The counteroffensive did not retreat.
It disintegrated.
Orders were still being shouted—captains screaming themselves hoarse, signal mages burning out their throats—but nothing held. The Blight did not advance like an army. It flowed, spilled through streets and alleys, climbed walls, poured itself over barricades like a living flood of meat and bone.
I saw Cadet Rhol sprint ahead of me, screaming something I couldn't hear. A mass of flesh detached itself from the tide and leapt. It wrapped around him mid-run, arms and torsos forming a suffocating cocoon.
"HELP—!"
The flesh tightened.
Then it contracted.
The explosion painted the street red.
I staggered back, bile burning my throat.
"No—no—no—"
Another scream to my left.
Cadet Mirelle was trying to drag a wounded officer when a monster dropped from above—its body a knot of legs and teeth. It landed on her back, jaws clamping down on her shoulder. She screamed, stabbing wildly, before it tore her down and began feeding while she was still alive, chewing mechanically as her legs kicked and scraped against stone.
"Tear it off!" someone yelled.
Too late.
Her scream broke into wet gargles.
I turned away—
And nearly collided with Tairi.
He stood frozen in the middle of the street, eyes locked on Mirelle's body being pulled apart.
"Tairi," I said, grabbing his arm. "Move. MOVE!"
He shook his head violently, breath coming in sharp, panicked bursts.
"This—this isn't—this isn't training—"
Another Axiom bolt screamed overhead and detonated nearby, flattening a row of buildings. The shockwave knocked us both off our feet.
"This is the Blight!" I screamed at him. "If you don't move, you die!"
"No!" he screamed back, wrenching free. "You don't get it—we can't win! Look at them!"
He pointed.
Down the street, a Vanguard Concord shield wall collapsed as mouths opened in the Blight itself, chanting distorted spell patterns. Stolen Axiom discharged outward, ripping through barriers, turning protective formations into death traps.
People ran.
People fell.
People were taken.
General Ignis was a burning figure ahead of us, carving through monsters with impossible precision—but there were too many. Madam Roseanne screamed incantations until blood ran from her ears, purification fire burning holes in the tide that filled again instantly.
Yna dragged a civilian free from rubble, screaming for someone to cover her. A cadet raised a shield—
A creature slammed into it, melting through, jaws biting into his face. He didn't even scream. He just vanished into the mass.
"Tairi—RUN!" I shouted.
Then the air changed.
It was subtle at first. The hum of Axiom shifted pitch, like a wrong note in a familiar chord. My skin prickled. My teeth ached.
I looked up.
A thing rose from the Blight—towering, swollen, barely humanoid. Its chest split open, revealing a cavity where Axiom compressed into something dense. Heavy. Wrong.
"No—GET DOWN—!"
It fired.
The projectile didn't explode immediately.
It fell.
Screaming meteor showers of condensed Axiom slammed into the district three streets over. The impact erased everything—stone, flesh, monsters alike—leaving a crater of pulverized debris.
The shockwave hit us like a god's fist.
"TAIRI GET DOWN—!"
I slammed into a wall, pain detonating across my ribs. The world spun. I tasted blood.
Something crashed beside me.
Captain Renia. She saved me from the collapsing debris.
She hit the ground hard, then disappeared under a cascade of collapsing masonry.
"CAPTAIN—!"
—
I crawled toward her.
Stone scraped my palms raw. My fingers slipped on dust slicked dark with blood—mine, hers, someone else's, I couldn't tell anymore. The world tilted with every movement, my vision pulsing in and out like a dying light. Smoke stung my eyes, burned my lungs, and the ground trembled beneath me as something large moved nearby.
Monsters poured from the debris.
They didn't rush. They drifted, drawn by sound, by weakness, by the way Renia's breath rattled beneath the rubble. Their bodies sloughed and reformed as they moved, flesh dragging across stone like wet cloth, faces surfacing and sinking again—some screaming, some laughing, some whispering prayers that had no god left to hear them.
Renia coughed.
"E-Elrin—" her voice cut through the chaos, sharp despite how thin it was. "Get back."
I shook my head violently, even as my arms trembled.
"No!" I screamed, digging my fingers under a slab of collapsed masonry. My nails tore. I didn't feel it. "I've got you—I've got you—just—just hold on!"
The stone didn't move.
It crushed my hands harder, as if the world itself refused to let go.
A cadet screamed nearby.
I turned just in time to see him—one of ours, spear blazing with a last desperate enchantment—charge a grotesque thing dragging itself free from the Blight.
He didn't stab it.
The monster opened itself.
Arms—too many—wrapped around him.
Pulled him close.
For a heartbeat, he looked relieved.
Then the flesh tightened.
And detonated.
The shockwave lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing. My ears rang. My chest seized. I hit the street hard, breath ripping out of me in a broken gasp.
"RENIA!" I screamed, voice cracking into something animal.
Dust and ash rained down.
"Tairi—HELP ME!" I yelled, forcing myself back onto my knees, straining against the rubble again. My muscles burned. My bones screamed. "IT'S TOO HEAVY—I CAN'T—!"
I looked back.
Tairi stood a few paces away.
Not running.
Not fighting.
Just standing.
His spear lay abandoned at his feet, its glow already fading. His hands hung uselessly at his sides. His eyes were wide, glassy—staring through me, through Renia, through the world.
"Nononono…" he whispered, rocking slightly. "They're dead. They're all dead."
Behind us—
My squad.
My people.
Cadet Venn was lifted off the ground, screaming, legs kicking helplessly as a creature chewed through his torso, ribs cracking like snapped twigs. His scream turned wet, then stopped.
Cadet Irel clawed at the ground as the Blight dragged her away, her fingers leaving streaks of blood in the stone. One snapped. Then another. Her hand disappeared, torn away, and she was gone—pulled screaming into something that swallowed her whole.
Seven months.
Seven months of early mornings and aching limbs. Shared rations. Laughter in the barracks. Complaints about drills. Quiet promises of survival.
Gone.
"Snap out of it!" I screamed at Tairi, my throat raw. "LOOK AT ME!"
He didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
Didn't hear.
My vision blurred with tears I didn't remember shedding. I forced myself up again, casting strength amplification despite the way my body screamed in protest. Power flooded my limbs—but it wasn't enough.
"RUN, ELRIN!" someone cried from behind me.
I didn't look.
"No!" I sobbed. "I won't—I won't—leave her!"
The rubble shifted.
A shadow fell over me.
Something massive struck my chest.
I flew.
Stone slammed into my back, then my head. My vision fractured into white shards. Pain flared, blinding and total. One eye burned—then went dark, swallowed by black.
I lay there, gasping, unable to move.
The monster loomed above me, its body a cathedral of mouths, flesh reaching down like melting wax. Teeth clicked. Tongues tasted the air.
"Tairi screamed, "WE'RE DONE—!"
...An arrow struck the thing mid-lunge.
Then exploded.
Fire consumed it in a violent bloom, flesh vaporizing into ash.
Silence.
I froze.
The man stood there.
Burned cloak hanging from his shoulders. A crown of thorns pressed into pale skin. White hair catching the firelight—white, like mine.
"Not now," he said calmly, as if we were speaking in a quiet hall instead of a grave. "You do not die here today."
"I get to do that."
My throat closed.
"Y-You—" My voice broke. "You're—"
He smiled faintly.
Then he walked past me.
Toward Renia.
"No—!" I tried to rise. My body refused. My limbs betrayed me.
He knelt beside her.
"Elrin," he said softly.
My blood turned to ice.
"You must see everything," he murmured, as if offering wisdom. "The pain. The loss. Only then does meaning take root."
He opened his palm.
Blight pulsed within it.
"This," he said, "is the finale."
"STOP—!" I screamed.
Renia screamed.
"WHAT—ARE YOU—DOING—AAAAAGHH—!"
The corruption crawled across her face like rot, veins blackening, skin twitching, muscles spasming as if something inside her was waking up.
Then—
He was gone.
—
Renia convulsed beneath the rubble.
Not violently—not yet. It was worse than that. Small, uneven tremors ran through her body, like a hand testing strings before pulling them tight. Dust slid from her armor with each twitch. Her breath came shallow, wet, and wrong.
Her eyes found mine.
They were still hers.
That—that was the cruelest part.
They weren't clouded. They weren't lost. They weren't hollow like the infected I had seen moments before. They were sharp, aware, terrified. The eyes of a soldier who knew exactly what was happening to her and had no power to stop it.
"Elrin…" Her voice cracked, barely louder than the settling rubble. "…please."
I stood.
Barely.
My legs shook so hard I thought they might fold beneath me. One eye refused to open, sealed by swelling and blood. The other burned as tears poured out unchecked, blurring the world into streaks of firelight and shadow.
I took a step forward and nearly fell.
I caught myself on a broken wall and looked down.
The firearm lay half-buried beneath the rubble—still clutched in the stiff hand of a dead officer. His face was gone, crushed beyond recognition, but his fingers had not let go. Duty to the very end.
My fingers closed around the grip.
Warm.
Slick.
Blood—hers, mine, everyone's—coated my hand.
The weight of it felt wrong. Awkward. Heavy in a way swords never were.
...
Would you finish them off?
...
Ignis's voice echoed in my head, calm and distant.
My hands began to shake.
Violently.
"I'm weak," I whispered, the words tearing themselves out of my chest. "I really am…"
My vision blurred again, but this time it wasn't just tears.
Faces flooded my mind.
Cadet Venn, laughing too loud in the mess hall, always stealing extra bread and swearing he'd "burn it off tomorrow." Cadet Irel braiding her hair before drills, rolling her eyes whenever someone tripped over formation lines. The way she smirked when she beat me in sparring and said, "Don't look so surprised, noble boy."
Tairi, nervous and earnest, asking too many questions, clinging to every scrap of reassurance like it was oxygen.
Captain Renia, arms crossed, scolding us so fiercely it made our ears ring—then turning away so we wouldn't see the faint smile she tried to hide.
You're sloppy, Elrin.But you learn fast.Don't waste that.
I remembered her standing in front of us on the first day, eyes sharp, voice steady.
I don't need heroes, she had said. I need soldiers who won't abandon each other.
Seven months.
Seven months of shared exhaustion. Of bruises and scraped knuckles. Of whispered jokes during night watch. Of stolen moments of peace where we pretended the world wasn't already ending.
All of them gone.
I'm forced to relieve the day I lost everything in Sunpire.
All of them dead.
And now—
Her.
"Elrin…"
Her voice dragged me back.
The tremors were getting worse. Black veins crept along her neck, pulsing faintly beneath the skin. Her jaw clenched hard enough that I heard teeth grind.
She swallowed.
Forced the words out.
"Listen… to me."
I shook my head, sobbing openly now. "No—no, I can still—there has to be—"
"There isn't." She cut me off, voice trembling but firm. Captain's voice. The one that had carried us through drills and disasters alike. "I can feel it."
Her breathing hitched.
"It's… it's already inside."
I froze.
"Please," she whispered again. "Before I stop… being me."
My stomach twisted violently.
"I—I can't," I choked. "I can't do this. You're—you're my captain."
Her lips trembled into something almost like a smile.
"And you're my cadet," she said softly. "The one I trusted."
Her eyes locked onto mine.
"Don't let it use me."
The words shattered something inside my chest.
...
I remembered another conversation—another quiet moment.
Ignis, standing beside me in the monitoring center, gaze fixed on distant lights.
"If one day someone dear to you was corrupted… would you finish them off?"
I told General Ignis that I do not know.
Now I did.
...
My fingers fumbled with the firearm. I forced myself to reload it, each click deafening in the silence that had fallen around us. The act felt obscene. Crude. Wrong.
They said guns were for the incompetent. For those who couldn't wield steel or shape magic properly. A shameful tool. An admission of weakness.
Now I understood.
This wasn't a weapon for battle.
It was a weapon for mercy.
It was for moments when magic and steel had already failed.
I raised the gun.
My arms screamed. My vision swam. The barrel wavered inches from her forehead.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed. "I'm so sorry. I didn't—I didn't protect you."
Her eyes softened.
"Elrin," she said gently. "You did."
Her lips parted one last time.
"Thank you… for staying."
I pulled the trigger.
The gunshot tore through the ruined field like a scream.
Too loud.
Too final.
Her body went still.
No twitching.
No breath.
Just silence.
The world seemed to hold its breath with me.
Then—
Boots.
Shouts.
Spells igniting.
Reinforcements poured in from every direction as the first light of dawn bled over the horizon. Banners from distant bastions. Officers shouting orders. Healers rushing forward.
They saw me.
Standing there.
Alone.
The barrel still smoking.
Captain Renia dead at my feet.
Tairi's scream came late.
Delayed.
Like his mind had refused to accept reality until it had no choice.
"Ahh… aaghh… AAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!"
He collapsed to his knees, clawing at the ground, his voice breaking into something feral and broken.
I didn't move.
I couldn't.
Tears streamed down my face, but my expression was empty. Hollow. As if everything inside me had already been scraped out.
The Blight didn't just kill bodies.
It didn't just destroy cities.
It took the things you loved.
And forced you to be the one to end them.
And now—
I was the last one left of Cadet Squad 28.
Alone.
Again.