Chapter 25
SERIS
The resistance hit the capital’s outer defenses like a hammer striking glass.
Five hundred soldiers poured down the ridge in coordinated waves, moving with the kind of precision that only came from years of training against impossible odds.
No war cries. No wasted breath. Just boots pounding earth and steel gleaming in the blood-dark light as we closed the distance between forest cover and stone walls.
I ran with Malzaun’s unit. Daemon ran to my left, Kane’s massive frame ahead, and Zephyr moved light and quick on my right. Twenty elite veterans forming a protective shell around the single point of failure in this entire plan.
Me.
The capital loomed closer with every stride. Smoke billowed from gaps in the battlements where defensive fires had spread unchecked. The gates remained closed. Heavy iron-reinforced oak met the frontal assault of warriors armed with desperation and fury.
Kaelen’s voice cut through the thunder of boots. “Battalions two and four! Flank positions! Cover the approach!”
The formation split cleanly. One hundred twenty soldiers peeled left, another hundred twenty right, moving to intercept the royal forces scrambling to respond. That left two hundred forty charging straight at those gates like a spear aimed at the kingdom’s heart.
Arrows darkened the sky before we’d covered half the distance.
The first volley fell in a deadly rain. Soldiers raised shields instinctively, but iron points found gaps. Bolts landed on necks, legs, and the space between helm and pauldron. Bodies crumpled mid-stride. The charge didn’t slow.
We stepped over the fallen and kept moving.
Climbers broke from the main formation. Twenty agile Fae carrying grappling hooks and rope, sprinting ahead to scale the walls before defenders could mass properly. They moved fast, throwing hooks with practiced accuracy, beginning their ascent before the second volley launched.
I watched a young woman with braided hair reach halfway up before an arrow punched through her shoulder. She fell backward, rope burning through gloved hands. She didn’t scream. She just hit the ground with a sound that made my stomach twist and didn’t move again.
“Seris!” Daemon’s hand caught my arm as I stumbled. “Stay focused!”
But I couldn’t stop watching the climbers die. Arrows found them one by one. They dropped like cut flowers, bodies tangling in ropes or striking stone with wet, final sounds.
We had to get past this, no matter what.
Zephyr stopped running. Planted his feet. Drew and loosed arrows in one fluid motion that barely seemed to involve conscious thought.
An archer collapsed on the battlements, an arrow through his throat.
He knocked another. Drew. Released.
A second archer fell backward off the wall.
His hands moved in patterns too fast to properly track. Each motion was economical and precise. There were no wasted movements or hesitation. Just arrow after arrow sailing upward to punch through leather armor, finding gaps in helms and eliminating threats with mechanical efficiency.
Bodies dropped from the battlements. The remaining archers scrambled for cover, defensive fire faltering as they prioritized survival over accuracy.
“NOW!” Daemon surged forward, Kael materializing at his shoulder like a shadow given deadly intent.
They hit the wall together. Daemon’s hands found a steady grip in the rough stone, and Kael moved up the wall with a fluid grace as effortless as someone walking down a road.
Both ascended faster than seemed physically possible, using cracks and outcroppings invisible to anyone without years of training.
Zephyr’s arrows whispered past them, maintaining suppression fire that kept defenders pinned while our climbers closed the distance.
Daemon reached the top first. His blade flew in a horizontal slash that opened an archer’s throat before the man could cry a warning.
Kael arrived a heartbeat later, twin daggers flashing as he drove into the clustered defenders with focused brutality.
He struck vitals with ruthless precision, throwing knives that seemed to appear from nowhere at those who approached.
Steel rang against steel. Men screamed and died. Blood painted stone as two assassins transformed the defense into a crimson canvas.
“Ladder!” Kane’s voice boomed across the battlefield.
Daemon kicked the nearest siege ladder over the wall’s edge. It struck the ground with a heavy thud, and Kane grabbed it before the thing finished settling.
He climbed one-handed, war hammer gripped in the other, ascending through sheer physical strength that made the ladder groan under his weight. Each rung bent but held. Each pull brought two hundred fifty pounds of armored warrior closer to the top.
Reinforcements rushed to retake the position Daemon and Kael had seized. Twenty soldiers in royal colors charged toward them with weapons ready, clearly understanding what it meant if those gates opened.
They wouldn’t reach them in time.
Kane crested the wall like a natural disaster given human form.
His first hammer swing caught an advancing soldier's center mass and launched the man backward with enough force to take down two others. His second strike shattered a spear mid-thrust and continued through to pulverize the wielder’s ribs.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Just waded into the clustered reinforcements like a boulder rolling downhill, hammer rising and falling with methodical violence that scattered bodies and broke formations.
Bone cracked. Steel bent. Men died screaming under Kane’s blows.
Kane carved a path through flesh and fear, and nothing stopped him.
Kael broke from the main fight, sprinting along the wall toward the gate tower. Guards tried to intercept. He slid under the first blade, hamstrung the wielder in passing, came up inside the second guard’s reach, and buried a dagger in the base of his skull.
Three more defenders blocked the tower entrance.
Kael didn’t slow.
He hit them like a thrown knife, all momentum. Daggers found throats, eye sockets, and the soft spaces between ribs. The guards crumpled in sequence, dead before they’d properly registered the attack.
Then Kael vanished into the tower’s dark interior.
I held my breath without meaning to. Counted heartbeats. Strained to hear anything over the battle’s roar that might indicate success or failure.
Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
A scream echoed from inside the tower, wet and abbreviated, ending in a choked gurgle.
The gates groaned.
Ancient mechanisms engaged with the sound of metal grinding against stone. Chains rattled through hidden channels. The massive iron-reinforced doors began to swing outward with terrible, grinding slowness.
The gap widened. Six inches. A foot. Enough for light to spill through.
Enough.
“CHARGE!” Kaelen’s voice carried across the entire battlefield.
The resistance surged forward in a unified roar. Two hundred forty Fae warriors hit those slowly opening gates with all the momentum of their desperate sprint. Bodies pressed through the widening gap, shields raised against the inevitable counterassault, weapons ready.
The gates swung wider.
Steel met steel inside. Soldiers died screaming on both sides as the battle compressed into the narrow opening, every inch contested, every life spent purchasing ground.
But we were through.
The capital had been breached.
I stood at the back of Malzaun’s protective formation, watching our forces flood into the city proper, and felt the weight of what came next settle onto shoulders already buckling under accumulated pressure.
The gates were only the beginning.
The throne room waited beyond miles of hostile territory, defended by soldiers loyal to a corrupted king, all of it wrapped in the Devourer’s spreading influence.
And I had to walk through every inch of it.
By the time I passed through the gates, Daemon, Kane, and Kael were already waiting, clearing any immediate threats.
“Seris.” Daemon appeared at my side, breathing hard, blood spattered across his face and armor. Not his blood. It never seemed to be his blood. “The tunnels are three blocks east. We move now while they’re focused on the main assault.”
It was time to come face to face with the Devourer and King Aeron Thorne.
I looked at the burning capital, the resistance pouring through the gates, those holding back reinforcements outside. Before I could get lost in the sheer destruction of battle, Daemon’s steady gaze found mine, reminding me of the promise he’d made earlier. We’d face the end together.
I reached for his hand, squeezed, and started moving.
Toward the tunnels.
Toward the throne.
Toward the choice that would either save the world or condemn it.
There was no longer any room left for doubt. Forward momentum was all that remained.
The world was burning, but it was up to us whether it would begin anew or cease to exist.