The rain began as a whisper on the ruined walls.
Ethan barely noticed it at first, just the soft patter of drops striking broken stone and cracked mortar. The world had gone quiet — the eerie calm between storms. But under that quiet, he could feel the tremor in the ground, a pulse that wasn't weather.
It was movement. Thousands of feet. Claws. Hooves. Scales.
Things that should not walk, crawling toward Haven.
The air stank of blood and ozone. Smoke rose from the shattered outer gate where the first waves had fallen. Piles of mutant corpses — twisted birds, plated boars, malformed things with too many eyes — smoldered in the killing ground. Even now, they dissolved slowly into ash and core fragments.
Dawn was grey and hollow.
Twelve hours.
That's how long they'd been fighting since the golden script had burned "Fortress Trial: Beast Eruption" across their sky.
Twelve hours left to survive.
---
"How many?" Ethan asked.
His voice came out rough, scraped raw by shouting.
Ravi's face was pale, his notebook stained with mud and blood. "Seventy-two still able to fight," he said. "Everyone else is wounded or below ground with the healers."
Marcus grunted beside him. His armor was half broken, the Iron Juggernaut's skin marked with claw gouges that hadn't had time to scar. "Seventy-two or seven-hundred," he said. "Doesn't matter. We hold this line."
Darren stood to his right, spear dripping black ichor. "We hold," he echoed, calm as ever.
Ethan's gaze drifted toward the southern cliff, where the ants had finished their work. Aria stood near the tunnel mouth, pale but upright, her spider crouched behind her like a living barricade. Hundreds of smaller ants moved in disciplined lines, clearing rubble, carrying stones, reinforcing the hidden passage. Every time Ethan saw them, something in his chest tightened.
He stepped closer. "Is the passage still clear?"
Aria nodded. "The Queen says the tunnel's stable. It runs into the cliff and out near the old riverbed. Wide enough for stretchers."
"Good." Ethan exhaled. "If we have to fall back—"
"She seals it," Aria said quietly, finishing for him. Her voice shook, but her gaze didn't flinch. "I know."
He gave her a small nod and turned back toward the gate.
---
On the west side of Haven, the river roared like a living beast.
Keith stood ankle-deep in the shallows, staff braced against the slick stones. Around him, his companions formed a living wall. The lion prowled low along the bank, mane bristling, eyes burning gold. The tiger stalked the narrow mudbar, stripes rippling like molten brass. In the darker water, the crocodile moved — a broad shadow just beneath the surface, only nostrils and eyes breaking the flow.
Beside him, Ellie worked like a conductor in a storm. Her bear — now half stone, half flesh from its last evolution — bellowed as it smashed a mutated serpent against the rocks. Her husky danced along the water's edge, every breath turning spray to jagged ice. The Alsatian lurked further back, claws sparking faint blue as it launched from rock to rock, intercepting anything that slipped past the main line.
They had turned the river into both shield and trap.
Keith's voice rolled over the water. "Hold the line! Nothing crosses this river alive!"
---
At the main gate, Ethan's core team gathered.
Marcus in the center, a battered mountain with his hammer resting across his shoulder. Darren to his flank, spear set, eyes locked forward. Sofia knelt on the half-collapsed battlement, bow drawn, gaze narrowed to slits. Her new bow — the rare drop from the highway alpha — glowed with faint red sigils that flared with each shot.
Behind her, Riley waited — energy humming under his skin. Sparks crawled up his arms, jumping from knuckle to stone. Since his evolution to Stormheart Adept he looked different, light flickering in his pupils, hair perpetually haloed in static.
Ethan's voice carried across the yard. "Positions!"
People scrambled. Barricades were checked. Turrets hummed awake, their barrels tracking invisible arcs along the treeline.
Then the ground shook.
The first roar rolled across the valley like thunder. Trees toppled. Stones cracked. And through the mist, they came — a sea of beasts.
Mutants of every shape and size: wolves with too many legs, boars sheathed in overlapping plates, hulking things that walked like men but had arms ending in blades. Behind them, shadows lumbered — giants wrapped in carapace and bone.
"Ravi!" Ethan shouted. "Call levels."
Ravi's eyes flicked, unfocused for a second as the system fed him information. "Front wave, level fifteen to eighteen!" he shouted back. "Bigger ones behind, low twenties! Two signatures past twenty-five — siegers!"
Marcus cracked his neck. "Good. I was getting bored."
---
The turrets opened fire first.
Arcs of blue-white plasma sliced through the murk, carving trenches through the front rank. Beasts exploded mid-charge, torn apart by concentrated energy. The ground burned.
Sofia's arrows followed — one after another, each shot a clean, lethal line. An eye, a throat, the seam behind a jaw. Every kill was a single motion: draw, loose, exhale.
Then the wall trembled as the wave hit.
Marcus met it head-on. His hammer blurred, the impact sending a shock through the stone beneath Ethan's boots. Bones shattered, armor plates snapped, flesh slammed into the dirt. Darren's spear moved beside him, faster than sight, each thrust punching cleanly into a joint, an artery, a brain.
Riley lifted his hands. "Clear!" he shouted, and lightning answered. A fan of crackling energy roared out from his palms, catching a dozen beasts mid-lunge and turning them into smoldering statues. Sparks leapt corpse to corpse, turning the front rank into a stumbling, burning mess.
They still kept coming.
Ethan's threads flared into being — green, silver-edged lines weaving into shields, lashes, binding nets. He patched torn flesh as it opened, closed arteries with a thought, braced knees that would have buckled and become breaks. His essence burned like oil in a lamp, the bar in the corner of his vision shrinking with every touch.
A scream cut through the clash.
One of the Titan Bloods went down, chest opened by a tusk like a scythe. Ethan lunged, catching the man's shoulder, his power flaring on reflex.
"Last Light!" he snarled.
The world narrowed to green.
For sixty seconds, the man's life refused to leave. Heart stuttered and then hammered. Blood that should have spilled clung stubbornly to its owner. Marcus had exactly one minute to kill the creature that had gutted his soldier.
He needed ten seconds.
When the beast hit the dirt, the Titan Blood managed one last breath, one last, shaky, "Worth it," before the borrowed time ran out. His eyes dimmed.
Ethan's hands shook. He did not look away.
---
At the river, all hell came loose.
The water surged upward as something vast pushed through from below. A serpent, thick as a tree trunk, scales black as oil and eyes ember-red. Its mouth opened wide enough to swallow a man whole. It lunged for the bank.
The crocodile struck first, jaws locking onto its throat. The river turned froth-white and red. They rolled beneath the surface, a churning knot of scales and teeth.
Keith barked a command. "Now!"
The tiger leapt, claws digging into the serpent's back, riding its thrashing body like a living platform. The lion followed, tearing into smaller beasts slithering up the bank.
Ellie's bear waded in with a roar, stone-plated shoulder smashing into the serpent's tail, staggering it. Her husky froze the shallows around them, locking lesser creatures in place. The Alsatian hit a mutant boar mid-charge, teeth finding its throat, essence-charged claws ripping through its plated chest.
Then the river itself screamed.
From the depths, something crab-like and wrong erupted — an armored mass of claws and jagged spikes. One spear-limb punched up through the water and impaled the tiger mid-leap.
Keith's oldest companion screamed, a sound half-cat, half something else. The creature dragged it under.
"NO!" Keith's shout tore from his chest and into the sky. He slammed his staff into the water, essence flooding from him in a concussive wave. The river boiled for a heartbeat. Mutant flesh split. Smaller things died without understanding.
It wasn't enough.
The tiger's roar faded into bubbles and was gone.
Ellie's bear lumbered between Keith and the next wave, taking a spray of acid along its flank meant for him. The husky froze a bridge that shattered under a boar's charge; the croc tore the serpent's head off in a final, savage twist.
Keith sank to one knee in the shallows, chest heaving, hand pressed to the water where his tiger had vanished.
"Rest, old friend," he whispered. "You earned it."
He stood up a second later, eyes cold. "We're not done."
---
Back at the gate, the ground split.
Something massive forced its way forward — taller than the wall, shoulders scraping stone even at a crouch. Bone plates sheathed its entire body, layered like a natural siege tower. Three blunt, tusked heads jutted from a single thick neck, eyes glowing sickly green.
It hit the wall like a battering ram.
Stone cracked. Dust rained. Men stumbled.
Ravi's voice shook. "Level twenty-eight! It's a siegebreaker-class mutant!"
Marcus spat blood and grinned through it. "Finally."
He charged.
Each step cracked the packed earth. The creature swung one colossal limb, claws carving a trench through the dirt. Marcus met it on the backswing. Hammer and bone collided. The shockwave hurled nearby fighters off their feet.
"Marcus!" Ethan shouted, threads already racing to brace the Juggernaut's joints.
Marcus roared — a sound that wasn't entirely human anymore — and drove his hammer up into the creature's chest. Bone shattered. It staggered but didn't fall. One of its three heads swung and slammed him sideways, sending him skidding across the killing ground.
He got up.
He shouldn't have. He did anyway.
He hit it again. And again.
The Siegebreaker finally toppled, plates cracking like dropped pottery. Marcus dropped to one knee beside it, chest heaving, sweat and blood streaking his face.
Ethan reached him. "You—"
Marcus grimaced, then let out a ragged laugh. "Still standing."
"Barely," Ethan said — but he couldn't help the answering flicker in his chest.
They didn't have time to breathe.
---
On the right flank, a scream ripped across the yard — Caleb's.
Ethan spun, threads already reaching.
A spined creature — wolf-shaped, red-eyed, longer in limb than nature had ever intended — had come in low from the rubble, slipping through a gap as others fell. Caleb had turned in time to meet the first lunge, his Verdant blades flaring green, vines snapping up from the soil to snare the thing's legs.
He didn't see the second.
It hit him from the blind side. Claws punched through his ribs.
"CALEB!" Ethan ran, threads snapping at the second beast and hauling it backward just before it could tear again.
Caleb went to one knee, blood bubbling at his lips.
"Hold still," Ethan said, already reaching for the last dregs of his essence. "I can—"
Caleb's hand shot up, grabbing his wrist with surprising strength. "Don't," he rasped.
Ethan blinked, stunned. "You'll die."
"Yeah." Caleb's smile was tired, crooked, real. "But I'm dying human. Not as a puppet who should've gone down an hour ago."
Behind him, the second beast lunged again — and Caleb, with the last of his strength, drove his Verdant blade up into its skull. Roots exploded from the wound, punching through bone, pinning it to the dirt like a grotesque tree.
The two of them fell together.
By the time Ethan reached him, Caleb's eyes were already glass.
"Thank you," Ethan whispered, but the wind took the words.
---
The hours dragged.
Waves crashed, broke, and came again. Bodies fell. Walls cracked. Essence bled from the air like heat from cooling stone.
By the time the final push came, it wasn't a roar.
It was a rumble — steady, building, like the world itself was moving.
The last horde crested the rise beyond the mines. A tide of mutants, hundreds strong. Smaller beasts formed the front rank; behind them, hulking silhouettes lumbered, each step shaking earth.
Ravi's face had gone white. "Levels twenty to thirty across the board," he shouted. "This is it!"
Marcus pushed off the wall, somehow on his feet. "Everyone who can stand, stand. We end this here."
The turrets whirred one last time, barrels screaming as they overcharged. Blue-white lances tore into the front rank, vaporizing flesh and bone. The ground ran black with burning blood.
The ants surged out of the southern cliff like a flood — a tide of black chitin and clacking mandibles. They swarmed over the battlefield, tripping charges, dragging down wounded beasts, stripping anything that slowed within reach.
On the wall, Aria stood with her hands on the stone, eyes glowing faintly. "Go," she whispered to the Queen in her mind. "Protect them."
The answer came in motion.
The horde hit the killing field and broke on it.
Marcus held the center, killing anything that reached his shadow. Darren's spear line turned charges into piled corpses. Riley called down thunder, Chain Arc leaping from spear to arrow to ant-covered hide. Sofia's arrows never missed. Keith's lion bled and refused to fall; the croc tore at anything that tried the river flank; Ellie's beasts fought like incarnate rage.
The last of the beasts turned to flee.
Aria's spider dropped from its perch and flung a web the size of a house across their retreat. The fleeing monsters slammed into the sticky veil and tangled. The turrets lined up the shot.
"Finish it!" Ethan shouted.
The world became light and screaming.
Then, at last, it became quiet.
---
The smell of blood and smoke filled the air.
Ethan dropped to one knee, vision swimming. His Essence Pool was almost dry. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Across the yard, Marcus slumped against what remained of the inner gate, chest rising and falling in harsh, steady pulls. Ravi sat in the mud, staring at the flickering golden text above his ruined notebook, lips moving as he counted the dead.
Ellie knelt beside her bear, murmuring softly as it licked a deep wound along its stone-flesh ribs. The husky leaned against her hip, sides heaving. The Alsatian paced in tight, anxious circles until she grabbed its ruff and pulled it close.
On the rampart, Sofia slowly lowered her bow. Riley sat with his back against the wall, electricity still ghosting around his fingers in tiny, unwilling sparks.
By the river, Keith stood alone in the shallows, one hand pressed over his heart where the tiger's bond had once burned. The water carried away the last of the blood, red becoming silver in the thin light.
Then the sky lit gold.
---
> SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT
Fortress Trial: Beast Eruption — COMPLETE.
Congratulations, humans. You have survived the Siege of Haven.
Rewards:
• +10,000 Experience to all surviving participants.
• Stronghold Credits: +8,450.
• Haven qualifies for upgrade to Tier II – Town.
Next Condition:
• Population ≥ 1,000 souls to activate the next phase.
You have earned 24 hours of divine protection.
No hostile forces may enter your territory during this period.
Rest. Rebuild. Prepare.
The golden light faded.
The silence that followed wasn't relief. It was disbelief.
Sofia sagged against the battlement, bow slipping from her fingers. Riley let his head fall back, eyes closed, lightning finally dying around his hands. Aria slid down the wall until she sat on the stone, her spider curling two legs protectively around her like a worried parent.
Lena counted heads, her lips moving. Tina washed blood from her hands that wasn't hers and didn't come clean.
Ravi tore out the last page of his ruined notebook and, with shaking fingers, began a new one.
"Siege survived," he murmured as he wrote. "Population… one hundred and thirty-four before the Trial. Thirty-three dead." He swallowed. "One hundred and one alive."
Marcus laughed once — a low, broken sound — and winced. "Still breathing," he muttered. "Told you we'd hold."
Ethan pushed himself upright last.
He looked out over what remained of Haven.
The walls were shattered in places, but standing. The gate was gone, but a new corridor of stone now sealed the breach. The killing ground was a graveyard of dissolving monsters, the air still thick with the taste of ash and essence.
The stronghold still stood — cracked, smoking, stubbornly alive.
They had won this round.
But the gods weren't done.
High beyond the trees, something watched the smoke rise. Somewhere in the deeper dark, new shapes shifted, drawn by the promise of a Tier II town and a beacon that would burn brighter than ever.
Ethan watched the thin sunrise claw over the horizon and whispered to himself,
"Fine. We'll be ready."