Winter crept through the guild hall like mold cold, unwelcome, impossible to ignore, but... normal?The door groaned open, and every head turned. For a second, the room went quiet, as if someone important had arrived.
Then they saw him.
Armon limped in with a dead beast over his shoulder, blood crusted on his cheek, wounds poorly wrapped with shredded cloth. Rather than heroic he looked like someone who shouldn't have survived.
A burst of laughter broke the silence.
"Look at that! And here i thought it was a real hunter," someone called out.
A boot slammed into his ribs before he even had the chance to set the corpse down. The kick didn't knock him because it was strong it knocked him because he had nothing left. He hit the floor hard.
He forced out, "Stop."
More laughter.
"Stand up then. It's not that serious, right?"
They laughed because they knew he would. A routine for him.
Armon pushed himself off the floor, swallowed the pain, and walked to the receptionist without another word.
Armon pushed the head across the counter. It left a smear of blood on the wood.
The receptionist didn't even look at the corpse first. She looked at him.
"Another hunt? Or did someone finally take pity on you and carry it for you?"
The insult hit him—
and suddenly he was knee-deep in mud again, breath tearing in his chest, three goblins shrieking behind him.
No sword. Just the snare buried under the leaves.
The rope snapped tight.
A neck broke like wet wood.
Silence.
Then the guild hall slammed back into place—laughter everywhere.
"Yeah," Armon said flatly. "I did."
The receptionist sighed loudly, counting the coins one by one, exaggerating every movement as if paying him was a personal offense.
"You're a disaster, Armon. One day you'll go out there and never come ba—"
The bell tower cut her off — a single, shrill strike.
Then another.
Then chaos.
Hunters froze mid-laugh.
Someone swore.
Someone ran for the door.
A guard shoved through the entrance, panting, armor scraped and smoking.
"Rift! Dozen's! At the north wall! It's not closing!"
The guild hall erupted. Benches toppled. Boots thundered. Every man who mocked him suddenly became a hero in their own head, shouting orders no one listened to.
The receptionist pushed the coin pouch toward him with a shaking hand, not looking at him anymore — too terrified to.
For a heartbeat, Armon just stood there.
The bell kept ringing.
People kept screaming.
He could stay.
He could rest.
He could pretend none of this involved him.
But the north wall meant the merchant district.
And the merchant district meant the orphanage.
Armon grabbed the pouch, turned, and ran.
Armon sprinted through the streets, vision blurring, every step sending pain up his ribs. The bell kept ringing — too fast. Too familiar. It sounded exactly like the day his parents died.
Not again. Not again. Not again.
He cut through the market square, ignoring the armored patrol shouting at civilians to shelter. Smoke already curled over the rooftops. A second bell tower joined the first.
He ran faster.
The orphanage door was already open when he reached it — not broken, just open, swinging gently in the cold wind.
That was worse.
Armon staggered inside. "Father Beron!"
The children were huddled in the chapel room — crying, praying, covering their ears against the bell. The priest stood in front of them, one arm raised, chanting stabilizing scripture, a barrier spell barely holding the walls together.
Beron turned the second he saw Armon — not surprised, not frantic, just relieved.
"I knew you'd come."
Armon wanted to say something brave, something confident. What came out instead was, "I can't—I can't lose anyone else."
Beron walked toward him without hesitation. His hand rested over Armon's wounds, and golden light flickered — weak, strained, nowhere near enough to fully heal. But the bleeding slowed. The pain eased just enough for movement.
"That's all I can give," Beron whispered. "You'll have to survive on your own strength now."
Armon swallowed hard. "What do you need me to do?"
Beron didn't smile. He didn't sugarcoat it.
"Every adult here will stay to protect the children. We need someone outside — someone fast, someone who knows the streets, someone who doesn't freeze when he's afraid."
Armon's hands shook. "I'm not— I'm not good enough for this."
"That has never mattered," Beron said, gripping his shoulders. "What matters is you always run toward danger, even when you're terrified. That's what the city needs right now."
A roar shook the building — something massive hit the east gate.
Children screamed.
The bells rang faster.
The protective chant faltered.
Beron leaned close. "You don't have to defeat the rift. You only have to buy us time."
It wasn't courage that pushed Armon to the door.
It was terror — sharpened, focused, weaponized.
He stepped back into the burning streets.
The streets were already a battlefield.
Torches rolled across the dirt. Wagons overturned. Bolts fired from the walls into the darkness beyond the gate. Goblins crawled over the outer ramparts like insects, shrieking with anything but fear.
A patrol of town guards sprinted past Armon, battered and bloodied.
"We can't hold the wall!" one shouted. "Fall back to the inner quarter!"
Then Armon heard something worse than the scream of a goblin — the clatter of a portcullis chain under load, struggling to drop… and failing.
He saw it: four guards braced around the winch, not pulling down, but holding the chain back, muscles trembling, trying to slow the descent of the gate rather than power it. The portcullis was halfway down, but something was wedged beneath it, forcing the winch crew to ride a line that could snap their arms clean off if they lost control.
If they released the brakes before the jam was cleared, the gate would crash crooked and break — and after that, nothing would stop the horde.
Armon didn't think. His body moved before his mind could tell him to be afraid.
He sprinted up the side stairs to the battlement. A guard tried to grab him as he passed.
"Hunters already pulled back — you go up there, you're dead!"
Armon tore free without answering.
At the top of the wall, two goblins were already behind the winch crew, claws high, ready to tear through their exposed backs. Armon didn't try to duel them — he'd lose. He ripped a loose plank from the railing and slammed it across their shins, sending both tumbling off the wall.
But more goblins were already climbing — dozens, swarming the ladders, filling the parapets.
The winch crew broke into panic.
"If we don't fall back, we die!"
"If we fall back, the gate breaks!"
No one could win that argument.
Armon's eyes snapped to the gap under the gate — the source of the jam.
A goblin's corpse wedged under the descending teeth.
He didn't think. He ran.
One goblin latched onto his arm — he used its momentum, spun, and hurled it straight into the winch gears. Bone and metal screamed. The gears lurched. The jam cleared.
The guards felt the shift instantly.
"Let it drop! Let it drop now!"
They released pressure all at once.
The chain whipped upward. The portcullis fell the final meters under its own weight.
BOOM.
The whole city shook when it slammed shut.
Silence — then a wave of goblin shrieks from the other side, claws scraping desperately against wood and steel.
For a moment, the guards just stared at the closed gate, breathless, disbelieving.
"You— you actually did it," one said, voice trembling.
But before relief could even form, someone screamed from the tower above:
"THE RIFT IS STILL OPEN! SECOND WAVE INCOMING!"
The street below erupted into new panic.
And Armon — bloody, shaking, barely standing — reached for his weapon anyway.
The words hit harder than any blow. The first attack hadn't been the invasion — it had been a scout.
A bolt of dread rippled through the defenders. Some took a step back. Some whispered prayers. One dropped his spear entirely.
Armon leaned against the battlement, lungs burning, hands shaking from adrenaline and blood loss. He could feel it — the city hadn't been saved. It had only been given minutes.
Below the wall, the gate vibrated under something slamming it from the outside. Once. Twice. The wood groaned like bone about to snap.
A captain grabbed Armon's arm. "Hunter! Reinforce the inner barrier with us! We need every fighter—"
Armon didn't answer immediately.
Because he saw it.
Beyond the rooftops, at the far northern field, the sky was splitting — not glowing, not swirling — splitting, like canvas tearing under a hot blade. Black light poured out, wrong and silent, and every instinct in his body screamed that whatever was coming next wasn't goblins.
The bells struck again. Faster. More desperate.
The captain was still shouting orders at him, but Armon wasn't listening.
He wasn't afraid of the rift itself.
He was afraid because he had seen this before — the exact kind of tear that killed his parents — and no one else on this wall recognized it.
They thought a gate was the worst danger tonight.
They were wrong.
Armon forced his voice out, hoarse and certain:
"That's not a rift surge. It's an invasion. And the goblins were only the opening."
The captain froze, eyes widening.
Far in the distance, something stepped through the tear — enormous, horned, unmistakably intelligent — and the screaming from the far watchtowers started before anyone could make out its full shape.
Armon drew a short breath. His hands bled. His body shook. He knew he wasn't strong enough for what was coming next.
But he turned toward the inner city anyway.
He had children to protect.