---
The assassins met them with an absence of surprise that was almost admirable. Seven-star men do not fear numbers. They cut them into shapes they prefer. Drones fell, not in screaming heaps, but in hard kneels with teeth showing and a hand still looking for work it could do before someone told it it was finished. Injuries bloomed like red handprints along the line. None of them stopped the line. Not yet.
"More," Shadeclaw said, knowing more would not be enough and asking for it anyway because that is how you keep other men's sons breathing.
The mountain answered with bodies. Not deaths. Drones. More and then more, the way a tide knows how to repeat itself without losing the shape it loves.
For a space of breaths, the math held. Seven-star skill multiplied by four met five-star grit multiplied by two thousand and realized it had to sit down and think for a second. That second is sometimes what saves a house. It was not going to be enough tonight.
