Page 25 of Orc’s Moon

She’s off and sprinting low along the chamber’s edge toward the nearest intact pillar, and I don’t wait to see whether it works before I put myself between her and the nearest cluster of soldiers who’ve noticed us.

I meet the first three the way this posting has trained me to meet anything — economical, final, nothing spent between the decision and the result. Nightfall opens a path through matched armor that shouldn’t part this easily, and doesn’t stay closed behind me long enough for anyone following to use it.

A groan answers from the chamber’s far wall — stone shifting, ancient and enormous, a sound I recognize from a fountain days ago and hoped never to need again this badly.

The Guardians wake.

Six of them this time, rising from alcoves I hadn’t clocked as anything but decoration, armor catching the moonlight pouring through the cracked dome in slow, deliberate silver. For one terrible heartbeat I brace for them to turn on us the way the first squad did — and then Lyessa’s rune catches, gold light tracing fast along the nearest pillar’s script, and every one of them pivots as a single unit toward the black-cloaked soldiers instead.

For the first time in a thousand years, the Guardians of Blackspire fight for Blackspire.

It isn’t clean. It isn’t merciful. But it’s exactly what they were built for, and watching them finally get to be that again lands somewhere I don’t have time to examine properly. One Guardian meets three soldiers at once and doesn’t give an inch of ground, its blade moving with the same formation-trained discipline that nearly killed me the first time I fought one, now spent entirely in our favor. Another wades into a knot of soldiers trying to reach Lyessa’s pillar and simply doesn’t stop moving until every one of them is down.

The battle floods the Hall entirely within minutes — orc steel and Guardian blades against Order armor, moonlight and torch-fire both scattering broken across a floor that’s held every kind of oath a city could swear and never once expected to hold this much blood. I lose track of individual soldiers the way I lose track of individual heartbeats, meeting each threat as it arrives and moving to the next before the last one’s finished falling. A soldier gets close enough to nick my shoulder before Nightfall finds the gap under his arm. Another goes down under a Guardian’s counterstrike a breath before his blade would have found my back. I don’t have time to be grateful. I only have time to keep moving.

Lyessa works the pillars like her life depends on it, because it does — sprinting between control points, restoring failing wards under fire, reading six-pointed script faster than any soldier can close the distance to stop her. I catch sight of her twice in the chaos and both times she’s exactly where she needs to be, blade out, moving like the room itself is an extension of her own reach.

The third time I look, two soldiers have her backed against a pillar.

I’m already moving, and I don’t make it in time — she doesn’t need me to. The nearer soldier lunges, and she drops under it, driving her knife through the meat of his thigh with a precision earned, not lucky, using his own scream to cover the half-second she needs to redirect his partner’s own momentum into the pillar’s edge instead of into her. He goes down hard enough to crack stone. She’s already back at the rune while both men are still falling, hands steady, voice raised to call the next ward online like the last thirty seconds cost her nothing at all.

I’ve fought beside disciplined soldiers my entire career. I have never once fought beside anyone like her.

My chest doesn’t unlock until I see her back on her feet at the rune, steady, on to the next fight like the last thirty seconds didn’t come within a breath of ending her. I shove the fear down the same place I shove everything I don’t have time to feel yet, and turn back to the soldiers still trying to reach me — because if any of them get the idea to try that again, I won’t be nearly as patient about it as I’ve been so far tonight.

A Guardian falls near the chamber’s center, three soldiers finally overwhelming it after it’s already put down twice their number, and something in me registers the loss even mid-fight, set aside to grieve properly once there’s time to spare. There isn’t time now. There’s only the next blade, the next soldier, the next second I need to survive long enough to give Lyessa the room she needs to keep this Hall standing.

He finds me the way a man finds the only opponent in a room worth his attention — direct, composed, silver hair dark with someone else’s blood by the time our blades finally lock.

“Captain Blackfang.” Up close, the scars I only glimpsed from a distance days ago map a face that’s clearly done this exact work more times than he’s bothered to count. “I confess I expected more resistance from a man defending a failed dream.”

“It’s not failed. It’s asleep. There’s a difference you’re currently making very expensive to ignore.”

“History belongs to those willing to rewrite it, Captain. Every kingdom standing today was built on a story somebody had the will to bury.” He shoves off, circling, unbothered by the chaos collapsing around us. “Your Covenant simply lost the will first.”

“No.” I meet his next strike near enough to feel his breath. “History belongs to those willing to protect it. That’s the entire difference between you and everyone in this room who’s actually dying for something tonight.”

He laughs — genuine, delighted, a man who’s clearly never once lost sleep over a single name he’s erased — and comes at me with a speed that tells me exactly how many men he’s put down to earn this confidence.

He’s good. Better than good, trained in a discipline that trades my raw strength for a precision I have to work to match, and for three full exchanges he holds ground I expect most soldiers to lose in one. Steel meets steel hard enough to numb my forearm twice. He reads my openings before I’ve fully committed, adjusting mid-strike in ways that tell me he’s fought orcs before and knows exactly which habits to punish. A lesser man would already be dead against him.

I give him an opening on purpose the fourth time, a gap along my ribs I let him think he’s earned, and step back exactly one pace too far — luring him half a stride past me, toward the damaged monument I marked the moment I noticed its base had already cracked under the first wave of falling debris.

“Getting slow, Captain.” He presses the advantage, exactly the way I need him to. “I’d hoped for better sport out of the last Warden of a dead Covenant.”

“I’m not slow.” I let him drive me back one final step, close enough now to the monument that I can feel the wrongness in the air where its cracked base has already given up half its purchase on the floor. “I’m patient. You mistook the two the moment you decided this city was worth burning.”

“Vorren!” Lyessa’s voice cuts through the chaos, sharp with warning. “The supports — now!”

I don’t need the second word. I drive my shoulder into his chest and put my whole weight behind it, and the monument that’s been groaning under its own damage since the fight began finally loses the argument with gravity entirely.

He doesn’t get his blade up in time. Stone and silver-chased marble come down in a roar that swallows whatever he tries to say next, and when the dust settles there’s nothing under it worth calling an opponent anymore.

I don’t feel triumphant. I feel tired, and old, and furious that a man who genuinely enjoyed tonight’s work is the reason any of it had to happen at all. I stand over the wreckage a moment longer than the fight requires, chest heaving, blood running warm down one arm, and make myself move while the adrenaline still has enough left in it to carry me.

Victory, when it finally arrives, doesn’t feel like victory.

The last soldiers break and run somewhere past the point I stop tracking individual retreats, and the Hall goes quiet in increments — steel first, then shouting, then the heavy silence that follows a fight nobody walks away from clean. My shoulder’s bleeding freely now that I’ve stopped moving fast enough to ignore it. I don’t reach for a bandage yet. I need to finish a count first.