The sun had barely cleared the low ridgeline to the east, yet its light carried little warmth into the valley. Dust lay loose over the ground, kicked thin by days of marching and resettling, rising in faint veils with every bootstep. The army spread across the basin in ordered sprawl—rows of tents driven hard into stubborn earth, supply wagons locked wheel to wheel along the slope, nearly eight hundred soldiers rotating through drills while squires, carpenters, smiths, cooks, and traders kept the structure from fraying. Horses stamped against packed soil and shook their manes free of grit. The air carried sweat, leather, ash, and heated iron.
Khartha's campaign banners marked the central ridge where command tents stood braced against crosswind. Storm-gray cloth split by deep sea-green, the white spiral gale descending toward a breaking wave at its base. Even here, far from harbor walls, the city's mark flew first. Around it hung house variants—same spiral, altered fields and trims—each pledge bending toward the same center. The wind caught the cloth without rhythm, snapping it taut, then slack, then taut again. Beneath those standards, orders moved in sharp exchanges. Pike lines locked and reset. Shields rose and lowered. Runners cut through the lanes at controlled speed, sealed packets tucked tight beneath leather straps.
Holst's Men did not behave like garrison soldiers. Their gear remained within arm's reach even at dawn. Bedrolls were tight. Blades were cleaned nightly whether used or not. No one spoke of the Marches directly, but everyone knew how close they camped to broken ground.
The mobile forges had been established along a shallow rise where the wind could carry smoke away from the main lines. Kilns were bolted into reinforced wagons, iron ribs darkened from seasons of use. Within them burned aetherite shards set into iron cradles, heat steady and white-gold at the core. The flames did not waver outward with gusts. They narrowed instead, drawn inward along unseen tension, coals glowing evenly without bellows once the pressure caught. Spearheads rested in neat rows beside anvils. Arrowheads cooled in shallow pans. A half-shaped sword hissed as it met oil, steam vanishing almost instantly in the dry air.
Men passed those wagons without awe. Aetherite was expensive, watched, rationed—but it was a tool. Campaigns required heat that did not depend on wood alone.
Four years ago, the sight of so many men and beasts and wagons had suffocated him.
At eight, Baldwin had stumbled through these same lanes unsure which shout belonged to him, water sloshing over his boots while older squires jeered. Now, at eleven, he moved with deliberate economy. A yoke balanced across his shoulders carried two brimming buckets, the weight settling easily into muscle shaped by repetition. He angled his stride without thinking to avoid a stack of bundled pikes. A cavalry mount shifted against its line; Baldwin gave it space before it could test his sleeve with teeth. Heat from a shard-fed kiln brushed his cheek as he passed, steady as a banked breath.
The chaos no longer intimidated him. It had become a rhythm he understood, one that demanded attention but no longer threatened to swallow him whole.
Above him, a banner twisted sharply as the wind shifted direction. Baldwin's eyes lifted briefly to judge the strain along its rope before continuing on. Somewhere along the western perimeter, a sentry adjusted his stance and looked twice toward the horizon without knowing why.
Baldwin carried water toward the officers' tents, the weight a small burden compared to the thoughts turning quietly behind his eyes.
He had grown out of the softness of childhood without noticing when it happened. Work had stripped it from him. His arms were lean and corded from repetition, shoulders squared by years of hauling, lifting, standing straight when spoken to. Sun had darkened his skin unevenly. His eyes were sharp, quick to track movement or correction, though something gentler still lingered there when he looked for his brother.
Nearby, Sybillian moved through the lanes with care that bordered on hesitation. He was smaller than most boys his age, pale where Baldwin was bronzed, his frame narrow and drawn tight as wire. His gaze never settled. It passed over tent lines, shield stacks, the way banners twisted in the wind, the shift of men adjusting straps or turning their heads too quickly. As if the camp were a thing that might lunge.
Baldwin had seen that look before.
Years ago, Sybillian had known their parents were sick before fever showed in their faces. He had woken from dreams already afraid. What had once seemed like childish imagination had proven correct too often to dismiss outright. Their parents were gone now. One year remained before Baldwin would leave squiredom and step into cadet ranks, where his duties would change and his time would no longer be his own. One year to make sure Sybillian could stand without him.
He set the yoke down carefully and knelt beside his brother, resting a steady hand against his shoulder.
Sybillian recoiled as if shaken from a dream. He would sometimes drift away to places Baldwin didn't quite understand.
"What's wrong, Syb?" Baldwin asked.
Sybillian's breath hitched. "I don't know. Something's—" He paused, gathered himself, then nodded once before speaking. "It's wrong," he said quietly. "Not loud. Just… tight." His fingers curled against the hem of his sleeve. "The regiment. The scouts. The Marshal." He swallowed. "It's like something is already happening somewhere else and we're standing where it ends. I see fire. I see men running. I see the banners torn."
Baldwin's jaw flexed. He resisted the urge to look toward the ridge where Khartha's spiral snapped in the wind.
"Listen to me," he said, keeping his voice level. "You see too much sometimes. That doesn't mean it's true." He shifted closer so Sybillian would have to look at him instead of the camp. "Marshal Holst has held this line three seasons running. The scouts are out before dawn. The men are drilled twice over. The acolytes, the magi—all of them answer to command here. Nothing moves without someone seeing it first."
Sybillian's lip trembled despite himself. "My dreams don't feel like nothing."
"They're dreams," Baldwin said, firmer now. "And fear makes everything sharper than it is." He squeezed his brother's shoulder once, grounding. "You stand with me. That's what matters. Whatever comes, we face it the same way we face drills. Together."
Sybillian nodded, though the tension did not leave him.
Baldwin forced a small smile. "Finish your chores," he said. "If you're going to predict disaster, at least do it with clean boots."
That earned the faintest breath of something like a laugh.
Baldwin lifted the yoke again and rose, the buckets settling against his shoulders. He did not look back immediately.
The morning wore on and the camp settled into the steady churn of duty. Baldwin ran messages between drill lines, replaced snapped bowstrings, carried fresh bundles of arrows from the fletchers to the eastern stacks. Sweat traced slow paths down his back beneath roughspun cloth. Dust clung to his throat until swallowing felt like work. The rhythm held, but something beneath it had shifted.
At one of the forge wagons, a smith paused mid-strike and leaned closer to the kiln. The shard within burned steady as ever, white-gold and contained, yet the coals around it had drawn inward too tightly, as though pulled by a current that did not match the wind. The smith swore softly and struck again. The sound rang sharper than before.
Baldwin felt it then. A narrowing. As if the air had thickened without growing heavier.
He had just delivered a stack of sealed orders to the western drill line when raised voices cut across the central ridge.
Not shouting.
Clipped. Hard.
Baldwin turned toward the command tents.
Marshal Holst stood just inside the open flap of his pavilion, one hand braced against the central pole, jaw set. He was younger than most marshals Baldwin had seen in passing campaigns—broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, his dark hair tied back without ornament. There was nothing theatrical in him. Only focus.
Opposite him stood Captain Varro, scarcely older, dust still caked along the hem of his cloak.
"You're certain?" Holst asked.
"Yes, sir."
"How far?"
"Less than half a day at its current pace." Varro swallowed once. "The scouts confirmed displacement along a three-mile stretch. Ground folding inward. Livestock gone. Two riders lost before they could turn back."
"And the acolytes?"
Varro's mouth tightened. "Four went with them. Only one returned."
"Condition?"
"Shaken. Nose bled through both sleeves. He said the pressure was moving east. Direct line. Toward Khartha."
Silence held for the length of a breath.
Holst's gaze flicked briefly toward the spiral banner snapping above the ridge, then back to Varro.
"Did he report interference?"
"No, sir. Only movement."
Holst nodded once.
"Find Rowland. I want his reading confirmed." His voice did not rise. "Send word to Khartha immediately. Full gallop. If this line holds, they have hours at best."
"Sir," Varro said carefully, "if it continues on this bearing—"
"I know where it continues," Holst cut in, not harshly. Simply final.
He stepped forward, lowering his voice. "We brace here. Cavalry ready to redeploy. Shields east. Pike wall double depth. No collapse in the center, no matter what shifts."
Varro hesitated. "Sir… if this is what we think—"
Holst met his eyes evenly. "Then the city stands."
That was all.
The tent flap snapped wider as a runner emerged at speed, leather satchel already slung across his chest. Medium height. Slight forward lean. Dark hair threaded faintly with early grey despite his age. He sucked air once through his teeth as he adjusted the strap.
His eyes met Baldwin's for the briefest moment.
A curt nod.
Then he was moving, boots striking hard along the ridge as he angled toward the southern road.
"Baldwin."
The word cut clean.
Baldwin stepped inside at once and dropped to one knee.
"Yes, Marshal."
Holst studied him only long enough to judge steadiness.
"Front line," he said. "Find Commander Darius Hayle. Tell him eastern flank defensive. Cavalry mounted but held. Outriders extended another mile. I want eyes as far as we can put them. No gaps."
"Yes, Marshal."
"Move."
Baldwin rose and turned at once.
As he stepped back into the open air, the camp no longer sounded the same.
Drill calls faltered mid-command. A line of shields lowered without being told. Along the eastern rise, three acolytes stood shoulder to shoulder with palms lifted slightly, not casting—measuring. One winced as if struck by a sound no one else heard.
A horse tore free of its tether and had to be dragged back by two men swearing under their breath.
Above, the spiral banner snapped once, sharply, though the wind had not strengthened. Baldwin tightened his grip on the strap across his shoulder and began to run.
Baldwin felt the change before he understood it.
It passed through the camp like a tremor that never reached the ground. Conversations thinned. Men who had been bent over arrow shafts or tightening girths straightened one by one and turned toward the eastern rise. Not in panic. Just… turning.
Baldwin slowed without meaning to. Something in his chest tightened, the way it did before a storm broke.
Syb.
He searched the moving bodies for pale hair, for that slight frame that never quite filled a uniform properly. Nothing. Only shoulders and helms and pike shafts lifting above the crowd as more soldiers drifted toward the ridge overlooking the valley.
"Move," Baldwin muttered, slipping between two shield-bearers. Someone swore as he forced through. A cart wheel clipped his hip. He barely felt it.
The press of men thickened the closer he came to the rise. He lost his sightlines entirely—faces everywhere, backs everywhere, no clear path forward.
"Where are you?" he whispered.
He pushed harder, ducked beneath an outstretched arm, and broke free at last onto the eastern slope.
The valley beyond the trees looked wrong.
The wind did not match what he was seeing. Leaves shivered, but the trunks bent inward. A line of earth lifted beneath the forest floor, not sharply, but steadily, as though something vast rolled beneath it. Trees tilted and went down in a slow collapsing arc. Birds erupted from the canopy and scattered in uneven bursts.
A murmur ran through the soldiers around him.
Commander Hayle stood at the edge of the ridge, posture straight, jaw set, eyes fixed on the valley.
"Double the eastern line," Hayle called. "Shields forward. Cavalry hold for my mark."
The words were clear.
The movement behind them was not.
Too many men still stared at the trees.
Baldwin forced his way to Hayle's side, breath coming hard.
"Marshal's orders," he said. "Outriders extended. Pike wall doubled. No collapse in the center."
Hayle nodded once. "Good. Tell him we brace here. If it shifts north we—"
Baldwin's attention slipped.
He was already scanning the crowd again.
Syb.
Faces turned toward the valley.
All but a few.
A handful of figures moved against the current, slipping through the bodies instead of toward the ridge. Hoods low. Hands hidden. They did not look at the trees. They looked at the men.
One brushed past a pike tip and did not react when it scraped his shoulder.
Baldwin felt it then. The air had grown heavy around him.
He turned back toward Hayle, words rising in his throat.
"Commander—"
Hayle was already looking down.
Dust tightened around his boots, circling inward instead of blowing free. His cloak snapped sideways though Baldwin felt no wind on his own face.
Hayle frowned.
The air collapsed.
Hayle's feet left the ground and he was thrown hard across Baldwin's field of vision, body twisting as if seized by an unseen hand. Baldwin staggered back, heel slipping in churned dirt, eyes trying to follow. His hands lifted instinctively though he had nothing to catch.
The earth answered.
A jagged spike punched from the soil and met him before he could strike the ground. The impact drove through mail and bone and carried him forward onto it. He folded over the rising column, weight settling, blood dark against dust.
Someone screamed.
The line dissolved.
A robed figure stood ten paces away, hands low, fingers flexing. His pupils were blown wide, black swallowing the color of his eyes. For a moment they looked hollow, as if the darkness ran deeper than the skull behind them. Thin strands of shadow bled outward from the sockets like smoke caught in still air.
The air tightened around him first. Dust skittered across the ground toward his boots, tugged by pressure Baldwin could not see.
The air ruptured outward with a concussive crack.
A soldier at the front of the shield wall folded inward at the chest and dropped as if his ribs had been crushed in a vice. Another man spun beside him, helm flying free as his neck snapped sideways.
Aether.
The word came only after the second body fell.
Baldwin staggered back from the spike, breath tearing in his throat.
Not now. Not here.
Lightning crawled across the air near the wagons. A white fork leapt from an outstretched hand and struck a shield square. The metal flashed and blackened. The man behind it convulsed once and collapsed smoking.
Hoods fell across the eastern line.
Heat shimmered in the air before the wagons. Then flame tore forward in a narrow, controlled jet that cut through canvas and flesh alike.
Three soldiers went down together, one crawling while fire climbed his back. His screams tore through ash and smoke.
The man wielding it stepped forward through smoke with measured calm, wrist turning slightly as each burst found another gap.
Laughter rose over the burning.
Bright. Certain.
A cavalry rider broke from the flank and charged, shard set into his blade flaring as he swung. A crescent of compressed air tore outward.
The flame bent.
The jet shifted and caught horse and rider together. They went down in heat and splintered bone.
Baldwin flinched at the sound.
Find him.
The air burst again. Another soldier lifted from his feet and slammed into the ground hard enough that his helmet split. A second blow followed, catching two men at once and driving them flat.
An acolyte stumbled forward, blood running from his nose, hands shaking as he tried to shape the pressure. The next concussion hit him full in the chest. He dropped without a sound, the pressure dissipating around him.
Baldwin pushed backward through retreating bodies, boots slipping in churned earth.
"Syb!"
He could not see past the mass of men breaking apart. No pale hair. No narrow shoulders. Only smoke and falling canvas and bodies colliding without order.
Baldwin shoved past a fallen shield and nearly went down over a body he did not recognize. The ground no longer rolled in waves. It answered in bursts.
A magus stood amid churned earth, arms spread low. Dust lifted around him in a tightening ring, fragments of stone rising and orbiting with it. They did not fall.
They hardened.
With a sharp motion of his wrist the ring collapsed forward.
Stone tore through the nearest rank. One soldier dropped without a sound, face opened. Another screamed once before a shard of earth punched through his throat. A third lost his footing as the ground snapped upward beneath him and flung him sideways.
Baldwin ducked as something hissed past his ear.
Not there.
Lightning cracked again from deeper in the line. A white fork leapt from an outstretched hand and split a shield rim, the bearer collapsing in smoke as the charge tore through him.
Fire answered from the flank.
The magus's laughter carried him through wreckage at a measured pace, narrow jets carving seams through wood and mail. Every burst deliberate. Every step unhurried. His laughter threaded through the screams like something bright and pleased.
The line buckled again.
Then three shard-set shields forced through the breach, advancing shoulder to shoulder into the hail of stone.
"Wardline!" someone shouted, the word cutting through panic.
The next volley of debris struck the reinforced shields in a thunder of impacts that drove the formation back half a step—but no farther.
Behind them came steel.
A greatsword swept low, its embedded air shard flaring pale. The arc it cut did not travel far, but it traveled hard. A compressed crescent tore into the orbiting debris and shattered it mid-spin, opening space where there had been none.
The greathammer followed.
Its head struck earth with a brutal downward blow, shard flashing deep amber at the moment of impact. The shockwave rippled outward through broken ground, collapsing the magus's footing and throwing his control wide.
Two archers stepped in tight behind the shields. One loosed at near point-blank range. The second followed half a breath later.
The first bolt struck low.
The second caught the magus high in the shoulder.
He tried to rise on another surge of earth.
The greatsword cut again, shorter this time. The compressed air struck him high, collapsing collarbone and ribs in a single concussive crack. A ragged gasp tore from his throat, eyes wide with pain he did not have time to understand.
The greathammer came from the opposite side in a brutal, full arc.
The impact broke him across the middle, folding him apart before he struck the ground.
The orbiting debris fell uselessly to the dirt.
For a moment the eastern flank steadied.
Men regrouped behind the Wardline's advance. Shields locked tighter. A pike line reformed uneven but present.
Lightning still snapped from the rear, forcing men to shift and brace.
Fire did not relent.
The laughing magus turned his wrist. Heat shimmered in the air, and sent another gout of flame through the reforming line, catching a shield edge and turning it molten where reinforcement did not reach. The bearer screamed and dropped it.
Baldwin pushed past the reforming formation, breath ragged.
"Syb!"
He caught sight of pale cloth near a collapsed tent pole and drove toward it, heart pounding, the sounds of hammer, flame, and cracking Aether blurring behind him.
For the first time since Hayle fell, the line was not collapsing.
It was holding.
The Wardline tightened around the gap where the first shield had fallen, greatsword cutting controlled arcs through drifting debris while the greathammer struck low and hard to keep the ground beneath them from rising again. Acolytes began gathering behind them, hands trembling but lifted, trying to feel for pressure, trying to shape it before it shaped them.
Then the remaining magi adjusted.
Fire did not lash wildly. It narrowed, steady and deliberate, hammering at the weakened center. Lightning answered from the rear, each strike landing not at random but where metal had already begun to glow. Air moved next—not a gale, not spectacle, but a cutting force that found seams and edges and turned them into openings.
The central shield took the first two impacts.
The shard embedded in its heart flared white, brighter than before. Baldwin saw the bearer brace, boots digging trenches into churned soil as lightning struck again and fire poured across the cracked rim. When the air-shear followed, skimming across the shield's upper edge, he heard the fracture—thin, brittle, wrong.
The shard split.
The shield bearer staggered back half a step, exposed only for the space of a breath.
Fire filled it.
He fell without a cry, smoke rising from the gap in his armor.
The remaining shields tried to close, but lightning struck again before they could lock, and the greatsword's answering arc bent mid-flight, scattered by a pressure Baldwin could not see but could feel pressing into his ribs.
The greathammer slammed down once more.
The shock should have rippled outward.
Instead, it shuddered and died beneath the surface, as though the earth itself had lost interest in answering.
A tremor followed.
Not from any magus.
From deeper.
It rolled beneath Baldwin's boots and climbed his spine, and the air around him changed—not colder, not hotter, but heavier, as though something immense had shifted its weight below the soil.
Fire wavered mid-jet.
Lightning snapped wide and struck empty ground.
Even the air-shear lost its clean edge, scattering dust rather than cleaving flesh.
Beyond the ridge, trees began to tilt inward. Not falling. Leaning. Roots tearing free in long sheets of soil as the earth gathered toward a widening spiral.
Someone near Baldwin said it first, barely louder than breath.
"…Wyrm."
The word passed unevenly through the line. A disbelief, then recognition, moving from mouth to mouth.
Arrows loosed toward the lightning-wielder.
Three struck in quick succession. One high in the shoulder. One deep in the thigh. One burying itself beneath his collarbone. He swayed where he stood, lips moving in what might have been prayer or might have been nothing at all.
The ground behind him erupted upward.
Stone and earth surged in a violent upheaval that caught him mid-step and threw him backward into the rising mass. For a moment Baldwin saw his arm reach out, fingers clawing for balance.
Then the collapse swallowed him.
The remaining magi did not break.
Fire resumed its narrow path through the thinning ranks.
Air cut again, lower this time, taking a man at the knee and dropping him into the churn.
Men began retreating toward the ridge without being told, drawn instinctively toward the only point that had not yet fractured.
Rowland stepped into that space.
He did not announce himself. He did not raise his voice. He moved his hand and the next lightning strike twisted aside before reaching the fleeing soldiers, grounding itself in dirt with a violent snap. A falling tent frame altered its path by inches and crashed harmlessly beyond them. Flame bent and split as it approached him, redirected into open ground rather than flesh.
The space near him steadied.
Men gathered there because it felt survivable.
Fire and air converged toward him at once.
Rowland absorbed what he could, redirected what he could not, boots sinking deeper into churned earth as the strain began to show.
Baldwin pushed through the breaking flank, heart hammering.
"Syb!"
He saw him then—beneath a splintered tent pole, pale and curled tight, hands clamped over his ears, mouth open in a sound Baldwin could not yet hear over the roar.
The ground trembled again. Closer. It did not pass this time, it deepened.
Aether faltered in ways Baldwin had never seen. An acolyte near the broken Wardline lifted both hands, shaping what should have been a simple wind brace. The air gathered, thinned, and slipped apart like smoke through fingers. His eyes widened in confusion before a second tremor knocked him from his feet.
The greathammer bearer swung again at rising ground.
The shard flared.
Nothing answered.
The blow landed dull and useless, as though the earth beneath them had forgotten how to listen.
Men no longer held position. They fled toward Rowland, toward the one place where flame still bent away and falling debris altered its course by inches instead of crushing bone.
Rowland stood at the edge of collapse, hands moving in tight, deliberate arcs. He did not throw power. He pressed against what came. A surge of fire struck low and he split it along a line Baldwin could not see, forcing it to peel apart and gutter into dirt. Lightning forked toward the retreating cluster and Rowland caught it nearer this time, grounding it with a violent shudder that drove him half a step into churned soil.
The air around him felt steadier.
But it was thinning.
Baldwin reached Sybillian and dropped beside him. The pole pinning his brother's leg was wedged deep beneath splintered canvas and broken stakes. He seized it and heaved.
It did not move.
"Syb. Look at me."
Sybillian's eyes were open but unfocused, fixed somewhere far beyond the field. His mouth worked around fractured words, sobs tearing free between breaths as if he were reliving something no one else could see.
Another tremor rolled through the encampment.
This one was violent.
Wagons tipped. A stack of shields collapsed inward. The ground near the ridge buckled upward in long, rising seams.
Beyond the thinning smoke Baldwin saw it clearly for the first time—not the whole of it, not even a shape he could name, but a vast length of something breaching through torn earth. Stone and soil cascaded from its surface as it twisted, motion too fluid and too immense to belong to any living thing he understood.
It was already turning.
Already moving back toward the broken ground from which it had risen.
The lightning magus stood in its path, arcs cascading wildly around him.
He did not run.
Arrows still protruded from his body, hands lifted as if to shape one final strike. His lips moved in a low murmur Baldwin could not hear.
The upheaval struck him mid-breath.
Stone surged upward in a violent crest and threw him backward into its rise. For an instant his form was visible against the lifted earth—then he vanished beneath it.
A cry wrenched out from another magi. Air shearing from him carving one last cutting arc across the retreating men.
The ground beneath him lifted in answer.
He did not step aside.
He went under without breaking his stance.
Fire still burned.
The last of the three magi smiled, his laughter echoing through the mass of evacuating people. He moved through the chaos as though walking a garden path, narrow jets carving through the retreating mass. His laughter carried even now, bright and terrible.
Then the weight shifted again.
Not upward.
Inward.
Men near Rowland staggered toward a single point as if pulled by invisible hooks. Shields tore from hands. Pike shafts snapped as bodies collided chest to chest in a tightening crush.
A gust burst outward from Rowland's position—sharp, precise—just enough to stagger the source of the pull.
The hood tore free.
The last of the hooded men stood revealed, arms lowered at his sides as debris and men dragged toward him in slow, inevitable motion. He curled his fingers once.
Fire ignited at the center of the compression.
Fifteen bodies vanished inside the bloom.
Sybillian screamed.
The sound cut through Baldwin's skull.
The revealed magus turned toward it.
Beyond him, the vast body of the Wyrm slipped back into torn earth, its motion pulling the world inward as it withdrew. Soil collapsed in sheets behind it. Trees toppled into the widening breach.
Rowland staggered under converging blasts—fire bearing down from the laughing magus, pressure tightening from the revealed one. He forced flame aside, bent falling timber away from fleeing soldiers, but the strain showed now. His boots sank. His shoulders trembled.
The men behind him faltered.
Baldwin heaved again at the pole.
It would not lift.
Rowland's hand cut once through the air.
A narrow gust struck Baldwin full in the chest—not force, but release. The weight shifted for a fraction of a heartbeat.
"Move!" Rowland's voice echoed behind him.
The pole rolled.
Sybillian's leg came free.
Baldwin dragged him upright.
"Syb. Get up."
His brother did not stand. He folded inward, hands still clamped over his ears, eyes wide and lost in some interior ruin.
The revealed magus strode toward them, gravity pulling loose debris at his feet, flame rising low and steady in his palms.
Beyond him, past the retreating men, the torn earth gaped where the Wyrm had moved. The last of its vast length slipped beneath the surface, stone cascading after it.
Rowland took one step backward.
Fire surged.
The air thickened until Baldwin could scarcely draw breath.
At his feet, half-buried in churned soil, lay the sword.
Its scabbard swallowed what little light remained. The hilt felt wrong even before he closed his hand around it—cold, dense, alien against his palm.
He drew.
For an instant the battlefield held its breath.
White light erupted from blade and scabbard alike.
The roar of the field ceased.