Silence—absolute and terrified—rippled out from the epicenter of the blast.Kael broke the shotgun open, spent shells dropping into the snow, and snapped fresh rounds into place with practiced speed.
The barbarians around the fallen giant froze. They stared at the body. They stared at the place where the head should have been.
Griggs hauled himself upright, breath ragged. "You killed a Centurion," he rasped.
Kael's eyes stayed on the line. "A what?"
Griggs swallowed, nodding toward the corpse. "The tattoos. The size. There's always one."
Then they looked at the small boy holding the smoking metal tube.
"Sorcery…" one of them breathed.
Another barbarian, screaming in a rage to deny his fear, charged from the left. Axe raised.
Kael pivoted on his heel, body turning as one. The gun tracked smoothly with the motion.
BOOM.
The second barrel fired.
The charging barbarian's head snapped back violently. Half of his face vanished in a spray of red. He dropped like a stone mid-stride.
Click.
Kael's hands moved in a blur.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, he broke the shotgun open. One smoking shell popped free, spinning once before sinking into the snow with a hiss. His left hand was already there, drawing a fresh red shell from his pocket and seating it into the open breach.
Snap.
The gun closed.
[The Rear Guard]
Captain Valen lowered the spyglass, eyes narrowing as he measured the damage.
"No chanting. No runes," he muttered. "That wasn't how the Dwarves do it."
He had seen Dwarven fire-lances before—thick iron tubes driven by pressurized magic, one charge per shot. Each discharge vented the force in a single, blunt blast, powerful but slow.
This was different.
The weapon in the boy's hands worked without magic. He used it the way a man used a bow or a crossbow—by hand, by motion—but faster, simpler.
Valen's eyes narrowed. A new Dwarven design?
"Sir?" The Sergeant glanced toward the line. "Do we pull the boy out now?"
Valen made his decision instantly.
He measured what he had seen. A single pull of the trigger carried the stopping power of a knight's heavy war bow at full draw—delivered instantly, without windup.
"Sound the advance," Valen barked, his voice snapping like a whip. "Cavalry first. Drive a wedge between the boy and the main horde. Do not let him fall."
"Yes, Sir!" The Sergeant turned and blew the iron horn.
Boooooooom.
The main force of Blackstone Keep's regiment began to move. The earth trembled under the hooves of armored warhorses.
[The Front Line]
Kael caught the rhythm of the harvest, steady and relentless.
[Aether: 10.9]
The number rose at once.
Thunder never stopped. The roar rolled without pause as the barbarians surged forward together, as if pulled by the same command, wave after wave crashing toward him.
Each shot cut one down. Each body fell.
[Aether: 11.4]
With every kill, something shifted. Strength crept into his limbs in small, measurable steps. His stance settled faster. Recoil bit less. Breath came easier between shots.
The count kept climbing. And with it, so did he.
He fired again.
And with the number, the feeling returned.
The Aether he had gathered flowed into his body, threading itself through muscle, breath, and movement.
The more he moved, the smoother everything became. His reactions tightened. His aim found its mark faster. The motion from thought to trigger shortened with each shot, hands and eyes working in closer sync. Joints loosened through use, limbs responding cleanly as strain burned away under momentum.
A different state took hold. His awareness lifted past the limits of flesh and bone. The charging barbarians slowed in his perception, their movements stretching wide and clear, each step laid bare before it landed.
His body moved on its own rhythm now. Sight aligned, aim settled, the trigger broke, the breach opened and closed—each action flowing without pause, without instruction, carried forward by momentum alone.
BOOM.A head vanished in a spray of red.
The shotgun broke open and closed in the same breath.
Another skull burst apart mid-step, the body folding a heartbeat later.
Hands moved without pause. A shell slid home. Steel locked.
Two more heads were erased as they charged, bodies carrying forward for a step before dropping into the snow.
Six had rushed him. Four were already down.
The last two stopped where they stood. Weapons sagged in their hands. Pupils quivered, shrinking and widening as they stared, breath trapped high in their chests.
The barrel shifted. They never finished inhaling.
A barbarian lunged at him from behind. Kael didn't even turn his head. He just extended his arm.
[Aether: 14.9]
THUD.
Kael stepped forward. The barbarians gave ground at once, backing away in uneven steps, eyes locked on him, feet sliding through the snow.
None of them turned their backs. Weapons stayed raised but unused, hands shaking as the distance widened.
A sudden, crushing pressure struck the back of his head. He turned just enough to catch it in the edge of his vision—a shape already almost on him, closing fast.
Kael spun in the same motion the pressure peaked. The shotgun came up and fired twice in rapid succession, both shots breaking loose without hesitation.
The thing in the air shattered mid-flight. Ice burst apart under the blasts, fragments spraying outward. One shard tore across Kael's cheek, cutting skin before flashing past.
It was an ice spike.
He finished the turn with the barrels still up, eyes already tracking the source. Warm blood ran from a cut along his cheek, slick against the cold. A figure stood on a ridge fifty yards away.
A Shaman. Draped in human bones, face painted with frozen blood.
The Shaman raised a spinal-column staff. The air distorted.
Screeeeee.
A jagged spear of solid ice, three feet long and sharp as obsidian, launched from the staff. Kael stepped and twisted in the same breath. The spike grazed past his ribs, close enough for the cold to bite through cloth and skin.
His heart slammed hard against his ribs. The smooth rhythm shattered, breath catching as sensation rushed back in full force. The narrowed focus broke apart, time snapping back to speed. Weight returned to his limbs. Sound flooded in.
The state slipped away.
Kael felt the cold again. He felt the blood on his face. And he felt how close the strike had come.
"Fast," Kael muttered, slotting two new shells.
The Shaman raised the staff again. A third surge of blue light gathered at its tip.
The state had broken. The certainty was gone.
Kael felt the gap and moved at once. He sprinted and threw himself behind the trunk of a frozen pine, trusting mass and instinct more than timing.
The third ice spear hit.
THUNK.
The impact split the tree down the middle. Wood cracked with a sharp, tearing report as the trunk snapped and folded, the upper half shearing away and crashing into the snow. Shards of ice and splintered timber blasted outward, hammering into Kael as he was thrown sideways by the shock.
The tree didn't hold. It broke.
From the ridge, the Shaman shrieked—a sound of pure frustration. He slammed the butt of his staff into the ground.
A red pulse rippled out across the battlefield.
The effect was immediate. Barbarians surged forward with renewed force, heedless of wounds, heedless of death.
The Vanguard's line collapsed under the sudden pressure. Men were cut down where they stood, shields crushed aside, spears torn from hands. Screams rose and were cut short almost at once.
Eyes burned brighter.
They turned back toward Kael as one.
The harvest had ended.
Something else had begun.