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“Two hundred yards,” she warned him, mind-to-mind.

Cedric already knew. The enemy wasn’t running, but they moved quickly and as one massive unit, still hooting and screaming, a terrifying cacophony drawing ever nearer. A metallic scent hit Cedric’s nose as cultist after cultist smashed their palms against their chests, cutting their hands open on the wolven medallions hanging from their necks. Red crystal weapons bloomed in their hands.

Fear was scrawled upon many of the soldiers’ faces as the sanguinagi approached.

That would not do. These were his people, all of them. His to command and his to protect. His to remind.

Cedric drew Ashrender, the blade catching a glint of the aurora overhead. “People of Kingshelm, stand!” he shouted, his breath misting in the frosty morning air. “You were promised the honor of defending a city. Fate has instead placed you here. Here, where you bore witness to the healing of a realm, the breaking of a new dawn. Cheers spring from our enemies throats because they think they have already won. They scream with joy thinking it will force your fear. They are wrong.”

A ripple went through the lines of soldiers. Shields were pulled tight to chests. Swords were drawn. Above them, an eagle screeched.

“The Crucible has been won. The accords have been signed. And just this morning, you witnessed us seal the Chasm itself. Arcanis is healing. Those who come at us would rather break the world back into pieces than see us forge a better future together. Do not let them.”

Cedric looked up, looked at Elyria—a beautiful specter, a shadowed blade against the ever-brightening morning. Pride pulsed down the bond between them. They could do this. They could end this.

Together.

“So stand, my brothers and sisters!” he shouted, pointing Ashrender to the sky. “Stand for the realm, for kingdom, and for glory! Stand for Arcanis—a whole Arcanis. And let us show the enemy what true joy sounds like!”

Cheers rose up—just a few strong voices at first, roaring into the dawn. Cedric looked to his right to see Thraigg, Kingsley, and the rest of the dwarves rattling their axes and hammers high above their heads. And then there was more, a swelling chorus, a furious clangor.

It echoed across the field, and with an answering yell of his own, Cedric turned toward the enemy swarm . . .

. . . and raced forward to meet them.

Elyria was a periwinkle blur soaring ahead of Cedric and the soldiers following close behind him, her eyes locked on the hill where they’d spotted Malakar. Now it stood empty, and she let out a curse as she dove down into the rush of sanguinagi cultists, brandishing her staff in front of her like a divining rod she hoped would lead straight to him.

The swirling shadows she had wrapped around the length of the staff concentrated at its tip, growing sharp, spiked—lethal. She swung it like a mace, sending an entire row of cultists sprawling. But whatever she did next, Cedric did not see.

He could barely see anything but the madness in the eyes of the first sanguinagi he reached—a man whose hood fell back to reveal a shaved head tattooed with runes. The man thrust his blood-crystal spear at Cedric’s chest, but with a quick sidestep and a whirl of his wrist, Ashrender came down in a smooth arc, and steel met flesh.

The cultist fell hard, his body striking the dirt with an all-too-familiar sound.

And then came another.

And another.

Cedric fought. He slashed and he sliced and he parried, moving through Malakar’s army like each blood mage was little more than a nuisance. He was so much faster now. So much stronger. Crystal shields shattered under Ashrender’s touch. Cultists fell, left and right, one after the other.

He was not alone.

Soldiers followed him through the throng, hacking away at ribbons of sanguinagi magic and blood-forged weapons with no hesitation. Steel flashed in disciplined bursts, cutting down enemy after enemy. Farther down the line, hammers shattered shields and axes cut through limbs as Thraigg and his dwarven brothers charged fearlessly into the fray.

Several yards ahead, Kit and Ollie flew over the clashing throng, raining shards of ice down upon the cultists, while Jocelyn and Tristan clashed with them on the ground. With another screech, Zephyr’s massive eagle form swooped low, talons digging into flesh as she pulled a cultist off Ludov, hauling the sanguinagi into the air before letting him fall, screaming, back to the snow-dusted earth.

Cedric pulled Ashrender from a fallen cultist’s chest, then watched with fascination as shadows swelled on the ground next to the body. Tenebris Nox stepped out of the darkness just long enough to drag a cultist back in with them. A feral growl sounded from above his head, and Cedric ducked just as Sid swooped low, pouncing on a cultist woman he hadn’t noticed at his back. She screamed as the volacarnii bit into her wrist, forcing her to release the crystal dagger she’d been clutching. There was a burst of greenish light, and then sage fingers were nimbly plucking the dagger off the ground and flinging it deep into the cultist’s gut.

“Volacarnii,” Zephyr said, under her breath, like a reminder to herself. But Cedric, of course, had no time to ask her what she meant, because another cultist was upon him.

And so it went.

Blood sprayed across the dirt.

Curdled screams cut off in a wet gurgle.

And slowly—sometimes one at a time, sometimes several at once—Malakar’s army fell.

The massacre was over so fast, it almost felt anticlimactic. Tenny, Young Shep, and the other healers never even needed to come forth.