The last embers of tar-fire smoldered on the riverbank when the Covenant scouting party crept out of the treeline.
The scout captain knelt and brushed a shard of gem-encrusted shell with the tip of his dagger. It was still warm. The charred edges crumbled beneath his touch. All around him, the earth was scorched black, the riverbank gouged and torn by the crab's final thrashing. There were no bodies. No blood. No trace of the attackers at all—just scorch marks, broken trees, and fragments of shell too small to be of any use.
His second-in-command whistled softly. "They killed it. They actually killed a Fifth Rank Dread Crab. And they didn't lose a single man."
The captain stood, his jaw tight. He had seen the crab tear through three legions of Covenant infantry that morning. He had watched lightning and holy fire slide off its shell like rain. And now it was gone. Stripped clean. Carried away. By the tunnel rats everyone had been laughing at a month ago.
"Report back to Her Highness," he said, turning for the trees. "Tell her the crab is dead. Tell her the rats did it."
He did not need to say the rest. If the rats could kill a Fifth Rank beast, they could kill anything on this field. The balance of power had shifted overnight. And no one had seen it coming.
In Murong Xue's command pavilion, the report landed like a death sentence.
The council went dead silent. Every lord in the room stared at the messenger, as if waiting for him to say it was a joke. A Fifth Rank beast. Gone. Wiped out by three thousand ragtag scavengers who lived in holes.
"Impossible," one of the lords blurted. "They're Third Rank at best. Nothing short of Fourth Rank siege magic can pierce that shell."
Murong Xue sat very still, her fingers steepled beneath her chin. She did not think it was impossible. She knew better now. These were not ordinary scavengers. They did not fight fair. They did not fight by the rules everyone else had been taught. They poisoned. They trapped. They lured. They hit you with things you never saw coming, from angles you never thought to check.
First the granaries. Then the sapper companies. Then the general. Now a Fifth Rank Dread Crab.
Every time she thought she had measured their strength, they pulled something new out of the dark.
"Send word to all forward outposts," she said, her voice cold and steady. "Double the watch. No patrols smaller than a full company. No one pursues anything into the woods or the hills alone. They are not pests anymore. They are the single greatest threat on this field."
She paused, her gaze drifting to the map's western tunnels.
"And send a runner to the Tide Pact. Flag of truce. Tell Soren Shaw we need to talk."
The council erupted. Murmurs of shock and protest. A truce? With the sea savages? After they'd landed on their shores?
"Quiet," Murong Xue said, and the room fell silent at once. "You all saw what they did to the crab. You think they won't do the same to us, one by one? They want us divided. They want us bleeding each other dry. We will not give them the satisfaction. Not anymore."
Out on the flagship of the Tide Pact, Soren Shaw had just thrown a full tankard of wine at the wall.
His greatest weapon. His life's work. Every gemfish, every siren bubble, every crystal he'd poured into that crab. Gone. Eaten, for all he knew. By tunnel rats.
Rage burned in his chest, hot and bitter. He wanted to sail every ship up the coast, flood the plains, drown every tunnel and every hole and wash those miserable rodents out into the sea.
But he knew better. He'd seen what they did to the crab. They'd lured it. Tricked it. Worn it down. They'd do the same to his armies, if he let his anger lead him into the caves.
A knock came at the cabin door. His first mate stepped in, his expression grim.
"Sir. A messenger from the Covenant. Flag of truce. Princess Murong wants to parley. She says the rats are the real enemy now."
Soren froze. He stared at the man for a long, quiet moment.
A truce. With the Covenant. With Murong Xue, who'd called his people sea savages only a week before.
It was absurd. It was humiliating.
And it was the only smart move any of them had made all tournament.
"Tell her I'll meet her at the northern river crossing at dawn," he said at last. "No armies. Just us and two guards each."
He turned to stare out the cabin window at the darkening coastline.
The game had changed. The rats weren't hiding anymore. They were hunting. And if the two great alliances didn't stop fighting each other, they'd be picked apart one by one, until there was nothing left.
Up in the observation spire, the crab's owner was still screaming when two proctors escorted him toward the exit.
"Cheating!" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "That fire was Fourth Rank! No Third Rank subject can cast that! There are rules! I demand a full audit!"
The proctors said nothing. They just kept walking.
A low, calm voice cut through the shouting before they reached the door.
"The spell was cast from a scroll, forged within the contestant's own divine realm by a demon-forger subject of hers. All materials, all runes, all essence—sourced entirely from her kingdom. No external artifacts. No outside aid. Every rule has been followed."
Headmaster Corvin stood in the archway, his hands folded behind his back, his gaze steady. The young lord's face drained of color the second he saw him. He knew who Corvin was. He knew what a God King could do to a house like his.
"But—but the power level—" the boy stammered.
"Subject-forged armaments are permitted," Corvin said, flat and final. "If your own subjects had been trained to craft such things, you could have used them too. You gambled everything on one beast. You lost. Accept it with dignity, or be escorted out in irons for disrupting the tournament. Your choice."
The boy's mouth snapped shut. He hung his head, and the proctors led him away.
The examiner who'd been standing beside Corvin let out a low whistle.
"Demon-forged scrolls. Soul-annihilating essence. That's… Soulbane property, isn't it? The same trait the ban was meant for."
Corvin nodded slowly, his eyes drifting back to feed seventy-three. The camera panned over a cave mouth where teams of apes and drakes were hauling enormous crab legs into the dark, singing off-key marching songs as they went.
"That's only the half of it," he said, a faint, dry smile tugging at his mouth. "Those three clans you see out there? The ones running the whole war? They're the replacements. The backups. The ones she dug up in the wastes because her real army was banned from the tournament."
The examiner blinked. "Her real army?"
"Her original six clans," Corvin said. "Every last one of them bears multiple rare traits. Soulbane. Abysstouched. Void Resistance. If I'd let them in here? This whole realm would be a crater by the end of the first month. There'd be nothing left but holes and empty storehouses."
He gestured at the feed, where Korg was already directing teams to break down the crab's shell into armor plates.
"Be glad you're only seeing the B-team."
Deep underground, the great cave hall smelled of salt and spice and cooking shellfish.
Long stone tables had been dragged out of storage. Great steaming pots of crab soup bubbled over fire pits. Roasted claw meat sizzled on iron griddles. Every fighter in the burrow had been given a thick slice of white crab meat, and the air hummed with quiet, satisfied celebration.
Lirael sat at the head table, picking meat out of a small crab claw with a thin bone knife, and listened to Borgul and Korg bicker about which cut was the best.
"Enough," she said, setting down her knife. The noise died down at once. "The Covenant and the Tide Pact both know we killed the crab. They know we're not just scavengers anymore. By dawn, they'll both be hunting us in earnest. They might even team up."
Korg grunted, wiping crab juice off his chin.
"Let 'em. We've got tunnels. We've got traps. We've got more food now than we know what to do with. We can outwait them."
"We can," Lirael agreed. "But we won't just wait. While they're busy meeting and making alliances and planning their great campaigns, we hit their supply lines. We hit their camps. We keep them off balance. We make them regret ever deciding we were the enemy."
She tapped the map spread across the table, right where the northern river crossing lay.
"They meet at dawn. We'll be there. Not to fight. To listen. To find out what they're planning. And then we'll make sure their little truce doesn't last very long."
Borgul bared his teeth in a grin.
"Divide and conquer."
"Always," Lirael said.
Outside the hall, the tunnels stretched on for miles. Somewhere far above, two great alliances were licking their wounds and preparing to unite against a common enemy.
Down in the dark, three thousand fighters ate well, and sharpened their blades, and waited.
The hardest part was over.
The real war was about to begin.
Up in her booth, Laia had just finished her seventh pastry of the day when she heard the students in the booths around her gasping and chattering about the crab.
She blinked, leaned forward, and squinted at her feed.
Her people were… having a feast. There was an enormous crab shell propped up against the cave wall. Everyone was eating.
Oh, she thought. They actually did it. They killed the giant crab.
She sat back, crossed her arms, and tried very hard not to look proud.
It was… nice. Knowing they could take care of themselves without her hovering over them every minute.
She reached for another tart, and smiled to herself.
Maybe she'd even go down and congratulate them. After the tournament. When there was less chance of face-planting into an altar again.
Somewhere outside her booth, the tournament bell tolled, low and deep.
Two years down.
One to go.
And the worst was yet to come.