The attack didn't wait for permission.
It came in the afternoon, when the city was loud, busy, and convinced that whatever horrors lurked beyond the borders had decided to stay there.
Aldric was in the lower courtyard with Arinelle when the alarm rang.
Not the long ceremonial one.
The short one.
The wrong one.
Arinelle stopped mid-sentence, fingers still stained faintly with chalk and ink. "That bell," she said slowly, "means someone screwed up."
Aldric was already moving. "Or someone very competent stopped pretending."
Captain Rovan was sprinting toward them, helmet tucked under his arm.
"Eastern wall," he said. "Something hit the outer barrier. Went through the first layer like it wasn't there."
Arinelle's jaw tightened.
"That barrier was never meant to adapt," she muttered. "It holds. Or it breaks."
Aldric glanced at her.
In his memory, she was older. Sharper. Scarred along one cheek from a collapse that shouldn't have happened. Her hair always tied back because loose ends annoyed her. Her eyes permanently tired from fixing things faster than they were allowed to fail.
She'd died at thirty-four.
Not in glory.
But in a city that trusted outdated defenses.
Not this time.
They reached the eastern wall to chaos.
Guards shouted. Civilians were pushed back. The barrier shimmered violently, light cracking like glass under pressure.
Outside it, something slammed into the wall again.
The impact didn't explode.
It pressed.
The barrier bowed inward, lines of force distorting under strain.
Arinelle stared, eyes already moving, already calculating.
"…It's riding the impact," she said. "Matching resistance instead of overpowering it."
Aldric nodded. Just like the Siege of Halverin, he thought.
The same mistake. The same assumption.
He turned to her. "Can you fix it?"
She didn't hesitate. "Yes."
Rovan blinked. "That was fast."
Arinelle grimaced. "That's because if I hesitate, people die."
Aldric felt the echo of the future tighten in his chest.
That line hadn't changed.
She ran straight to the control anchor.
No ritual.
No preparation.
Just instinct and experience she hadn't lived yet.
"Everyone back!" she shouted. "If this fails, it fails loudly!"
Her hands moved fast—not drawing, but rewriting. The rigid formation peeled apart under her touch, layers shifting into staggered patterns, each one slightly out of sync with the others.
Aldric felt it immediately.
The barrier wasn't stronger.
It was thinking.
In the future, they'd called her the woman who taught walls to move.
She hated the title.
The next impact came.
Instead of resisting—
The barrier bent.
Force slid across its surface, dispersed, redirected. The crack vanished.
A breath went through the wall like a single shared heartbeat.
"It held!" someone shouted.
Arinelle shook her head. "No. That was them testing."
She slammed her palm down again.
"And now," she said softly, "we teach them manners."
The attackers revealed themselves.
Three figures, humanoid but wrong. Movements too precise. Strikes aimed not to destroy, but to exploit.
Aldric studied them.
Yes, he thought. Same type. Same pattern.
In the future, these things would be called Pressure Walkers—units designed to crack static defenses and sow panic. Entire cities would fall to them because no one adapted fast enough.
Arinelle adjusted again.
The barrier responded before the strike even landed.
It pushed back.
The pressure rebounded.
One of the attackers staggered.
Arinelle laughed, sharp and delighted. "Oh. That's new."
Aldric smiled despite himself.
She'd always laughed like that when something worked.
"Rovan," Aldric said calmly. "Now."
The archers fired—not wildly, but precisely.
Bolts slipped through brief openings Arinelle created intentionally, striking joints, weak points, moments of imbalance.
One attacker screamed—a horrible, tearing sound.
The second tried to retreat.
The barrier surged forward.
Not violently.
Decisively.
It threw the attacker back like an inconvenience being removed.
The third hesitated.
Aldric stepped forward.
"You came expecting a wall," he said evenly. "You got a response."
The creature ran.
It didn't get far.
When it was over, the barrier settled into a steady glow.
Still standing.
Still intact.
Arinelle leaned against the anchor, breathing hard, hair loose now, eyes bright with exhaustion and adrenaline.
"…Okay," she said. "I hate that."
Aldric walked over.
"You rewrote a city defense under live attack," he said. "In the future, people will argue about whether that was even possible."
She snorted. "Then they should argue faster."
He laughed softly.
In the future, she would never believe how important she was either.
By evening, the city knew only this:
Something had attacked Aurelion.
And lost.
Not because the wall was stronger—
But because it learned.
Lysenne joined Aldric as Arinelle argued animatedly with stunned engineers, already redesigning improvements.
"She's different," Lysenne said.
"Yes," Aldric replied.
"She doesn't wait."
"No," Aldric said quietly. "She never did."
Later, Aldric stood alone at the wall.
He rested his hand against the stone, feeling the adaptive hum beneath it.
In the future, this wall would save tens of thousands.
In the future, Arinelle Vaast would die trying to protect people who never knew her name.
Aldric closed his eyes briefly.
Not this time.
He'd remembered her early.
And this time—
He wouldn't let the world waste her.