The door ground open. Stairs descended into darkness that seemed to swallow light.
From below, the sound of hundreds of feet in perfect coordination.
"HOLD THE STAIRS!"
Death-knights formed a wall across the entrance. Shields locked. The narrow space was their only advantage against numbers that should have overwhelmed them in seconds.
Shells poured upward. Wave after wave. Throwing themselves against the defense with no regard for self-preservation.
Because there was no self left to preserve.
The first wave broke against the shield wall. Death-knights cut them down. For thirty seconds, it almost felt manageable.
Then the second wave hit before they could reset.
A death-knight stumbled. Shells dragged him down before he could recover. The man had served Dante for four hundred years. Had survived wars that toppled empires. Died in a stairwell, drowning under empty bodies.
"Close the gap!"
Shadow-guards surged forward. Filled the hole. Held.
The third wave came. And the fourth. And the fifth.
It stopped being a battle. Became something more like drowning. Like being buried alive under bodies that kept coming, no matter how many they killed. Dante's shadows lashed out constantly, destroying shells by the dozen, but for every one that fell, three more pushed forward.
His arms burned. His chest ached with every breath. Sweat ran down his spine. He'd fought for his whole existence without tiring like this. Now his body screamed for rest it wouldn't get.
Aldric went down.
Not dead. A shell's blade caught his shoulder, spinning him into the wall. Two shadow-guards pulled him back before the tide could swallow him. But the captain who'd served Dante longer than civilizations had existed was bleeding badly, face grey with pain.
"Keep fighting," Aldric snarled at the guards trying to tend him. "I'll bleed later."
Another death-knight fell. Then three volunteers in quick succession, pulled from the line and torn apart before anyone could reach them. A ward-keeper named Sera, who'd been teaching the younger ones during the march, took a blade meant for someone else. She crumpled without a sound.
Each death pulse carved absence into Dante's awareness. Each one made the weight heavier.
The shells kept coming. Endless. Relentless. Like the stairs went down forever, and every level was full of them.
"They're not stopping!"
"We don't need to kill them all." Dante's voice came out steady. Had to. "Brynn, how far to the ward-core?"
"Four more levels." She was at the wall, tracing symbols with bloody fingers. "But there's a service passage. Emergency route. Bypasses everything."
Four more levels would break them. Would leave bodies stacked on every stair.
"Can you access it?"
"One minute."
Sixty seconds.
Another wave surged up the stairs. The shield wall buckled. A shell broke through, heading for the ward-keepers. A Nightfall volunteer intercepted it. They went down together, her knife in its throat, its hands around hers. Neither got back up.
Forty seconds.
"The line's failing!" Someone's voice, high with panic.
