The slaughter did not slow.
Beatriz moved like a living blade through the chaos, her extended spear cleaving through armor and bone as if they were parchment. Hobgoblins—towering brutes that would have terrified a veteran platoon—fell in halves before they could even raise their weapons. Every slash was calculated, every thrust exact, never a wasted motion.
A massive warhammer whistled toward her from behind. She did not even glance. One subtle step to the side and the steel head passed harmlessly through empty air, missing her by less than an inch. She did not allow even a scratch upon her.
More poured from the camp's inner barracks, howling war cries. She stood still for the first time, her helm tilting upward. The gold-veined light in her form flared—an almost imperceptible hum building in the air.
Then she jumped.
The force of her leap sent cracks spiderwebbing through the ground, bodies tumbling from the shockwave. She shot upward so fast she seemed to vanish entirely into the glare of the sun.
Silence fell for the briefest instant.
Then her shadow appeared overhead—spear aimed directly at the heart of the camp.
She dived.
The air itself screamed as she descended, her speed a golden blur. A breath before impact, she vanished from sight entirely—only to reappear in a blinding flash at ground level.
The explosion ripped the world apart.
The camp's center erupted in a dome of dust, flame, and shredded timber. The shockwave blasted goblins and hobgoblins into the air like rag dolls, their bodies snapping on impact with the ground. The earth split in jagged fissures, tents and palisades collapsing as the tremor tore through the camp and into the surrounding forest.
Where she landed was no longer ground—just a crater rimmed with fire and strewn with pulverized corpses.
---
Far beyond the gate, Darran and his men were gaining distance through the trees, stumbling more than running, their breaths ragged.
The sudden quaking of the earth nearly threw them from their feet. Birds erupted from the canopy in panicked flocks, and a deep, resonant boom rolled across the forest like the toll of a war god's bell.
They froze—only to find a fresh nightmare in front of them.
A patrol. Half a dozen hobgoblins and a dozen goblins, all bristling with weapons, blocking the narrow animal trail.
The two groups stared at each other in breathless stillness. The enemy shifted uneasily, as if unsure whether to attack or demand surrender.
Then the ground shook again—harder this time.
The rumble came from behind them.
Darran turned just enough to glimpse the camp through the gaps in the trees. He saw the rising column of dust and flame, the silhouettes of the walls shattering inward.
When he looked back to the patrol… most of them were gone.
Some had simply vanished—thrown aside by the quake or crushed by falling debris from the forest. The few that remained had already broken, fleeing deeper into the undergrowth without a word.
Darran didn't hesitate.
"MOVE! Keep running!"
The survivors of his company surged forward again, pushing past the place where their enemies had stood moments before.
His mind burned with a single thought he couldn't shake.
That thing.
That woman.
She couldn't be from here.
He had heard the stories—the monsters from the unknown continents that had come more than a century ago. The things that cities still whispered about in the dark. Creatures that left nothing but craters and ash where kingdoms once stood.
And now he wondered…
Had they just unleashed another?