cut with a dagger.
Volka slammed the table. A glass of wine overturned and the crimson liquid spilled onto the maps.
"How much longer will the reinforcements take?" she vociferated. "They promised a week! A month has passed. A month in which I have lost half of my mages."
"You're not the only one who has lost people," Lena replied coldly.
"Each of my mages is worth a hundred of your soldiers. It's not comparable."
Lena pointed a finger at her face, her eyebrows tense with contained anger. "If they were worth so much, they wouldn't be dead. Say that again and I'll punch you in your magical face."
Climberland raised his only hand, his right; the other he had lost in the first battle. "We are not gathered here to throw stones at each other. We all want this to end," he said in a grave, exhausted voice.
Dyan approached the table, leaning on his staff. The wound still burned at times, a persistent reminder of his vulnerability. He saw that Volka's hand, open on the table, trembled slightly, and he understood that the pain was not only physical.
"We must end this before there's no one left to fight," Volka said, nervously brushing hair from her face. She had deep dark circles under her eyes and pale skin. "We're not the only ones exhausted. The enemy is too. There has to be a way. Aren't you supposed to be the strategists?"
Climberland lowered his gaze. Every word pained him. His plans had yielded no fruit, and his confidence had vanished like his severed hand. Lena remained silent. Though she didn't say it, she felt the weight of failure just as he did.
"I request the floor," Dyan interjected. All eyes turned to him. "We all agree that waiting for reinforcements is useless."
They nodded in silence.
"I have a plan that could end this war, but I need at least three days."
Volka and Lena exchanged distrustful glances.
"I won't be able to fight if we are attacked in the next three days. But if you manage to draw the enemy in and bring them within my reach… I can act."
Climberland frowned. "If we are attacked in that time, your absence will weigh on everyone. Do you understand?"
"I understand. But I am willing to take the risk. The question is: are you?"
"What do you plan to do?" Lena asked. "Why do you need so much time?"
"It's a lightning spell, but not a common one. It requires more mana than I can accumulate through traditional means. I need time to gather it… and to prepare. It's not something I can cast in the heat of battle."
Volka looked at him with suspicion. "What kind of spell requires so much power? No such thing exists. I will not risk my life for an illusion."
Dyan held her gaze. "Just because you don't know it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I am a battle mage. My spells were designed for this."
Volka grabbed his tunic and violently pulled him towards her. "Battle mages no longer exist! You're lying!" Her voice broke with rage. "Do you think my comrades died in vain?"
"I didn't say it before because I knew you wouldn't believe me," he replied calmly. "But I have already demonstrated on the battlefield what I can do."
"Let him go, Volka!" Lena interrupted. "Dyan is right. He has saved us on more than one occasion. If he says he can turn this around… I support him."
Climberland cleared his throat. "Let's pray the enemy doesn't attack in the next few days. If you achieve the impossible, everything will change, in many ways."
"My master sent me here for this," Dyan affirmed. "If I succeed, the enemy will not return."
Volka abruptly released his tunic. "If you're lying, I'll kill you myself."
Dyan did not respond. He had no energy to argue or defend himself with words. He only had one certainty: time was against him, but hope, however fragile, was still alive.
Dyan's tent, though austere, was charged with the tension of the impending storm. Outside, the wind whistled through the camp stakes, and in the sky, clouds gathered with a deep murmur, as if the earth itself held its breath.
Inside, the young mage prepared himself. He wore no armor, only his dark robes of enchanted fabric and a series of glyphs he had traced on his forearm. His fingers moved with precision as he intoned the first words in the arcane tongue. Each syllable left a brilliant trail in the air, and each stroke seemed to pulse with contained force. A halo of bluish light enveloped him at times, intermittently, as if the very fabric of the world responded to his invocation.
The Scabia mages surrounded him in a semicircle, still, attentive, some with hands already raised, others with palms against their chests. All had followed Dyan in silence since the end of the first battle, and although some had feared him at first, now they respected him. Not because he was the strongest—though he had proven it—but because he had protected them, fought, and bled by their side.
"Are you sure we can't preempt them?" asked Orlec, his most loyal second, his voice tense. "If we go out now, we could gain the element of surprise."
Dyan raised his hand for silence. His eyes, once tempered like steel, were fixed on the glyphs still dancing before him. Then, without looking at them, he replied: "If we attack without preparation, they will divide us and we will fall one by one. I need time… to finish this."
"This?" whispered Volka from the tent entrance, her arms crossed. "An enchantment you don't even know if it will work?"
Dyan barely looked up at her. His face showed no offense, only a kind of weariness that seemed to come from very far away. "I don't know, Volka. But if I don't try, there will be no one left to prove it."
She remained silent. She didn't believe in invisible glories or hopes woven into the air. But she had been in enough battles alongside him to know that something in that young man had changed since the day he sent that letter. He wasn't just casting spells. He had started to write in the world.
Dyan continued, his words growing faster, denser. The glyphs began to spiral around him. His Scabia companions adopted channeling postures, joining him in a symphony of arcane murmurs.
Volka watched him from the entrance, her silhouette outlined by the flickering of the spell. The camp beyond moved with urgency: scouts returned, soldiers closed ranks, and officers shouted orders, their voices sharpened by fear. But inside, time seemed different. A strange calm, like the one that precedes the clash of two storms.
"Dyan…" Volka murmured, no longer incredulous but resigned. "If you die here, at least make it worth it."
He did not respond. But the glyphs around him glowed with a firmer pulse, as if that promise was not made with words, but with magic itself.
The hours dragged with cruel slowness, allied with the pain of sustaining so much mana in such a young body. Dyan, motionless in the center of his tent, was a candle lit in the wind, flickering but firm. Kermit watched him closely, in case anything happened, while the Scabia mages prepared in silence, tense, awaiting the trumpet that would announce the end of their truce.
When night fell, the accumulated mana was such that waves of energy escaped through the folds of the tent, leaving behind a vibrant hum that traversed the entire camp like a premonition. A trickle of blood slid from Dyan's ear. He did not blink. He continued reciting unintelligible words, almost forgotten by history, and tracing arcane letters with his finger in the air, which lit up like floating embers and then dissolved in a luminous dance.
Kermit approached with a cloth to wipe his ear, barely touching him.
"Are you sure you want to take this risk, my lord?"
Dyan looked at him. His face showed neither fear nor weakness, only the carved stone of duty. In that shared silence, pierced by the footsteps outside, by the gazes of trembling soldiers and contained anguish, there were no certainties. Nor was there an alternative.
On the second day, the exhaustion was evident. His eyes glowed with an unnatural light, as if a storm resided within them. Blood flowed from his ears and tear ducts with alarming frequency. Kermit and Orlec took turns cleaning him as best they could, but approaching Dyan was increasingly dangerous. The energy he radiated caused nausea, dizziness, fainting; a corporal who entered out of curiosity fell unconscious after two steps. No one tried again.
Even so, he did not stop.
The mages gazed at him with an uneven mixture of surprise, fear, and reverence. It was an otherworldly spectacle, from a forgotten time.
Before nightfall, Lena thought of going to see him. But when she approached, Orlec stopped her with a firm gesture. From the entrance, she barely managed to see his silhouette: a shimmering body under a trembling light, with traces of dry and fresh blood sliding from his eyes like dark ink tears. She pressed her lips together, her throat tight, and retreated in silence.
The dawn of the third day was broken by the metallic cry of the trumpet. This time, it surprised no one. The hosts marched to meet the enemy with hardened faces. In the camp, only a handful of guards and Kermit remained, standing firm at the tent entrance.
When Dyan emerged, it was already midday. The combatants had not returned. If the camp was still standing, it was because the battle still raged. He walked slowly, leaning on his staff. His body seemed to drag the weight of another world.
"Kermit... I can't see well. Take me to the battlefield."
His voice was a bitter whisper, an agonizing sigh.
The steed guided by Kermit emerged like a black shadow among the trees and tents, without fanfare. In the distance, the roar of combat mingled with the echoes of accumulated tension. Steel against steel, shattered shields, broken cries. For Dyan, however, everything reached him as if from a submerged cavern. His heart beat to its own rhythm, thrumming in his temples.
"Leave me in the rear. Then cast a thunderclap spell. They must flee."
Kermit nodded in silence.
When the young mage dismounted from the steed, he could barely stand. And yet, he did. Between the moment Kermit cast the thunderclap spell and the warriors began to retreat, Dyan became a solitary figure. Soldiers passed him as if he were a ghost. The enemy, confident in their victory, broke ranks and rushed after them, roaring.
Dyan raised his hand.
No one heard him.
No one fully saw him.
There he was: a silver-haired boy, soaked in sweat and blood, his figure barely a silhouette on the horizon. Facing a sea of enraged enemies.
The words barely left his lips, like a secret prayer to the abyss, like a plea to sustain him before an end:
"Have mercy on me..."
And then, the sky split in two.
A tide of black clouds covered the firmament, and a curtain of lightning fell like a fire curtain upon the earth. The discharge was not a lightning bolt: it was a deluge of light and death. From a distance, the allies only saw a blinding flash and then, the thunder. An explosion so violent that it knocked them to the ground, drove a shriek into their ears, and left the earth trembling beneath their feet.
The lightning intertwined like maddened silver serpents, descending in an infinite net. For what seemed an eternity, the world became only light, sound, and ash.
And then, silence.
An icy rain began to fall, as if the sky finally exhaled after so much pain. The water struck the steaming armors, creating a cloud of ghostly vapor over a ravaged field. The enemy's bodies were little more than charred shadows; some, simple piles of dust.
In the midst of it all, Dyan lay sprawled. His body soaked, his eyes open, bleeding. The skin of his right hand—the one that held the spell—had peeled away to reveal raw flesh. He breathed. Barely.
But he breathed.
And in the center of that devastation, the ancient magic returned to sleep.