One of the soldiers nearest me adjusts immediately, stepping back instead of forward, his blade staying between him and the next strike.
Good.
Learning.
The pressure doesn’t hitin one place.
It spreads.
Orcs hammering the weakened barricades, minotaurs forcing structural breaks, nagas slipping through anything that isn’t perfectly sealed. It isn’t chaos—it’s layered, deliberate, designed to pull at every weakness at once.
Krago isn’t testing anymore.
He’s dismantling.
I step back just enough to widen my view, forcing my focus beyond the immediate clash, tracking the shifts, the fractures, the points where the line thins too far.
“Kareth,” I call.
He turns toward me, breath controlled despite the strain.
“East holds,” he says before I ask, his voice tight. “Barely.”
“Supplies?” I ask, already moving.
A younger officer stumbles toward me from the rear, mud streaked across his face, one sleeve torn.
“Low,” he says, forcing the word out between breaths. “Food, water—both.”
“How long?” I ask.
He hesitates.
That’s enough of an answer.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say before he can speak. “We hold.”
He nods, swallowing hard, then moves to relay what he can.
I turn back toward the line.
The structure is still there.
But it’s thinning.
Not from force.
From strain.
A woman grips her spear too tightly, her knuckles white, her shoulders trembling just enough that it throws off her balance.
“We’re not—” she starts, her voice catching.
I step into her space, close enough that she has to look at me instead of what’s in front of her.
“You’re still here,” I say, my voice lower now, cutting through the noise just enough to reach her. “That’s what matters.”
Her breathing stutters.
