The wall of fire created by Alina was the only thing holding back the end of the world.
It roared. A five-meter-high curtain of shimmering, liquid-orange heat.
Alina held the wall.
Her arms were outstretched, her knuckles white. They ached.
She ignored it.
Sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes.
'Just... hold on.'
Her mind was a single, focused point of light. Maintain the spell. Feed the fire.
'A little longer. He has to be here soon.'
The mana drain was immense.
Behind her, she heard the sounds of the camp. Desperate sounds. The thwack of a poorly-fired crossbow. The sharp, terrified shout of a man. The cry of a young girl.
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
It was a mess.
The camp's "barricades" were just overturned carts and hastily piled-up junk.
About thirty of them were fighters. Her elite. Men and women with hard eyes and worn leather, clutching swords and spears. They were arranged in a thin, brittle-looking line behind the meager barricades, waiting for the inevitable
The rest... the rest were the reason for the wall.
Their faces pale and papery in the firelight.
They were all staring at her. At her back.
'They won't last a minute without this fire wall.'
The thought sent a fresh jolt of cold, hard fear through her. She snapped her head back to the front.
Smash.Smash.
The corpses didn't care. They just threw themselves at the fire. Rotting hands, skeletal faces, empty sockets. They burned.
'Gotta hold. Where is he? Where is Roland? He promised.'
He had promised. An alliance. Supplies for protection.
'He promised...'
But he wasn't here. And she was running out of time.
Not far away, on a high, dark ridge, Rena watched.
He saw the fire.
A big, bright pillar of orange and yellow, pushing back the night. A beacon.
He sneered. The motion was small, barely a twitch of his lip.
"Foolish mage," he whispered. The wind snatched the words from his mouth.
"On a battlefield," he continued, his voice a dry, papery rustle, "you're just the brightest target."
He had been patient.
He had watched the corpse horde, a shambling, mindless carpet of death, get drawn to the life. He had watched her erect her flashy, arrogant wall of fire.
And he had waited.
He patted the thing lying beside him. His crossbow.
It was not some cheap camp toy. It was a monster.
A heavy, beautifully-crafted piece of dwarven steel and darkwood, with a gear-and-pulley system that required a crank to draw. It was his prized possession.
Then there was the Glimmerstone Arrow.
His only one. A treasure he had paid a small fortune for. A single-use item.
A weapon designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: to kill mages.
'This has to work. One shot. One kill.'
He slotted the bolt into the crossbow's channel. Click. The sound was crisp, final.
He settled his shoulder against the stock, his eye finding the simple, iron sight. He raised the heavy weapon, bracing it on the rocky ledge.
Through the sight, the distant, shimmering wall of fire was just a blur.
But the woman holding it... she was a bright, defiant silhouette.
He aimed. Center mass.
And he waited.
He waited for the perfect moment.
The moment she was most vulnerable.
Alina signed.
The horde was pushing. Not just wandering into the fire, but pushing.
A sea of bodies, a tidal wave of rot, pressing against her magic.
The wall buckled. It bent.
'They are just too many!'
But She couldn't let it break. Not now.
'Now.'
Rena's finger, gentle as a lover's caress, tightened on the trigger.
Thwack.
The crossbow jumped in his hands. The bolt was gone.
It didn't fly like a normal bolt. It didn't arc. It flew straight.
A silent, blue-black streak, cutting through the night air, utterly invisible against the chaos of the battlefield.
It ate the distance.
Alina felt it before she saw it.
A sudden, ice-cold pinprick of danger. An instinct, honed over a hundred battles.
She tried to move. She tried to react.
A shield. Hasty. Paper-thin. A bubble of pure mana, her last-second defense, flared into existence.
The blue streak didn't care.
It didn't slow. It didn't deflect. It didn't register the shield at all.
It passed through the magical barrier as if it were air.
And then it hit her.
Thud.
It was a sickening sound. A wet, heavy punch.
Pain.
Unbelievable, blinding, white-hot pain.
It was a supernova in her shoulder.
It eclipsed the world. It eclipsed the fire. It eclipsed everything.
She looked down. Or tried to. Her head was swimming.
Her right shoulder.
There was a bolt.
The pale, runic-etched bolt. It was... it was in her.
It had punched clean through the leather pauldron, through the chainmail underneath, through muscle and bone.
And it had pinned her.
The force of the impact had slammed her backward.
The tip of the bolt was buried deep in the trunk of the massive, ancient tree at her back.
She was pinned. Nailed to the tree.
A grunt. That's all she could manage. A muffled, choked sound, stuck in her throat.
And the spell... the spell died.
Instantly.
As if a switch had been flipped. The raging, five-meter-high wall of fire... vanished.
Poof.
Gone.
The sudden silence was deafening.
The only sound was the crackling of the corpses that were still burning, and the new, rising groan of the horde.
And the wound...
She stared at it, her mind numb.
It wasn't just bleeding. Blood, dark and thick, welled up around the shaft. But there was something else.
Blue light.
The same cold, sickly blue light from the arrow's tip.
It was crawling.
Like glowing, spectral spiders, thin tendrils of blue runic light were crawling out from the arrow. They were spreading. Down her arm. Across her chest. Into her.
And where they touched... there was nothing.
Cold. Emptiness.
'My magic...'
She tried to summon it. A spark. A simple, guttering flame. Anything.
Nothing.
Her mana flow... it was gone. The blue light was... suppressing it. Disrupting it. Eating it.
She was... empty.
In one second, she had gone from a powerful arch-mage, to... to this.
A woman. Half-crippled. Pinned to a tree.
Useless.
The corpse horde didn't wait. They didn't pause to celebrate.
They were a mindless tide, and the dam had just broken.
They surged.
A wave of rot and bone and tattered rags.
They poured over the smoldering ashes of their comrades.
The camp's defensive could barely hold.
And then, at that exact moment, when this camp was about fall.
he came.
On the flank, crashing through the forest's edge, he arrived.
Roland.
He was leading his thirty "soldiers."
Armed slaves, every one of them. They held their new swords and shields awkwardly, their eyes wide with terror. But they were there. An armed force.
Alina's heart, which she thought couldn't sink any lower, found a new abyss.
It plummeted.
She saw him, and she felt no joy. She felt no relief.
She felt... fear now.
A cold, logical, and utterly paralyzing fear that eclipsed the pain in her shoulder.
Her thoughts raced, frantic and clear.
'It's over... It's all over.'
'Our alliance. Our... "friendship." It was all built on my strength.'
'And now I'm... this.'
She looked at her arm, at the creeping, magic-devouring blue runes.
'Crippled. Useless.'
She stared at him, helpless, as he and his men paused at the edge of the clearing, taking in the scene.
'He's a pragmatist. A survivor. Just like me.'
'Will he honor a promise? A promise made to a powerful 'bandit' leader?'
'Or... or will he betray us?'
'Will he betray me?'
'He can. Right now. Kill us all. We're weak. And take the supplies. take everything.'
The thought was so cold, so logical, it froze her.
She watched, helpless, trapped, as Roland's armed force drew closer, a second wave poised to crash into their doomed, dying camp.
Her fate... their fate... was in his hands.
Roland didn't look at the chaos. He didn't look at the screaming. He didn't even look at Alina, pinned to the tree.
He was looking at his map.
The mini-map, a faint, translucent square floating in the bottom-right corner of his vision.
And it was screaming at him.
A bright, blue-white dot... was flashing. Fast. Flash-flash-flash.
'Alina. She's in danger. Bad danger. Injured.'
The dot was right where she was pinned.
And then... he saw it.
Far, far away, on a high ridge overlooking the entire valley. A single, stationary red dot.
'The sniper.'
Roland's mind worked fast.
Horde was problem A. Dying allies was problem B.
The man, Rena, with the high-powered, magic-killing crossbow... he was problem C.
And you always solve problem C first. You cut the head off the snake.
He didn't hesitate. Not for a second.
He whispered, his voice a low growl. "Violette."
A shadow beside him seemed to deepen. Violette appeared.
" That Highest point. The ridge."
Roland pointed at Rena's position.
"He's the one in charge. The mastermind. Rena."
He turned his head, just enough to look at her.
"Go. Now. Bring him back to me."
"Alive."
"okay."
Violette's form... it just... melted. It wasn't a run. It wasn't a sprint. She didn't make a sound. She simply blended into the shadows of the trees and... vanished.
Problem C was being handled.
Now, for A and B.
Roland turned to his men. His thirty "soldiers."
They were terrified. He could see it.
They were clutching their new weapons—shortswords, shields, spears—like they were strange, heavy clubs.
One of them was shaking so badly his shield was rattling.
They were slaves. Just yesterday, they were property. They had no training. No morale. No reason to fight.
'Gotta give them a reason.'
He looked at the chaos. At the horde. At the screaming, dying people in the camp.
Then he looked at Alina. Trapped. Helpless.
He raised his own sword. It was a simple, steel longsword. No runes. No magic. Just a tool.
And he roared.
It was a sound that ripped from his very soul. A sound of command. A sound that said I am here.
"All of you!"
His men flinched. They stared at him.
"WE HONOR OUR ALLIANCE!"
He pointed with his sword. Not at the horde. Not at the enemy. He pointed at the woman pinned to the tree.
"TARGET, THE CORPSES! PROTECT THE FLANK! SAVE THAT WOMAN!"
"AND FOR EVERY ENEMY YOU KILLED, I WILL REWARD YOU A CPPER COIN!"
He didn't wait to see if they followed.
He just charged.
Because he knew those slaves can't resist the temptation of money.
Alina, trapped in her despair, her mind a frozen lake of logical, cynical fear, watched it all.
She watched Roland... the man she was convinced would betray her... roar.
She watched him charge, not at her, not at her defenseless people... but at the horde.
She watched his thirty terrified slaves, his "soldiers"... hesitate.
Just for a second. They looked at each other. They looked at their charging leader.
And then, with a ragged, terrified scream, they charged, too.
They slammed into the side of the corpse horde.
They weren't traitors.
They weren't murderers.
They were... saving her.
Her expression... it was a mess. A complex, broken, and utterly confused mask.
Shock. Confusion. Disbelief.
And maybe... just maybe, for the first time...
Sincere gratitude.