The mud swallowed every step of the crusaders. Blood, incense, and sweat mingled beneath their boots as they advanced blindly through the abyssal gloom.
The chants had fallen silent. The banners still stood, but they were far from symbols of victory; they were tattered, shredded remnants barely distinguishable within the density of the night.
And after the arrival of that demonic presence, the armed host had been drastically reduced. The survivors of the first assault, those who had managed to regroup, and those who still possessed enough strength to wield steel gathered into formation.
—Hold the line! —a cleric bellowed, but his voice was swallowed by the void.
A savage roar thundered from beyond the thicket, followed by several more. The beasts charged the vanguard once again. This time, however, the crusaders did not panic.
—Now!
A flash of mana tore through the mist. Sir Edran burst into the front line, severing claws and fangs before they could reach the infantry. Behind him, Lyra raised her glowing hands.
—Get back!
A bolt of lightning tore through the foliage, dispersing the shadows for an instant. The soldiers caught glimpses of ancient trunks, monstrosities, corpses, and dozens of silhouettes moving with deadly precision.
—Left flank!
Kara blocked a thrust with the shaft of her spear and spun around, driving it through the throat of a beast that had breached the shield wall.
—Don't break formation!
This time, the Heroes operated in unison. Edran and Lyra opened corridors through which the army could advance; Tamara held back the charges with bursts of fire and lightning; Delora moved among the troops, neutralizing specimens that broke through the vanguard; and Keitaro moved in flashes of arcane light, rescuing wounded soldiers and repositioning them several yards behind the lines, out of the forest's reach.
Above them, Mark flew over the swamp on the back of his griffin, harassing the enemy from the air while Eleonor covered the flanks.
And Emily... Emily could barely catch her breath. Maintaining a dome of Holy Light over the center of the column, she endured the constant assault of the darkness. Every impact reverberated through her mana core.
—Emily! —Kara shouted when she saw her falter.
—I can hold it! —she replied through clenched teeth.
She could not yield. If the dome collapsed, the infantry behind her would perish in the darkness.
A short distance away, Arnos assessed the course of the battle. Covered in mud and with his armor battered, he could feel his divine mana running low, but he remained standing.
—Don't pursue the creatures! Maintain cohesion!
One specimen attempted to leap upon the command post, but Tamara obliterated it with a fiery blast. Another shadow emerged behind the troops, only to be intercepted immediately by Delora. For the first time during the incursion, the Crusade was advancing without disintegrating.
However, when Arnos looked back, he grasped the brutal reality: they were not conquering ground; they were merely surviving.
The wounded filled the carts, the priests were unable to keep up with the healing rites, and the physical exhaustion was absolute. Meanwhile, the enemy remained the undisputed master of the shadows.
—Arnos! —Mark warned from above. —More waves of creatures are approaching from the north!
Arnos clenched his fists in frustration. It was maddening to fight an adversary that did not even need to reveal itself to tear their ranks apart.
—Retreat! —he ordered.
The command spread in an orderly fashion. The Heroes secured the rear: Emily erected a final wall of light, Kara and Edran held the perimeter, and Keitaro continued evacuating the maimed. The troops surrendered ground step by step, executing a methodical withdrawal.
When they crossed the border marker again, silence descended upon the forest. The soldiers collapsed into the mud, overwhelmed by exhaustion and despair.
A priest stared at his palms, stained with dried blood, and whispered:
—How many casualties...?
Another cleric finished the count in a low voice, his face turning deathly pale.
—More than half the contingent.
The officers were unable to determine how many had fallen to the beasts' fangs and how many had been swallowed by the mist, consumed beneath the demonic pressure that had swept through the camp like a scythe.
The figure froze the air. Of the colossal armed host that had arrived at the borders of Mondring, only an exhausted fraction remained. And the territory of House Douglas remained impregnable.
Arnos closed his eyes and exhaled heavily.
—The campaign is not over.
—How can we possibly continue? —a high priest asked in horror.
Arnos fixed his gaze upon the wall of darkness.
—Because the divine command remains in effect.
Emily felt a sharp pang in her chest. Defeat would not halt the Crusade; it would merely alter the way the war was fought.
Arnos faced the Heroes coldly.
—We will withdraw beyond the darkness's sphere of influence. We will establish containment fortifications, secure the supply lines with the kingdoms, and devise a method to breach their defenses.
Alejandro tightened his grip on his sword with renewed determination; Leonardo silently nodded. Kara and Emily kept their eyes lowered.
Emily understood what no one dared to say aloud: the Crusade was learning. And every tactical adaptation meant that the next incursion would claim the lives of more men from House Douglas, more crusaders, and more innocent lives in a slaughter that threatened to consume everything.
Silence followed the retreat.
It was not a peaceful silence, but the oppressive weight that settles over a place where thousands of men have stopped breathing.
Miles from the territory, the survivors regrouped in a makeshift settlement. The formations had vanished: the golden banners lay submerged in the swamp, and the campaign tents sagged beneath the weight of the wounded. Priests wandered silently among the ranks.
Of the ninety-five thousand souls who had begun the march, fewer than forty thousand remained alive. More than half the host had been left behind; some had fallen in the slaughter, others had deserted in panic, and many had vanished into the shadows of the Eternal Night.
To the high command, the assessment was unanimous: the incursion had been an absolute failure. And the Douglas domain remained impregnable.
A priest fell to his knees in the mud.
—It can't be... —he sobbed.
Another cleric heard him and replied in a broken voice:
—The gods promised us victory.
No one spoke. They all shared the same horrifying certainty: the gods had not walked beside them; they had simply sent them to the slaughterhouse.
Arnos sat beside a dying campfire. His breastplate was shattered, and a makeshift bandage covered half his face. Around him, the Heroes kept watch in silence. Emily stared at the wounded, her heart constricted; Kara kept her fists clenched until they went numb.
No one celebrated the retreat. This had not been a conventional battle; it had been a categorical warning.
And, at the summit of the celestial plane, someone finally understood the true nature of the disaster.
Far above the firmament, beyond the reach of mortal eyes, Velryon opened his eyes.
He had overseen the battle from its beginning. He had watched his legions advance; watched his chosen ones fight; witnessed the Demon Queen cross the enemy ranks and watched the Douglas lineage repel the assault.
But one particular disturbance surpassed his concern over the losses.
The darkness.
Velryon extended his right hand and projected an arcane mirror of the Douglas territory: the Eternal Night burying the mountains, the mist winding through the fiefdoms, the fortifications, and, lurking beneath every inch of earth... a divine presence.
The god stared at the projection without blinking.
—Kheris... —the name emerged like a frozen curse.
For the first time, Velryon grasped the factor he had overlooked: that abyssal density did not originate from Lusian's mana or the secret techniques of the Douglases. It belonged to Kheris. The fallen god had spread his domain across the territory, draining and distorting the celestial blessings.
Velryon clenched his palm. He saw his soldiers weaken as they crossed the border; saw sacred mana suffocate in the unnatural air and the Heroes forced to fight defenders who, outside the darkness, would never have been able to maintain such a relentless pace of combat.
He understood the scale of the problem: it did not matter how many men they recruited, how many Heroes they summoned, or how fervently they proclaimed their devotion. As long as Kheris's domain covered the land, any mortal crusade was doomed to annihilation.
A hint of caution replaced the arrogance on Velryon's face.
—So this was your game... —he murmured.
He understood his mistake. He had commissioned mortals to slaughter one man, unaware that another divine entity was watching over his existence. And as long as Kheris remained intertwined with Lusian, no human crusade would achieve its objective.
Velryon closed his eyes.
—In that case, I do not need another mortal host.
He opened his hand.
—I need to tear Kheris from that plane.
The celestial vault began to tremble.
And, for the first time since the Crusade had begun, Velryon stopped looking toward the Duchy of Douglas.
He looked toward the forest.
Toward Kheris.