They obeyed, lines parting just as antlers crashed through their previous position. Two illusions of the stag shattered under sword blows—but the real one slid between strikes, its antlers cutting three men down in a single sideways sweep.
Noctis caught a glimpse of the cathedral doors.
A cluster of civilians, terrified by shadows and screams, had started to push out, thinking the building was collapsing or monsters were inside. Figures stumbled onto the steps, disoriented and exposed.
"Guard the doors!" Noctis roared. "Shield the families!"
He threw his sword at the stag in a last-ditch attempt to divert it.
The blade spun, striking one of the spectral antlers. Reality rippled where it hit, like a stone dropped into a pond of air. The weapon bounced away, clattering onto the cobbles as the stag barely twitched.
Minutes blurred into a grind of noise and confusion.
The Mist Stag moved as if it owned every angle, every lie the city's streets could tell. It isolated defenders, turning pairs into singles at the worst possible moments. Each time someone stood alone, an antler found them.
Noctis navigated by memory, not sight.
Cathedral north gate. Fountain wall. Narrow alley with three steps and a broken railing.
If I hold here, the largest group survives, he decided. The flanks might break, but the core will live.
A medic stumbled toward him.
"South wing collapsed!" she shouted. "Thirty gone—the mist's too thick for signals!"
Thirty.
The number hit like a physical blow. He felt a flare of raw fury—a howl of protest at his own limitations, at the timing of this attack, at the sheer cruelty of being struck when everyone was so tired.
He pressed that fury down.
Rage won't bring them back. Rage will just get more killed.
He drew on emergency lamp reserves.
"Form a semicircle!" he ordered, voice ringing across the square. "Anchor at the cathedral! No one moves without my command—block, don't chase!"
Lamp carriers, shaken but alive, closed ranks.
They planted themselves at the base of the cathedral steps, rods held high. Swordmasters took positions in front, shields locking together in a last defensive shell. Behind them, civilians huddled, every flinch audible.
The stag hit them like a storm.
Antlers crashed into stone steps, sending cracks spidering through ancient masonry. Each impact made lamps shudder, light bending unnaturally before snapping back. Illusions of the stag spooled off in every direction, dozens of copies slamming into imaginary walls and scattering phantom defenders.
Noctis ignored all but the one his Echoframe confirmed.
Target lock flickered in his vision, a narrow, pulsing outline around the true beast. He adjusted his stance accordingly, directing nearby defenders with short, precise commands.
"Left shield up."
"Strike low on my count."
"Hold. Hold. Now."
Pain brushed past him again and again—screams, the thud of bodies, the crunch of breaking bone. He did not look away from the real enemy.
Finally, as quickly as it had thickened, the mist began to thin.
The stag stepped back through its own fog, antlers leaving trails of warped light that faded as it retreated. Its form blurred with distance, then vanished into the night.
Silence did not return.
Instead, the square filled with ragged breathing, sobs, and muted cries from the wounded. Lamp rods still burned, their harsh light now revealing the full extent of the damage.
Once, the plaza had held hundreds.
Now, barely fifty defenders remained standing—or at least kneeling, half-collapsed, still breathing. Streets around the cathedral were littered with bodies, armor twisted, weapons scattered from lifeless hands. Barricades lay shattered. Blood streaked down steps that had once seen only ceremony.
Noctis turned slowly, taking it in.
His expression was controlled, but something in his eyes had cooled into a hard, reflective glass.
Too many lost.
He replayed the last hour in his head. The timing of the lamp deployments. The gaps in the northern wing. His decision to let people relax perhaps a fraction too much after the previous victory. The Mist Stag had arrived when they were weakest—and exploited every crack in their defenses.
My discipline slipped, he admitted silently.
Was it just fatigue? Was it the temptation to believe, even for a moment, that they had earned a pause? He did not know. He only knew that the Nightborne had shown him what happened when even a careful commander faltered.
The Nightborne broke us tonight, he thought. And it taught me exactly how thin the line is between holding and falling.
He looked at the survivors gathering around the cathedral, lamps flickering over their ash-smeared faces.
There would be a report for the king. There would be new plans, harder schedules, stricter rotations. There would be arguments over whether to stay or evacuate.
But first, there would be one more entry in Noctis's internal ledger: another night where he held the line with what he had—and another night where, no matter how much he gave, it was never enough to save everyone.
He swallowed that knowledge whole, locking it away with the rest.
Then he straightened, sword retrieved, voice steady as he began to give orders again.
The plaza stopped feeling like a place to live and became a place to die.
Streets that had once carried market carts and laughter now held only broken bodies and smeared blood. Citizens, who had dared to believe the battle was over, tried to flee in blind panic—some tripping over fallen stones, others disappearing into alleys that twisted under the Mist Stag's warping influence. Soldiers scrambled, trying to form new lines that shattered almost as soon as they were made. Runners vanished into the fog, swallowed by illusions and antlers before they could deliver half their messages.
Noctis pushed through the chaos with shield raised.
He felt debris strike his armor, heard the crack of antlers against stone, smelled smoke and wet stone and blood. His blade stayed steady in his hand, its movements shaped by training rather than feeling. The Echoframe overlaid the nightmare with a single point of clarity: a live, shifting marker locked onto the real Mist Stag. Illusions flickered and split, but that marker stayed true.
"Anchor on me!" he shouted.
His voice cut through the roars, the screams, the crack of breaking walls. The surviving swordmasters responded, dragging themselves into proximity around him, shields overlapping, eyes searching the mist. Emotion curled at the edges of his words—anger, grief, the bone-deep urge to protect—but he forced it into a hard, focused line rather than a wild flame.
The cathedral behind them shook.
Each time the Mist Stag rammed its antlers into the steps or columns, the old stone trembled, dust drifting from carvings overhead. The massive doors, once symbols of sanctuary, groaned under the assault. Inside, civilians huddled and prayed. Outside, Noctis refused to move from his post. His muscles burned from overuse, cuts throbbed under his armor, but he pushed everything aside except for a cold, controlled anger that sharpened his thoughts rather than blurring them.
He mapped the stag's behavior in real time.
It favored flanking charges from the right after a feint to the left. It struck hardest when lamp light flickered, using that moment to warp reality most violently. It targeted isolated clusters, then retreated into thicker fog. Noctis waited until he sensed its attention split—half on the cathedral, half on a group of defenders regrouping near the fountain.
"Press left!" he barked. "Shields high!"
The swordmasters obeyed.
They surged forward, raising shields against a charge they could not fully see. The stag met them with brutal force. Antlers crashed into steel and bone. Half the swordmasters fell before they managed to advance three steps—some cut nearly in half, others thrown aside like broken dolls.
Their bodies, in death, did what they had tried to do in life.
They became barriers.
They slowed the beast's next move. They blocked sightlines just long enough that the civilians inside the cathedral were not immediately exposed to the full brunt of the charge. Precious seconds were bought—seconds that meant doors could be braced, children pulled deeper inside, medics shoved behind shields.
Soon, the plaza emptied of allies.
Cries for help faded one by one, replaced by ragged breathing and the muted echoes of battle further away. The lamp lines were broken. Swordmaster formations dissolved. Where once there had been ranks of defenders, now there were only scattered corpses and the lone figure of Noctis standing amid them, sword in hand.