The training yard smelled of sweat and iron and the faint, sweet smoke of Helios' embers. Sam stood in the center of churned earth with Indra curled in his arms and the phoenix perched on his shoulder like a living ornament. Vlad leaned against a practice post, arms folded, the scar along his jaw catching the pale light. Around them the city moved in a slow, careful rhythm—smiths at the far forge, Moon Mages checking ward arrays, cavalry riders tending their wolves—but here, in the yard, the world narrowed to a single, bright thing.
Sam held the small disk between two fingers. It was heavier than it looked: a Champion Token, white and black braided through its metal like a promise and a threat. He had not shown it the moment the roulette had stopped; he had kept the shock private, folded it into plans and contingencies. Now, with the raid teams moving and the lattice still humming in the distance, he let the secret out.
"I spun the Daily Gift Roulette," he said, voice steady. "It gave me this."
Vlad's eyes went sharp. "A Champion Token?" he said, as if the words were a blade. Helios ruffled his feathers and peered at the disk with molten curiosity. Indra's ears pricked; the cub's tail flicked once, a small, eager motion.
Sam nodded. "We need every advantage. If this works, it changes the calculus."
He set the token on the ground and stepped back. The air around them tightened, as if the world were holding its breath. White light and black light split the sky above the yard—two columns that cut through cloud and fog and fell like twin spears. They struck the earth and uncoiled into a shape that was both impossible and inevitable.
Two massive black wings unfolded in the air, feathered and shadowed, and a figure descended between them. Long white hair streamed like a banner; armor the color of fresh snow wrapped a body that was taller than any man Sam had seen. A claymore hung at the figure's back—black as night and longer than a man was tall. Black chains coiled around gauntlets, catching the light and turning it into a promise of pain.
When he landed the ground seemed to take a breath. He was almost three meters tall, a presence that made the training dummies look like toys. He knelt with a motion that was both ceremonial and casual, and his voice when he spoke was a bell struck in a deep, empty hall.
"I am Fallen Angel Gabriel," he intoned. His eyes opened and golden light met Sam's like a blade finding its mark.
Sam felt something in his chest unclench. He inclined his head. "Rise," he said.
Gabriel rose and looked over the yard with a soldier's appraisal. When his gaze fell on Vlad he laughed—a sound like thunder and old wine—and then he moved with the speed of a man who had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Gabriel did not approach with the stiff formality of a summoned champion. He strode, and when he reached Vlad he swept the Blood General into a bear hug that crushed armor and pride in equal measure. Vlad's arms went around him, not in resistance but in the practiced, dangerous intimacy of two warriors who had bled together.
"Calm down," Vlad grunted, half laugh, half warning. Gabriel only laughed harder, the sound bright and unashamed.
Sam watched them and laughed too. The sight of two hardened fighters greeting like old friends—one a towering, winged champion, the other a man who had made iron obey—was absurd and human and exactly what the yard needed. Helios chirped, a small sunburst of sound, and Indra pressed his forehead to Sam's chest as if to anchor himself in the moment.
Vlad wiped his face with the back of his hand and explained, between grins, the long, complicated history. "We fought on the Never Ending Battlefield," he said. "Together, against each other, sometimes on the same side. It's where Champions go to be forged. You can fight your way to demigod there, or you can… do what we did. Raise an Overlord. Make bargains. It's ugly, it's glorious, and it's honest."
Gabriel's grin was a slash of light. "You always did like the messy routes," he said. "But you did well, Blood General."
Vlad's reply was a grunt that meant more than words. The two of them traded a dozen small stories—half boasts, half apologies—while Sam filled Gabriel in on the more immediate facts: the lattice, the node strikes, the partial freeing of the Nightmare Bear, the raid teams in motion. Gabriel listened with a soldier's attention, eyes narrowing and widening in the right places.
Sam introduced Helios and Indra properly. Gabriel inclined his head to the phoenix and the tempest cub with a curiosity that was almost tender. "Plenty more?" he asked, glancing at Sam with a smile that suggested he understood the weight of bonds and the economy of power.
"More than I can greet," Sam said. "And not enough time to do it properly."
Gabriel's expression softened. "Then let us be efficient," he said. "Tell me what you need."
Sam laid out the situation in a few, precise strokes: the lattice's nodes, the hub deeper in enemy territory, the raid teams already committed—Tide with Dionysus and the Nightmare Bear pushing toward the hub, Vlad to lead a feint and destroy a nearby node, and the city's defenses that needed a steady hand. He asked Gabriel to hold the domain's heart—wards, morale, and the main line—while the strike teams moved.
Gabriel's answer was a single, sure nod. "I will watch the city," he said. "Let your men move. If Girlock presses, I will be the blade that cuts him down."
Sam asked the question that had been burning at the back of his mind since the token had landed: what did Gabriel bring to the field?
Gabriel obliged with small demonstrations. He let a flare of light bloom in his palm—pure, clean, like a sun held in a fist. He then let shadow gather and curl around the light, a blackness that did not swallow but sharpened. He breathed and the air chilled; a whisper of cold that smelled faintly of graves brushed the training dummies. He snapped his fingers and a small ember leapt into being, then died.
"I have affinities," he said, voice low. "Light and dark. Death and fire. They are tools, not masters. And there is a thing I call the Sword God."
Sam's eyebrows rose. "Sword God?"
Gabriel smiled, a small, dangerous thing. "A state. Not a god, not truly. A focus of skill and will. When I invoke it, my sword becomes an extension of fate. I read motion, weight, intent. I can cut through defenses that would stop ordinary men. But it costs. It drains me. Use it too long and I am a husk. Use it without purpose and you waste what little mercy the world affords."
He demonstrated a microburst of the skill—no full invocation, only a taste. His claymore moved like a thought, parrying a dozen strikes in a breath and redirecting their energy into a single, precise counter. The dummy's head came off with a clean, clinical motion that left no gore, only the echo of inevitability.
Sam listened and weighed the cost. A god‑level swordsman who could be spent like a candle was a terrifying asset and a fragile one. The tactical implications were immediate: Gabriel could anchor the line, break a charge, or cut a leader down in a single motion—but Sam would have to guard the champion's reserves and choose the moments of invocation with care.
Sam had intended to send Tide with Vlad to destroy a nearby node as a feint. He had to revise that plan.
"Tide is already committed," Sam said. "He's with the hub team—Dionysus and the Nightmare Bear. I can't pull him off that mission."
Gabriel's brow creased, not in irritation but in calculation. "Then we adapt."
Sam assigned One to Vlad's mission as the rune specialist. One was not Tide—no one was—but he was steady, precise, and had the kind of cold, methodical mind that could hold a rune under pressure. A Vasuki clone would accompany Vlad for heavy lifting and to carry back any node cores they could not destroy outright. A Moonlight flank would provide stealth and extraction.
Vlad accepted the change with a soldier's shrug. "I'll take One," he said. "We'll make it quick."
Sam handed Vlad a small token of trust—an iron seal that would let him call for immediate extraction if the mission went sideways. Gabriel promised to watch the city and to intervene if Girlock pressed too hard. The plan was messy and dangerous and, Sam thought, exactly the kind of thing that might work.
Gabriel asked to test the bonds. Sam agreed; the yard was a better place to learn than a battlefield where mistakes cost lives.
Helios and Indra moved first. Helios summoned a small Solar Halo that hummed like a distant bell; its light warmed the air and made the shadows sharp. Indra became wind and teeth, Wind Walker making him a blur as he struck with Lightning Fang. Gabriel did not move like a man; he moved like a blade that had learned to think. He read Helios' arcs and Indra's gusts and met them with a parry that was both light and terrible. He redirected Helios' halo with a sweep of his claymore and let the light spill harmlessly into the sky. He met Indra's storm with a death‑touched edge that sapped the cub's feral hunger for a heartbeat.
The bonds learned in the exchange. Helios adjusted his timing; Indra learned to bait and punish. Gabriel's microbursts of Sword God reflexes—small, controlled—showed Sam how the champion could be used without burning him out. The champion's strikes were not merely force; they were lessons in motion.
Dionysus watched from the parapet, silk legs folded, eyes like black glass. She made a small, approving sound. "Useful," she said. "He reads motion like a spider reads a web."
Sam felt the possibilities unfurl. Gabriel could be the anchor that let his strike teams move with less fear. He could be the blade that cut a charge in two. But he was also a resource to be guarded, a weapon that could be spent.
The test came sooner than anyone liked. Scouts reported a pack of enhanced predators—hill wolves swollen by the lattice's aftershocks—moving toward the outer wards. They were a threat to the foraging lines and a test of whether Gabriel could integrate with Twilight's forces.
Gabriel volunteered. He moved like a storm, wings folding and unfolding in a motion that made the air sing. He led a small intercept: Moonlight riders on wolfback to flank, Sunrise riders to pin, slimes to harass at range, and Gabriel at the center to break the pack's will.
The fight was quick and brutal. Gabriel braided light and shadow into each strike—fire to corral, death‑touched edges to sap feral will, and a final, sweeping claymore arc that cleaved the pack leader in two. The wolves scattered; the remaining predators fled or fell to coordinated cavalry strikes. The Moonlight and Sunrise squadrons moved like a single organism, slimes spitting corrosive globes to slow and blind, wolves leaping and biting, riders finishing with blades.
When it was over the field smelled of iron and singed fur. The troops cheered, a raw, human sound that rose up and warmed the yard. Gabriel sheathed his claymore and looked at Sam with a small, almost private smile. "Not bad," he said.
Sam felt the morale lift like a tide. The presence of a champion had changed the tone of the defense; it had made the city feel less fragile.
Tide's hub team reported progress and constraints. One and Tide's reconnaissance data refined the lattice map: two remaining nodes and a central hub deeper in enemy territory, heavily guarded and ritualized. The hub was the heart; cut it and the lattice would falter. Fail, and the enemy's tier boosts would only grow.
Sam laid out the options again: a full raid on the hub (high risk, high reward), continued node strikes to bleed the lattice (attrition), or a feint to draw forces while a small elite team infiltrated the hub. Gabriel recommended a feint plus spearhead: Vlad's node strike would draw attention while Tide's committed hub team—Dionysus, the Nightmare Bear, Tide, Shade Assassins, and a Vasuki clone—pushed toward the hub under Gabriel's distant cover.
Sam weighed the risks. Tide could not be recalled; the hub team was already in motion. The hybrid plan was the only one that balanced risk and reward. He gave the order.
"Vlad will draw their eye," Sam said. "Tide's team will push the hub. Gabriel, you hold the city. If Girlock moves, you cut him down."
Gabriel's golden eyes were steady. "I will be the blade," he said.
Orders were signed, signals set, and extraction windows carved into the night. Sam handed Vlad the rune‑sealed token that would call for immediate extraction if the mission went sideways. He gave Gabriel command authority over the ward matrix and a rune‑sealed key that let the champion open and close certain defensive channels.
Sam took a quiet moment with Helios and Indra. He ran his hand over the phoenix's warm feathers and felt the cub's small, fierce heartbeat against his chest. "Guard them," he told Gabriel, more to himself than to the champion. Gabriel's hand closed over his forearm in a warrior's pledge—callused, sure.
Vlad grinned and mounted his wolf. One took his place as rune specialist for the node strike. Tide's hub team—already formed and moving—checked gear and tightened straps. The Nightmare Bear paced, restless and dangerous, and Tide moved among the men with the calm of someone who had made peace with risk.
They left in two columns: Vlad's force a quick, sharp spear toward the nearby node; Tide's team a darker, slower shadow moving toward the hub. Gabriel watched them go, wings half‑unfurled, and then turned his golden gaze back to the city.
As the last riders vanished into the fog a bell tolled from the hub's direction—an unnatural, arcane sound that rolled across the land like a warning. Gabriel's expression did not change, but his hand tightened on the hilt of his claymore.
"That bell," he said, voice low. "It is a ritual alarm. Either they call their forces to arms, or they trigger something worse."
Sam felt the old, familiar spike of fear and the steadier, newer thing that had grown in its place: resolve. Twilight had a champion, a freed bear, and two strike teams moving into the teeth of the lattice. The cost would be high. The stakes were higher.
Gabriel turned his wings and cast a long shadow over the yard. "Then let them come," he said. "We will be ready."
The conversation closed on that promise—on Gabriel's silhouette against the pale dawn, on the wolves vanishing into fog, and on the thin, bright edge of hope that Sam had summoned into being.