It happened just after two in the morning.
Inside the dropship, Aleksander was sitting perfectly still, meditating in the dark. Suddenly, the temperature in the room didn't just drop—it plummeted. A sharp, freezing spike of psychic energy slammed into the back of his mind, like a shard of ice pressing against his skull.
The perimeter spell had been breached. Multiple hostile targets. East wall.
At that exact same second, all across the camp, Bellamy, Clarke, Octavia, Wells, Jasper, and Monty bolted upright in their beds. They gasped, shivering violently as the magical tether alerted their minds to the exact location of the threat. They didn't need an alarm bell. They knew exactly what was happening.
"They're here!" Bellamy roared, vaulting out of his tent and racking the bolt of his assault rifle. "East wall! Move!"
The camp erupted into organized chaos. Aleksander and Bellamy were the first to the perimeter, rapidly kicking the designated guards awake and dragging them to the firing positions.
Murphy, Jasper, and Atom scrambled up onto the elevated wooden platforms Bellamy had built along the inside of the wall, their hands shaking as they leveled their heavy rifles through the firing slits.
Outside the gates, the forest was pitch black. But they could hear it.
It sounded like an earthquake. A deep, rhythmic, terrifying thundering of hooves tearing across the dirt, rapidly closing the distance to the camp.
"I see them!" Murphy yelled, his finger hovering over the trigger as massive, shifting shadows broke past the tree line. "Fire!"
The deafening roar of automatic gunfire shattered the quiet night. Muzzle flashes lit up the perimeter in strobing, chaotic bursts of yellow light.
But the delinquents immediately realized a terrifying truth: shooting a stationary wooden target stuffed with grass in broad daylight was one thing. Trying to shoot fifty heavily armored Plains Riders charging on mutated, four-legged warhorses in the dead of night was something entirely different.
The recoil kicked wildly against their inexperienced shoulders. Bullets tore through the trees, snapping branches and kicking up dirt, but the Kalkru riders were moving impossibly fast, weaving through the brush with terrifying precision.
Out in the darkness, Khal sneered at the chaotic bursts of fire. The Sky Children had the thunder sticks, but they fought like panicked prey.
Khal raised his heavy, curved scimitar, issuing a sharp, guttural command.
The fifty Plains Riders didn't charge the walls. Instead, they seamlessly shifted their formation, fanning out in a wide, sweeping arc about a hundred yards away from the camp. They were executing Khal's tactical masterpiece: using the cover of night to negate the rifles' accuracy, while utilizing their own devastating equalizer.
The Kalkru didn't just fight with blades. They were the most lethal cavalry on the continent.
As the warhorses galloped in a perfect circle around the camp, the riders seamlessly unslung their primary weapons: massive, recurved bows. Crafted from carved bone, animal horn, and mutated ironwood, these bows possessed a draw weight that would easily snap a normal man's arms.
THWUMP. THWUMP. THWUMP.
The sound of fifty heavy bowstrings snapping in unison cut through the gunfire. A suppressing rain of massive, armor-piercing arrows descended on the camp, dropping out of the night sky like artillery shells.
Up on the firing platform, Atom and Jasper looked up, their eyes going wide with absolute terror as the lethal shower of iron-tipped arrows plummeted directly toward their heads. They threw their arms up, bracing for the inevitable, bone-crushing impact.
But the impact never came.
CRACK! SHATTER! SNAP!
Ten feet above the wooden walls, the massive arrows suddenly stopped dead in mid-air.
To the untrained eyes of the delinquents, it looked like the arrows were simply destroying themselves. The heavy iron tips violently crumpled against thin air. The thick ironwood shafts bowed, snapped, and exploded into hundreds of harmless wooden splinters that rained down over the camp like snow.
Murphy slowly lowered his arms, blinking rapidly as a shower of wooden shards bounced off his jacket. He stared at the empty space above the wall in total bewilderment. "What... what just happened?"
"Did they hit something?" Atom stammered, entirely unable to process what he was seeing. "They're just... breaking!"
Down in the courtyard, Bellamy and Clarke stared up at the shattering volley in awe, realizing exactly what was happening.
The warded kinetic stones Aleksander had buried around the perimeter days ago were active. The camp wasn't just surrounded by a wooden wall; it was encased in an invisible, magical dome of pure kinetic energy. The harder the Plains Riders fired, the more violently the barrier shattered their projectiles.
Standing calmly near the gates, Aleksander watched the splinters rain down, a faint, predatory smirk touching his lips. His wards were holding flawlessly.
Out in the darkness, Khal pulled hard on the reins of his Hex-Strider, his cruel smile instantly evaporating into a scowl of pure confusion. He watched his volley of armor-piercing arrows—arrows designed to punch through solid steel—turn into sawdust before they even touched the wooden walls.
"What trickery is this?" Khal snarled, his tactical mind stalling against the impossible physics of what he was witnessing. The Sky Children didn't just have thunder sticks. They had an invisible shield.
Inside the camp, Aleksander's voice effortlessly cut through the ringing silence following the shattered volley.
"They are out of arrows," Aleksander called out to the guards on the platforms, his tone cold and commanding. "And they are confused. Bellamy, tell your men to aim lower and stop holding the triggers! Fire!"
Down on the ground and up on the platforms, Bellamy, Jasper, Atom, Wells, and Murphy adjusted their aim, firing in the short, controlled bursts Aleksander had drilled into them.
The lower trajectory paid off immediately. The deafening cracks of the rifles echoed through the trees, and this time, the bullets found their marks. Several Plains Riders were violently thrown from their massive, four-legged warhorses, their armor offering absolutely no protection against high-velocity lead.
But the Kalkru were not easily broken. They were the most hardened warriors on the continent. Shaking off the shock of the invisible barrier and the fallen riders, the remaining warriors tightened their formations. The confusion vanished from their eyes, replaced by a cold, deadly seriousness.
Adapting instantly to the gunfire, the Kalkru riders seamlessly dropped to the sides of their saddles. Using the massive, heavily muscled bodies of their mutated horses as thick, biological shields, they hung horizontally from their stirrups. From this nearly invisible angle, they continued drawing their massive bows, firing heavy arrows under the beasts' necks while remaining completely shielded from the delinquents' line of sight.
Inside the walls, Aleksander watched the brilliant shift in their tactics. The kinetic barrier would keep the arrows out, but the rifles were now useless against shielded targets. The Kalkru were going to run the camp out of ammo.
He turned to Bellamy.
"Cover me," Aleksander ordered.
Before Bellamy could even process the command, Aleksander vaulted effortlessly over the wooden wall, dropping down to the dirt on the outside of the kinetic barrier and sprinting straight into the pitch-black forest toward the charging cavalry.
As Aleksander closed the distance, he raised his forearms. Ten heavy, dark metal rings—five on each arm—suddenly flared to life.
An intense aura of deep purple and brilliant blue energy erupted from the ancient artifacts. The magical currents wrapped around his forearms, illuminating the dark forest. The sheer power of the rings surged into his body, causing the veins in his arms and neck to pulse with a vibrant, ethereal blue hue.
A Plains Rider charged him from the flank, his heavy lance lowered to impale the boy.
Aleksander didn't even flinch. With a fluid, martial arts stance, he thrust his arm forward. The five rings on his right arm detached, hovering in a perfectly straight line, linked together by a crackling field of blue and purple magical energy.
He swung his arm, using the linked rings as a massive, glowing energy whip.
The magical chain lashed out with blinding speed, wrapping tightly around the charging rider's armored torso before he could tuck behind his mount. With a violent yank, Aleksander effortlessly ripped the grown man right off his warhorse and hurled him fifty feet through the air, sending him crashing brutally into the trunk of a massive oak tree.
Two more riders flanked him, swinging their heavy, curved scimitars.
Aleksander thrust his palms outward. The rings unlinked and shot forward like artillery shells. The glowing projectiles slammed into the riders' chests with the kinetic force of a freight train, killing them instantly before snapping back to Aleksander's forearms with a sharp, magnetic clack.
He moved through the battlefield like a god of war, a blur of purple and blue light. He was completely dominating the Kalkru, effortlessly dismantling the deadliest cavalry on Earth.
While he fought, Aleksander's mind remained perfectly split, his tactical awareness constantly monitoring the delinquents back at the camp. They were struggling to track the fast-moving horses and the hidden riders in the dark.
Aleksander reached out with his magic, casting a localized Sensory Enhancement spell.
Up on the walls, Bellamy, Jasper, and Wells suddenly gasped, blinking rapidly as a rush of cool energy washed over their eyes.
"Look again," Aleksander's voice echoed smoothly in their minds via telepathy.
When they opened their eyes, the darkness of the forest was entirely gone. Their eyesight had been magically refined far beyond the ordinary human capabilities. They could perceive the exact movements of the Kalkru riders weaving through the trees, their vision piercing the shadows to spot the slivers of armor exposed behind the horses with the terrifying clarity of apex predators.
"Whoa," Jasper breathed, completely awestruck as the forest lit up for him. He raised his rifle, the sights perfectly aligned on the heel of a hidden rider.
"Don't waste it!" Bellamy shouted, adapting instantly to the magical buff. "Pick your targets! Fire!"
With their vision enhanced, the three boys transformed into lethal snipers. The heavy crack-crack-crack of their rifles rang out, dropping the hiding Plains Riders with terrifying accuracy before they could even get close enough to swing their curved blades at Aleksander.
Out in the tree line, Khal pulled hard on the leather reins of his Hex-Strider, forcing the massive, six-legged beast to a halt.
His chest heaved with rage. In less than five minutes, his grand ambush had turned into a slaughter. Twenty of his elite Kalkru riders were already dead—some ripped off their horses by a glowing blue demon, others dropped in the dark by the thunder sticks.
But Khal was an exiled prince who had tamed a monster. He didn't know the meaning of the word retreat. He gripped the hilt of his heavy, curved scimitar, his eyes burning with absolute, uncompromising fury. He wasn't going to let this end in defeat.