Orst saw the fire a moment too late.
Rycharde's last spell had been ugly, desperate and forceful. The flame caught Orst mid-step, right where the terramancer's plating thinned at the joints. Orst tried to twist away, but the cast had already landed. Heat tore through the edge of his armor and into flesh.
Half his body blackened.
Orst didn't scream.
He seated mana into his nerves he tried to channel mana into a last minute magic armor but, it was too late. He switched to raw reinforcement. It dulled the pain, kept his legs from buckling, and kept his hands from trembling. But it was expensive. He could feel it like a drain in his core, like he'd ripped open a bag and watched the contents spill.
He was already deep into his reserves from the boulder throws, the walls, the underground travel, the constant armor maintenance.
A third left. Maybe.
That was the real injury.
Orst took two steps back on the ice-coated street, eyes scanning.
Ezra stood near the administrative building entrance—small, soot-streaked, eyes still sharp. Evan was at his side. Deimos and Phobos were closer in, whips loose, ready to lunge. Oswyn and Evered were near the front, holding lanes with whatever strength they had left. Bandits and Shadow Walkers still moved in the gaps, but the defenders had momentum for the first time all night.
Orst had orders.
It wasn't to assassinate anyone, that much was true. Terros's orders had been the same as always: support the operation. Keep the pressure. Don't let it fail.
Orst could still fight.
He could try to drag the square down into a longer melee, keep breaking gemlamps, keep opening the ground, keep making the battle about stamina.
But the cost was obvious now. Burns across his left side. A ruined arm if he pushed it. A depleted core. And worst of all—eyes on him. Too many competent fighters had found his rhythm. Ezra had made it predictable.
He took another step back. Then another.
Ezra noticed immediately. His head tilted, reading intent the way he read trajectories. He didn't shout, didn't celebrate. He just watched.
Orst's mouth tightened.
Then he turned.
He planted his good foot, shoved mana into his legs, and leapt toward the nearest building. He caught the edge of a lower roof with one hand, hauled himself up with brutal efficiency, and vanished over the far side—retreating to tend wounds and save what mana he had left.
A few Anticourt Guard men actually cheered.
It came out ragged and disbelieving, as if they were afraid the sound would summon him back.
"He's running!" one of them yelled.
"Omnipotence above, he's running!"
Rycharde swayed where he stood, chest heaving. He'd spent too much mana to keep casting at Orst, and the last exchange had taken what was left.
Phobos caught him by the shoulder before he tipped.
"Enough," Phobos snapped. "You've got nothing left to spend."
Rycharde tried to speak, then settled for a single nod.
Deimos stood nearby, breathing shallow to endure his ribs. Every inhale was a reminder. He didn't whine. He just kept his eyes on the dark.
The party huddled instinctively in the brighter spill near the administrative building—close enough that archers could cover, close enough that the gemlamps held corners clean.
But Ezra didn't loosen.
Something was off.
Orst was badly damaged—yes. The burns were real. But Ezra had watched the terramancer fight all night. Orst wasn't a man who ran just because it hurt. Orst ran when it made sense.
And it didn't make sense unless he had already done what he came to do.
Ezra's eyes tracked the rooftops and broken street.
He can still fight. So why leave now?
A shadow crossed the square from the far side. Something big.
Ezra's head whipped.
AMP kicked up a thin overlay before Ezra even asked it to. White lines and numbers popped at the edge of his vision, uninvited.
A boulder sped, with its momentum so high it would read like a canon. It slammed into the administrative building.
Contact. It hit the fourth floor of the administrative district's tower. This was where most of the light of the gemlamps were concentrated.
A corner of stone and timber simply disappeared under the impact. The whole structure shuddered. Support beams snapped. A section of roof sagged, then dropped in a grinding collapse.
Men screamed.
Archers on the upper levels—those who'd been posted for a better angle—fell with the broken floor. Some hit the ground hard enough to die instantly. Others were crushed under falling stone. Dust boiled out of shattered windows in thick waves and rolled down the building face.
The roof didn't fully collapse, but it no longer held a clean defensive line.
A hole—wide, jagged—had been punched into the archer's position.
The defenders stared up, stunned.
They expected the brute to be there.
He wasn't.
He didn't appear again.
This was his parting gift. It looked like he drained what remained of his mana to concentrate a large attack that would permanently shift the tide of battle.
The breach mattered immediately. The roof archers had been the cleanest suppression Anticourt had. Now there was a dead zone where they couldn't stand, couldn't shoot, couldn't even see without risking falling through broken stone.
The bandits—Terros's troops in ragged disguise—felt it.
You could see morale change in posture. They'd been pushing half-heartedly since Orst retreated. Now they surged, shouting, charging into the gap the boulder had made.
Shadow pooled with them.
Ezra's mouth tightened.
Rycharde was done. Between mana depletion and his leg, he was pulled back toward the entrance by Anticourt men—half carried, half dragged. He was in no condition to command.
Evered had spent himself earlier on walls and cover. He still stood, but his core was shallow and his shoulders were heavy.
That left Phobos, Evan, and Oswyn as the only ones still moving clean.
Deimos was upright, but every breath hurt him.
Galwell leapt from his sniping position and used reinforcement to absorb the shock once the tower collapsed. He and his archers were forced to reposition again with the building's new damage.
He rushed to support the men on the ground.
Ezra's eyes flicked over the line.
The Shadow Walkers recognized the same thing.
They gathered where arrows could not touch them. They moved under the broken corner of the roof, using the new geometry to create blind angles and pockets of dark.
Chaos came back hard.
Spells flashed. Steel rang. Men shouted orders that couldn't carry. Anticourt tried to re-form a line, but the bandits and Shadow Walkers didn't let it stabilize. They charged into melee and made it personal.
Archers hesitated. Friendly fire risk spiked. They either held shots or wasted them.
Ezra watched the attempt at formation collapse and felt his jaw set.
He could lead against a single powerful opponent. He could point out a weakness and have men act on it.
But this—two forces of similar size, interlocking, breaking and reforming—was different. He couldn't run the whole board himself. He couldn't personally place every soldier.
Soldiers could feint, retreat, flank, re-engage. Their movement space was larger. Their choices were more complex.
Ezra forced his brain to keep working anyway.
He saw Phobos and Deimos abandon "command" and do the only thing they trusted: hunt Shadow Walkers directly. Whips snapped, then daggers followed. Oswyn tried to support them, but without two pyromancers outside, it was hard to keep fights in clean light.
A single Anticourt Knight followed, chanting [Fireball] with shaky timing. The spell landed, but his control wasn't as good as the Blackfyre Guard. It was enough to help, not enough to dominate.
Evan stayed at Ezra's side.
"Evan," Ezra said, voice tight but controlled, "we go back inside. They're likely here for you."
Evan didn't argue.
"Yes, milord."
They turned toward the entrance.
Bandits intercepted them almost immediately—three men in patched gear, faces hard, weapons up.
Evan moved first. He didn't swing wide. He kicked the nearest bandit in the chest with mana seated into his leg.
The man launched backward and hit the ground ten meters away, sliding across ice and grit.
A second bandit swung at Ezra—an ugly overhead chop meant to crush a small body.
Ezra ducked under it easily. His small frame helped more than it hurt. He slipped between another man's legs, unseen for half a second, and drove a mana-reinforced fist straight up between the man's thighs.
The bandit's face drained of color.
He made a high, broken sound and crumpled.
Evan saw it and made a tight choking noise that wasn't quite laughter. He kept moving anyway.
More bandits blocked their path. Two stepped in from the side.
Evan took the right one. He struck with an open-hand smash to the cheek, reinforcement condensed into knuckles and wrist.
The man's head snapped sideways. Bone shifted wrong. He dropped without recovering—dead or close enough.
Ezra took the left—dodged, slid, and hit low again with the same brutal practicality. The man folded.
They didn't stop. They didn't celebrate. They ran.
Behind them, Phobos and Deimos managed to down two more Shadow Walkers with their Anticourt escort—whip to expose, steel to finish—while Oswyn drifted between them and the main knot, trying to keep lanes open.
Ezra glanced back once at the disorder and felt frustration bite.
Is it too late? We still have numbers. We still have Knights. We can win this. But the cost—'
He jumped, snatched a loose stone from the ground as he moved. He drove it into a bandit's temple mid-run, recoil carrying him into the next man. These were troops that couldn't control mana in any meaningful way, they were just here to add numbers.
Some onlookers, glanced to Ezra but didn't have enough time to be shocked at what they saw. They had heard his commands, that was something they had accepted already, but as more abilities of Ezra could be seen they became much more in awe, they just didn't have the time for it to settle.
"The boy, help the boy." Shouts were heard. Something in their minds clicked, Ezra wasn't ordinary but they had heard rumors that had spread from Bren, some of them started to understand who he was the moment he started commanding the troops, but now there was even more evidence in their heads of the identity of the toddler.
He landed and kicked another attacker away, then dashed forward again.
Ezra didn't have the reach for a clean kill on armored men. So he targeted what his body could do reliably.
Disable. Drop. Move.
He hit another bandit between the legs.
The man fainted.
Ezra didn't look back to confirm.
Ten meters to the entrance.
Two shadows emerged.
Not from a doorway.
Not from behind a cart.
From nothing.
The air distorted—thin, mirror-like—and a blade appeared where there hadn't been one.
Evan reacted instantly, snatching a dislodged torch from the ground. He swung it hard into the distortion.
The torch struck something solid.
A body flashed into view for half a heartbeat—dark clothing, pale face—and Evan drove his sword in.
The Shadow Walker's magic faltered as the blade bit.
Ezra grabbed another torch and swung at the second shadow. It retreated, recoiling from flame.
From the entrance, arrows fired—short range, fast release.
Galwell's archers had already come down. They'd set themselves in the doorway where light was strong and angles were clean.
Fire arrows tore into the retreating darkness.
The Shadow Walker dropped, flame eating at the cloak of shadow until there was just a body.
Evan and Ezra both exhaled at the same time.
Ezra's hands shook once, not from fear—too much input.
"That's it," Ezra said, voice low and hard. "I need to do something."
He stopped.
In the middle of movement, in the middle of bodies and steel, Ezra forced himself still.
He focused and heightened every sense. AMP surged up.
Numbers popped across his vision. White lines traced projectiles. Motion vectors mapped soldiers and arrows.
It was too much.
Come on, Michael, think.
His skin moistened with sweat immediately. The data came in thick, stacking faster than he could filter. He could force his perception of time to slow with mana but that required extra concentration, as he was about to activate it. Something out of the corner of his eye edged, like a pane of glass shifting. It wasn't pitch, it was more translucent, something you wouldn't notice if you saw it standing still.
It was a blade that was aimed at him.
Ezra's mana was too deep in AMP, and activating his slowed perception that he didn't notice it in time. Both the mana signature and the attack didn't register yet.
He couldn't move in time.
But Evan did.
He saw the blade the instant it broke concealment. He didn't think. He dove into Ezra, one arm shoving the toddler sideways.
The dagger drove into Evan's chest.
It sank deep.
Evan made a guttural choke, but he didn't scream. He refused to give the killer the sound.
The attacker twisted the knife.
Evan's grip tightened around Ezra reflexively, even as his knees buckled. He felt his heart hammering against cold steel. For a split second, time stretched thin and awful.
Then the blade found the heart.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump—
And then it stopped.
Ezra hit the ground hard. His eyes snapped up.
Evan was still on his knees.
For a moment, Ezra thought Evan might stand anyway.
A voice came from the empty air above Evan's fallen body—raspy, low, satisfied.
"Contract fulfilled."