The cost felt too high.
If I dwell on it, I lose focus before the next wave.
So he did what he always did: he acknowledged the pain, then set it aside, not out of indifference, but out of necessity.
He turned away from the dead and moved through the living lines.
Barricades needed immediate attention. Stone blocks had shifted, wooden supports cracked. He checked every weak point he could find, assigning fresh hands where possible: those with enough strength left to lift, hammer, and carry.
"Move that plank," he ordered. "Reinforce this gap. Tie that shield line tighter."
He made mental notes for the next report to the king.
Runners would need rest; too many had nearly collapsed during the last assault. Swordmaster squads had barely held under pressure—they needed replacements and extra drills before the next engagement. Oil supplies were dangerously low. Traps that had proven decisive would be useless if he did not refill fuel and materials.
Walking the ruined streets, he monitored more than walls.
Windows shattered, doors hanging from hinges, scorch marks crawling up stone facades—these were easy to see. Harder was the slump in posture, the hollow look in eyes, the tremor in hands that tried to grip swords or torches.
It's not victory if everyone is broken, he thought.
Holding the town while hollowing out its defenders into exhausted husks would only delay collapse. He had to think beyond the next hour. How to restore something like order in minds as well as in walls.
Fatigue is dangerous now.
A tired soldier missed warnings. A tired runner forgot half a message. A tired commander misread a pattern and turned a winnable battle into a slaughter.
He kept those thoughts in silence.
The defenders and civilians needed more than his tactical brilliance; they needed the illusion—or perhaps the reality—that their leader was steady, unshaken. Leadership here meant the pain stayed locked inside until it was safe to bring it out.
Let them see calm, he decided. Let them see structure. The suffering can wait its turn.
Later, when the fires burned lower and voices around the cathedral softened, weariness grew heavier.
Defenders clustered around battered barricades, armor loosened, helmets off. Some shared flasks or exchanged dark jokes, laughter sounding too loud and too thin against the exhausted quiet. Others simply sat in silence, heads bent, weapons resting across their knees.
Near the cathedral, survivors huddled under the watchful gaze of saints carved into stone.
Families spoke in low tones. Children clung to parents. The relief was palpable—a thick, fog-like sense of "for now, we're safe." Even those who knew better felt it pulling them toward carelessness.
Some soldiers slipped away from duty in small steps: sitting down when they should have stood, leaning their backs against walls, eyes sliding closed for a moment too long. They believed, or wanted to believe, that the worst was over.
That was when the air turned strange.
Mist rolled into the streets—not the natural kind that came with cool nights, but something heavier, thicker. It slid along the cobblestones like a living thing, coiling around boots, barricades, and doorways.
Torches flickered.
Sound stretched and bent, voices dampened as if coming from underwater.
Noctis felt the wrongness immediately.
His Echoframe pulsed sharply against his wrist, dragging his attention to the interface with a harsh buzz that cut through his fatigue. A red flash splashed across his inner vision.
Text appeared.
ALERT: NIGHTBORNE THREAT DETECTED
Entity: Mist Stag (Nightborne Classification)
Status: Approaching perimeter.
Ability Signature: Illusion Mist, Reality Warp, Spectral Antler Strike
Priority: EXTREME DANGER—Civilian and defense collapse likely.
Recommended Action: Deploy lamps, contain civilians, DO NOT ENGAGE ALONE.
The words carried no emotion, but he had seen enough classifications to know this was as bad as it sounded.
His head snapped up.
Mist already coated the nearest street, swallowing familiar landmarks. Stars overhead blurred. Torchlight dripped away into the gray, edges of buildings becoming soft and uncertain.
Fatigue vanished under a surge of focused urgency.
"Lamp squads!" Noctis shouted, voice cutting across the square. "Split into two wings—east and west streets! Use the cathedral steps as anchor! Swordmasters, three lines at the south plaza! Archers to the roofs—no shots until my mark!"
Runners, startled from their slump, jolted into motion.
They repeated his orders down corridors and across courtyards, boots splashing in newly thickening fog. Soldiers scrambled, armor clanking as they pulled helmets back on and grabbed shields.
Noctis took position near the cathedral.
He counted quickly as people moved. Too many gaps at the north side. The last wave had stripped that wing thin. He signaled a runner sharply, sending for reinforcements even as he adjusted his expectations. In a Nightborne attack, no line would be truly solid.
Lamp crews lit magnesium rods.
Harsh white light flared in the square, brighter and cleaner than torches. For a moment, the mist seemed to retreat, revealing shapes more clearly. Swords steadied in their owners' hands. People's breathing eased.
Then the Mist Stag arrived.
It stepped out of a collapsed carriage shadow, antlers spanning wider than a gate.
Its presence warped the world around it. The air rippled where its hooves touched ground. Its antlers glowed with an eerie, shifting light that bent straight lines into curves and turned distances into lies.
The illusion mist thickened.
Walls slid sideways, then snapped back. Street corners appeared where none existed. Light beams from the magnesium rods twisted, doubling back on themselves, sometimes bending around empty air instead of illuminating the stag.
"Pairs!" Noctis bellowed. "Pairs! Eyes open, shields up!"
He advanced, blade ready.
The stag blurred, then split into three versions of itself. He ignored the nearest phantom and aimed for the presence his instincts and Echoframe targeting agreed upon. His sword sliced through fog where the stag had been an instant before.
Reality warped.
For a heartbeat, he felt the ground tilt under his boots. His sense of balance screamed. The stag appeared as if walking through the side of a building, antlers brushing through stone without resistance.
A swordmaster to Noctis's left lunged at an illusion.
The real stag crashed into him from another angle. Spectral antlers tore through armor, flesh, and bone as if they were thin paper. The man's body flew, slammed against a fountain edge, and crumpled, leaving a smear of red on gray stone.
A master gone. That flank vulnerable now.
Noctis noted the loss with brutal efficiency. There was no time to mourn. He signaled a nearby lamp squad to shift their focus, flooding that sector with light even as the rods flickered under the stag's distortion field.
Above, archers tried to find vantage.
From the roofs, the mist turned streets into shifting puzzles. They shouted conflicting reports—"There!" "No, left!"—as arrows shot into places the stag had been moments before or into illusions that shattered into harmless smoke.
If I can't clear their sightlines, the plaza will be surrounded, Noctis realized. I need a stable signal.
He sent two runners away with colored lamps.
Red for retreat, green for hold.
But the fog swallowed the signals. Light barely made it past a few meters before being twisted away. Half the units never saw the patterns. Some held when they should have fallen back; others retreated at the wrong time, creating fatal gaps.
Panic skimmed along the edges of the lines.
Lamps spat sparks, faltering in the shifting air. Swordmasters called out contradictory positions—"It's right—no, behind!"—as the stag darted through its own illusions.
"Lamp squads, regroup at the north fountain!" Noctis called. "Medics, stay inside the cathedral! If the fog thickens, block first—do not pursue!"
His commands slowed collapse, but did not stop it.
Streets twisted under the Nightborne's Reality Warp.
Soldiers stumbled on nonexistent steps, crashed into invisible walls, or stepped through what they thought was open space only to smack into solid stone. Illusions stacked on illusions.
Noctis grabbed one recruit by the shoulder.
"Look at me," he said sharply. "Not the fog. Listen for my voice. You move when I say, nowhere else."
The recruit nodded, eyes wide, anchoring himself on Noctis's tone rather than his senses.
Noctis tried a maneuver.
He led five swordmasters into the densest fog, lamp holders flanking them. They formed a wedge aimed at where he felt the stag's presence pulling against the air.
"Mist can't hide pressure," he thought. "Follow the way it bends."
"The stag is coming!" someone cried.
"Split—cross formation!" Noctis commanded.