Lys slowed when the familiar outline of his house came into view. Lantern light spilled from the open front door, cutting a weak yellow path across the packed dirt. Elara stood in the yard with her arms wrapped tight around herself, shoulders drawn up like she was trying to make her body smaller. Helga was next to her. Mitsu hovered a half-step behind them, fingers curling at the edge of her sleeve.
A few neighbors from the houses on either side had come out as well, old women in nightdresses, others clutching shawls. Every face was turned the same way: toward the western stretch of wall, where the dark looked thicker, and the distant noise had a different pitch.
Lys stepped into the yard.
"What happened, Mom? Why is everyone outside?"
Elara's head snapped toward him. For a second her eyes sharpened, then she forced her voice into something steadier.
"Oh, Lys? You came? They're saying monsters got through the western gate. People are coming running from that side. We just… we don't know if that is true or not. So, we came to check."
Helga's hands were clasped so hard the knuckles stood out white. She stepped forward to break more news to Lys. "Uhh, Lys. Mira and Lady Selene also went to look over there. Just a moment ago. Mira insisted on checking by herself. And Selene didn't want Mira going alone. She said she was well enough to walk. So, uh…"
"Huh? What are you talking about? Wasn't Selene mana drained? How can she go? And why would Mira want to go there too? Mom, how come you didn't stop them from going?"
Elara looked down, not saying anything.
Helga spoke for her. "Your mom wasn't inside the house. She and Mitsu were in the backyard when those two decided to go out. I couldn't stop them in time. Sorry, Lys. It is my fault."
The words landed and sat there. Lys kept his face still. But inside, the ground under his feet felt like it had shifted half a step sideways. The same cold, unstable feeling that had followed him since the hobgoblin fight came back to haunt him again. His family is out there. And he was still too weak to confidently say to them that everything would be okay.
He nodded once. Knowing blaming others won't make things better here. Helga must've done her best, knowing how stubborn Mira was.
"Okay. What's done is done. I'll go get them back here. You guys go inside. And lock the door. Also stay away from the windows until someone comes back with clear word."
Elara's hand lifted toward his arm, trying to say something. "Lys…"
Before she could say it, he was already turning. The rest of whatever she meant to say was cut off by the sound of his boots hitting the road again. He didn't look back. He just ran as fast as he could.
'It's fine. They're probably fine.'
The thought repeated itself within his mind with every stride, thin and automatic, as he tried to keep himself calm.
The streets were emptier the farther west he went. Doors that had been half-open earlier were shut now. Lanterns that had swung freely hung still, as if even the light was holding its breath. Somewhere ahead, two people were coming from the gate's direction, running. Lys cut past without slowing. Seeing these two just made him run with more speed.
While running, his mind snagged on something he had shoved aside before.
'Did Selene really learn the mana-breathing exercise? Otherwise, how can she recover so fast? Wasn't she so exhausted before from just healing those men? Mira even had to carry her home.'
He had spent hours trying to teach it to Selene two nights ago. She had tried until her forehead shone with sweat and her hands trembled. But even after trying so hard, the mana just slipped past her every time, like water through open fingers. In the end, they had both decided it was something the system only let him use. A private skill or something like that. Which is not something that could be shared.
But now that he learned she recovered so fast, the memory of her face when she finally gave up kept rising now. The quiet frustration. The way she had stared at her own palms like they had failed her on purpose.
'What if she had been closer than either of them realized? What if something had clicked later, when no one was watching, and the mana had finally answered? It would explain why she felt steady enough to leave the house tonight. Why she had decided she could walk out into the dark with Mira instead of staying behind.'
He almost laughed at himself for the thought. They had tried for hours after all. She had said it herself; she couldn't feel the pull. It wasn't real. Maybe his brain was inventing reasons to make it true.
Still, the idea refused to die completely. It sat in the back of his skull. Knowing if Selene had somehow forced the technique to work… then Sara could learn it too. Sara had been bedridden after having her mana drained. This technique could potentially make her better overnight, as it does for him. Having her mana back would change more than just her strength. He wants her to feel better too. Seeing her cry that day felt awful to him.
Lys shoved the thought down and ran harder, having to worry if what Elara said is true. If monsters really had been spotted, as she heard, it's really bad.
Finally, he reached close to the gate, where he could see some people crowded now. The western wall was close enough now that he could hear the individual shouts instead of a single distant roar from afar. The air carried a strange smell, a familiar smell. Smell of monsters. He was instantly alerted by smelling that. His hand found the hilt of his sword on instinct.
He still didn't slow when the first shapes came into view: villagers with spears, a couple of adventurers he half-recognized from the guild, and farther ahead the darker mass of things that shouldn't have been inside the walls.
Monsters.
The noise from the scene in front of him hit him first, raw, overlapping, nothing like the tighter lines and shouted orders he had left on the eastern wall. This was messier. Louder. People yelling over each other, spears throwing sounds, shouting, and some running when there were no more spears to throw.
Then his gaze turned to where these monsters were coming from. The gate itself was the worst part. A massive hole had been torn clean through the heavy wooden doors. The planks around the opening were blown outward, jagged edges pointing toward the village like the force had come from outside and punched straight through without slowing down. Whatever made that hole had been big, and it had been moving fast. But he didn't see any monsters that size around.
Two guards lay in a bloodied slump near the breach. One was still moving, barely, having a large puncture wound on his abdomen, while a villager pressed cloth against there to stop the bleeding. The other wasn't moving at all. His spear lay a few feet away, snapped in half. Lys realised that person must've been dead already. But he couldn't see any wounds on her.
Beyond the ruined gate, more shapes were already pushing through.
These weren't the same dinosaur-like brutes from the east gate. The mix of monsters here was uglier and harder to track. There were some bipedal lizard-creatures, leaner, quicker on their feet among them. But mixed in with them there were also some knee-high things that looked like someone had packed dirt and stone into rough humanoid shapes and given them life. The mini golems lurched forward in uneven, stumbling strides, arms swinging like they weren't sure how joints worked. And darting between all of them were smaller, feathered things that moved like aggressive chickens, fast, low to the ground, heads bobbing as they changed direction without warning.
The variety made the whole approach feel more chaotic than it could've been, less like a coordinated wave and more like these were the ones who couldn't manage to keep up with those stronger monsters on the eastern wall, so decided to circle around the village to come through here.
And right in the middle of this chaos, he found them. There stood Mira and Selene.
Mira wasn't hanging back. She was in the thick of the smaller creatures; the enchanted sword she had shown him before was cutting sharp arcs through the air, one after another. Her form was still the same awkward-but-effective style he had seen in the backyard, feet a little too wide, shoulders too tense, but when the blade connected, a thin edge of wind followed the swing and sliced clean through one of the dirt golems.
The upper half of the thing simply came apart in a spray of dry soil and pebbles. She wasn't perfect. Her footwork slipped more than once on the uneven ground. But the instincts were there; even Lys could see them, however noob he himself was in this subject.
He noticed Selene just a few steps behind her. Her hands were pressed in the dirt, in a crouching position, fingers spread. Every few seconds, a faint shimmer rose from her palms, barely visible, like heat haze, and the nearest cluster of chicken-like creatures flinched back as if something invisible had shoved them.
It didn't look like an attack. Just a simple ward, weak and temporary, buying Mira the half-second she needed to reset her stance. And on her face there wasn't any trace of exhaustion, as Lys had figured would be. She was perfectly fine, as if she hadn't drained her mana just an hour ago. Supporting Mira with her all.
Around the edges of the fight, other women from the neighborhood had formed a rough half-circle, with spears, pitchforks, and one heavy iron poker from someone's hearth. They stayed at the periphery, jabbing at anything that tried to slip past Mira and Selene toward the houses behind them. Their faces were tight with fear, but none of them had run. They just kept the line, poking and shouting whenever a monster got too close.
"You fucker, come at me if you dare. I'll poke you to death, you miserable fuck."
"Misu, stop yelling at them. They can't understand you. It is only distracting me. Oi, cover that side; that chicken is getting past you."
"Shut yer trap. I'll be dead, but still won't let them enter my village. Come fucker, yaaahhh."
Most of them were silently forming defenses, but some had loud mouths, keeping on insulting the monsters as if those creatures could understand them.