The messenger arrived on the third day after their raid, his Kresh'mora mount foaming at the mouth from being pushed past endurance. The rider himself looked half-dead—eyes hollow, face grey with exhaustion and something worse. Something that looked like soul-deep horror.
He collapsed in M'lod's center square before anyone could catch him.
"East... City..." he gasped between ragged breaths. "East City is... gone..."
Shy'yao brought water. Lyria checked for injuries. The crowd pressed close, sensing catastrophic news but not yet understanding its scale.
The messenger drank, coughed, drank more. When he finally found his voice again, the words that came out shattered the fragile hope that had been building over the past few days.
"The king's army reached East City two nights ago. During the dark night. When both Thalanox and Ryn'thel were in shadow phase." His hands shook so badly he nearly dropped the water cup. "They surrounded the city at sunset. Gave no warning. No proclamation. No chance to surrender or evacuate. They just... they just started killing."
Silence. The terrible silence of a crowd holding its collective breath.
"How many?" Shy'yao asked, though his ancient face suggested he already knew the answer would be unbearable.
"One hundred twenty-seven thousand, nine hundred ninety souls." The messenger's voice cracked. "The entire population. Men, women, children, elderly. Chakra users, mana users, non-powered civilians. It didn't matter. They killed everyone. Everyone."
Someone in the crowd made a sound—not quite a scream, not quite a sob. Something more primal.
"I was three kilometers away on a supply run," the messenger continued, staring at nothing. "I heard it. The screaming. It lasted for hours. HOURS. The fires were visible from ten kilometers away. When dawn came and I... when I went to see..." He stopped, swallowed convulsively. "There's nothing left. Just ash and bodies. Mountains of bodies. They piled them in the streets and burned them. The smell... gods, the smell..."
A woman fainted. Then another. Children began crying—not because they understood, but because the adults around them were showing terror beyond anything they'd seen before.
Misaki felt his stomach turn to ice. One hundred twenty-seven thousand people. In a single night. That wasn't military action. That wasn't even genocide in the calculated, bureaucratic sense. That was annihilation. Systematic erasure of an entire city.
"Why?" someone asked. "East City was loyal. They paid their taxes. They followed every law. They—"
"They had mana users," the messenger said flatly. "Forty percent of the population. The king declared them corrupted. Hell-born. So he cleansed them. All of them. And everyone who lived near them. Everyone who might have been 'tainted by proximity.'" He laughed—a broken, horrible sound. "That's the new criteria. You don't even have to be a mana user anymore. You just have to live in the same city as one."
The implications crashed through the crowd like a physical wave. If proximity was now grounds for execution, then every village, every town, every settlement with even a single mana user was a target. The purge wasn't limited to the magic-capable. It was expanding to encompass entire populations.
This wasn't war. This was extermination.
Misaki sat in his workshop long after the messenger had been given food and shelter. His hands gripped the edge of his workbench hard enough that his knuckles had gone white.
"One hundred twenty-seven thousand," he whispered to the empty room. "In one night. While it was too dark to see the slaughter coming."
On Earth, he'd studied genocides in history class. Theoretical discussions about Cambodia, Rwanda, the Holocaust. Numbers on pages. Statistics that felt abstract despite their horror.
This wasn't abstract. This was real. This was happening now. And he was in the middle of it.
"I swear," Misaki said, his voice hardening, "I will make them pay. Every soldier who participated. Every commander who gave orders. Every fucking bureaucrat who signed off on this nightmare. They will know fear. They will know pain. They will know what it feels like to be powerless while someone stronger erases everything you love."
His Manipura chakra flared to life unbidden, flames dancing across his clenched fists.
"This is a promise. To every person who died in East City. To every child who burned. To every family that was torn apart." His eyes blazed with inner fire. "I will become the nightmare that haunts this king's last moments."
A knock interrupted his fury. Vellin entered without waiting for permission, her small face grave.
"We have intelligence," she said without preamble. "Bad intelligence. Really bad."
"Worse than one hundred twenty-seven thousand dead?"
"Different kind of bad." Vellin spread a hand-drawn map across his workbench. "My scouts have been tracking army movements across the region. To destroy M'lod and the seven villages, the kingdom would need maybe four hundred soldiers maximum. We're not a major strategic target. Just rebellious villages that need squashing."
"Okay," Misaki said slowly. "So they'll send four hundred—"
"There are four hundred THOUSAND soldiers mobilized." Vellin stabbed her finger at the map. "Across six provinces. Multiple army groups. Supply chains that suggest months-long campaigns. This isn't about M'lod. This isn't even just about the purge. This is total war preparation."
Misaki stared at the map, his engineer's mind trying to process the logistics. Four hundred thousand troops meant massive economic mobilization. Weapon production. Food supplies. Infrastructure. You didn't deploy that scale of force for village pacification.
"What's the real target?" he asked.
"We don't know yet. But M'lod is in the path of one of the army groups. Which means we'll get crushed as an incidental objective on their way to somewhere more important." Vellin's expression was grim. "We have one hundred twenty fighters. Combined. From all seven villages. How do we fight an army that large?"
Misaki's mind raced. Conventional warfare was suicide. Direct engagement would be a massacre. They needed asymmetric tactics. Force multipliers. Ways to inflict disproportionate casualties while avoiding direct confrontation.
"Catapults," he said suddenly. "Not huge siege weapons—we don't have time or materials. But human-portable versions. Large slingshots essentially. Mechanical advantage for throwing projectiles."
"Throwing what?"
"Oil bombs. Clay pots filled with rendered animal fat mixed with pitch. Light them, launch them, watch enemy formations burn." Misaki began sketching rapidly. "And we need chokepoints. Ambush sites. Ways to force them into kill zones where we can maximize damage and then retreat before they can organize counterattacks."
It wasn't much. Against four hundred thousand soldiers, it was pathetically inadequate. But it was something. A plan. A way to fight back even when hopelessly outnumbered.
"Get Torran," Misaki said. "Tell him I need materials for—"
He stopped mid-sentence.
Through his workshop window, he'd spotted movement on the southern approach road. Two small figures. Walking slowly. Stumbling.
Children.
Misaki sprinted outside, Vellin close behind. As they got closer, the details became horrifyingly clear. A girl, maybe ten years old, carrying an infant against her chest. Both were covered in ash and soot. The girl's eyes were vacant—shock, trauma, the thousand-yard stare of someone who'd seen things no child should witness.
"Hey," Misaki said gently, kneeling to her level. "Hey, it's okay. You're safe now. Can you tell me your name?"
The girl didn't respond. Just stood there, holding the infant, swaying slightly.
Misaki carefully took them both in his arms—the girl was light as air, clearly malnourished—and carried them toward the village. "Lyria!" he shouted. "LYRIA! Medical emergency!"
Behind him, Vellin's voice carried a note of pure terror.
"Misaki. We have a bigger problem."
He turned. Followed her pointing finger to the southern horizon.
A cloud of dust. Massive. Growing larger by the second.
And beneath the dust, the rhythmic thunder of marching feet. Thousands of feet. Moving in synchronized formation.
"How many?" Misaki asked, his blood turning to ice.
Vellin's scout-trained eyes calculated automatically. "Two thousand. At least. Infantry column. Moving fast. They'll be here in less than an hour."
"Fuck." Misaki's mind went blank. Two thousand soldiers. Now. Before any defenses were ready. Before the catapults were built. Before the oil bombs were prepared. "Fuck. FUCK!"
"EVERYONE TO DEFENSIVE POSITIONS!" Shy'yao's voice boomed across the village. "THIS IS NOT A DRILL! ARMY APPROACHING FROM THE SOUTH!"
Chaos erupted. Villagers scrambled. Fighters grabbed weapons. Elderly and children were herded toward the innermost buildings. The fragile peace of the past few days shattered completely.
Misaki handed the refugee children to Lyria and sprinted back to grab his weapons. His mind raced through tactical options. Two thousand versus one hundred twenty. They'd be slaughtered. Absolutely slaughtered. Even with Eldrion's magic and Misaki's fire chakra, those numbers were—
"STOP."
The voice cut through the chaos like a blade through silk. Absolute. Commanding. Filled with power that made the air itself feel heavy.
Eldrion stood in the village center. But not the Eldrion they knew—the quiet old mage who lived modestly and avoided attention. This Eldrion radiated power. His eyes glowed with inner light. His robes seemed to move in a wind that wasn't there. The air around him crackled with barely contained energy.
"Stand aside," he said, his voice resonating with harmonics that suggested multiple speakers talking in unison. "All of you. Stand aside. I will send a message that cannot be ignored."
"Eldrion," Shy'yao began, "what are you—"
"I am not who you think I am." The old mage walked toward the southern gate, his steps deliberate. "Before M'lod. Before this peaceful life. I was known by another name. Another title. They called me Varaken the Storm-Tongue. The Archon of the Seventh Circle. The World's Strongest Mage."
Stunned silence.
"I faked my death fifty years ago when Ashtherion'vaur took the throne. The king favored another for the position of Arch-Mage—someone more... pliable. Someone who would sanction his cruelties. I refused to serve a tyrant, so I vanished. Became nobody. Just an old man in a small village." Eldrion reached the gate and turned to face them. His expression was terrible to behold—ancient fury held in check by centuries of discipline. "But that ends today. Today, the Storm-Tongue returns. And the king will know that I have chosen my side."
He walked through the gate. Alone. Facing south where two thousand soldiers marched toward M'lod with murder in their hearts.
Eldrion knelt in the dirt fifty meters beyond the village walls. He drew a blade—simple iron, nothing special—and cut his left palm. Blood welled up, thick and red.
"What is he doing?" someone whispered.
"Blood magic," Deylos breathed, his voice filled with awe and terror. "Forbidden. Outlawed in every kingdom. The most powerful and dangerous form of spellcasting."
Eldrion pressed his bleeding palm to the earth and began speaking. But not in any language Misaki recognized. The sounds were older. Harsher. Consonants that scraped like stone on stone. Vowels that howled like wind through mountain passes.
Storm Tongue. The ancient language of pure magic. Words that predated kingdoms and civilizations.
The old mage drew a circle in his own blood. Then symbols inside the circle. Geometric patterns that hurt to look at directly. His voice rose in volume, the Storm Tongue words building on each other, layering meanings that no modern language could express.
The blood circle began to glow.
Then pulse.
Then burn with light so bright that people had to shield their eyes.
Eldrion spoke for one full minute without pause, the ancient words flowing from him in a continuous stream of power. The ground beneath M'lod began to tremble. The air tasted like ozone and copper. Reality itself seemed to bend around the glowing circle.
Then Eldrion spoke a final word—a sound like mountains cracking—and slammed both palms flat against the center of the circle.
The spell released.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying beyond description.
Two kilometers south, where two thousand soldiers marched in tight formation expecting easy prey, the earth simply... erupted.
Spikes. Hundreds of spikes. Thousands of spikes. Stone spikes three meters long and sharp as spears, exploding upward from beneath the marching army with the force of volcanic eruption.
The soldiers didn't have time to scream.
The spikes tore through boots, through legs, through torsos, through skulls. They emerged from the ground at angles calculated for maximum penetration. Every soldier in the formation was impaled. Some caught through the chest and hoisted into the air. Others speared through multiple body parts—leg, groin, chest—pinned like insects in a collection. A few were lifted completely off the ground, suspended three meters in the air on stone spikes that had punched through their bodies with such force that blood rained down in sheets.
The sounds were worse than any battle. Wet tearing sounds. Cracking bones. The meaty thuds of bodies slamming onto stone. And then—briefly, horribly—the screaming of those who hadn't died immediately. Men impaled through non-vital areas, still conscious, still aware of the stakes piercing their flesh.
The screaming didn't last long. Within thirty seconds, two thousand soldiers had been reduced to two thousand corpses, their bodies displayed on a forest of blood-soaked stone spikes that stretched across half a kilometer of road.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Eldrion stood slowly, his face pale from chakra exhaustion, his robes soaked with his own blood from the casting cost. He turned to face M'lod, and his voice—though weaker now—still carried across the distance.
"Misaki. Will this be enough to instill fear?"
Misaki stared at the field of impaled bodies. At the blood dripping from stone spikes. At two thousand dead men who'd been alive and marching less than five minutes ago.
"Yes," he whispered. "Yes, I think that will do it."
Eldrion collapsed.
Lyria and several others ran to help him, but the old mage was still conscious. Still aware enough to speak one final warning before exhaustion claimed him:
"The king will know it was me. The spell signature is unmistakable. He will send everything. Everything he has. Because he knows that if I'm alive, if I'm fighting against him..." Eldrion's eyes closed. "Then his reign is already ending."