The figure at the treeline didn't rush the gate the way any ordinary raider would have, didn't shout or brandish a weapon or do anything at all to announce intent. It simply began walking, unhurried, covering ground with a fluid, gliding evenness that made Rama's trained eye flag something wrong about the gait before his conscious mind had even finished cataloguing the rest of it.
"Archers," Yudhistira barked, already moving, voice cutting through the courtyard's rising panic with practiced authority. "Hold your ground, hold formation, do not break for it."
Two of Ki Branggah's guards loosed arrows anyway, too fast, too frightened, both shafts finding their mark center mass with the kind of hit that should have dropped anything human instantly. The figure didn't slow. It didn't flinch. It kept walking, arrows jutting from its chest like it hadn't registered the impact at all, and Rama felt the last of his uncertainty about what he was facing burn away into flat, focused clarity.
