The Veil didn't shatter all at once. It failed the way exhausted things do—unevenly and without ceremony. Fractures spread faster than it could heal, sections thinning to translucence before simply giving way. Sound punched through first, a violent rush that turned the air itself into a weapon as Dracus bodies surged forward through the gaps.
For a heartbeat, Aurix hesitated.
Not from fear, but from the sudden absence of resistance.
The silence that had held for so long collapsed into noise all at once.
Then the guards reacted.
Discipline snapped into motion as if it had been waiting for permission. Ranks formed along the wall and outer approaches as Null-infused spears were hurled downward in coordinated volleys. Each strike detonated on impact with blinding force. Entire clusters of Dracus vanished in flashes of white absence, armor and flesh erased so completely they left nothing behind but scorched impressions and drifting ash. Screams were cut off mid-breath.
The counterattack was devastating.
For a brief, terrible moment, it looked like Aurix might hold after all.
Dracus fell by the dozens, then the hundreds. Formations collapsed under the weight of sudden annihilation as roughly a quarter of their force was wiped from the field in seconds. The ground below the walls became a scarred expanse of burned stone and empty space where bodies should have been.
The Lieutenant did not retreat.
It did not rage.
It did not even flinch.
The realization came too late that this had never been about breaking the Veil through force alone.
As the next volley left Aurix's hands, something unseen snapped outward from the Dracus line. A pulse that didn't strike the body, but the system itself.
One by one—then all at once—the Interlogues went dark.
The effect was immediate and horrifying.
Guards faltered mid-throw as Null evaporated from their grasp. Spears fell harmlessly to stone. Structured barriers collapsed without warning. The faint glow in defenders' eyes extinguished as if a switch had been thrown. In the span of a breath, Aurix's soldiers were no longer augmented fighters holding a line.
They were ordinary people standing in front of monsters.
The Dracus surged forward.
What followed was not a battle. It was slaughter.
Blades and claws tore through unaugmented ranks trained to fight with power they no longer possessed. Screams erupted everywhere as formations disintegrated, discipline breaking not from fear but from impossibility. Courage could not compensate for the sudden absence of strength.
Blood slicked stone where Null had once burned clean.
Bodies piled at the wall as Dracus pushed through with brutal indifference, cutting down anyone still standing, anyone still trying to run, anyone too slow to understand what had happened. Aurix went from holding to dying in seconds.
I felt it like a punch to the chest.
Then Celest moved.
She didn't command anymore. She didn't direct or calculate. She entered the fight like a living blade, her Interlogue flaring brighter than I had ever seen as she tore into the Dracus ranks with terrifying precision. Every movement was lethal. Every strike carved space around her as she cut down hordes with disciplined fury, buying seconds with every kill.
Her presence was a brief, blazing counterpoint to the massacre.
Guards rallied instinctively toward her, only to be cut down in turn. Even Celest could not be everywhere at once.
The screams from the tunnels grew louder as the truth reached them. Panic was fully unleashed now as those still above realized there would be no return, no regrouping, no last stand that saved them all. Only delay.
Only sacrifice.
I stood frozen for a fraction of a second too long, Essence roaring beneath my skin in response to the carnage. Every instinct screamed to unleash it, to break myself if that's what it took to stop this. But even as the urge tore at me, I understood with sick clarity that losing control here would only add another corpse to the pile.
It would not save the city.
Then I heard it.
Celest's voice cut through the chaos like a blade—raw, furious, breaking—as she screamed the order that would end Aurix forever.
"SEAL THE TUNNELS!"