Romier and Prater did not immediately join the fray but hovered above, watching their troops launch a ferocious assault upon the defenders’ ramparts below. There, two dukes personally supervised, and every warrior fought with a kind of maddened desperation.
The mercenaries immediately felt the immense and unrelenting pressure — yet now they had no avenue of retreat. Against such a tide, death seemed certain regardless: better to fall honorably amidst battle than to perish uselessly trying to flee. The only ones now remaining within the fortifications were those mercenaries with the most experience and unmatched martial prowess. Using every terrain advantage, exploiting every slightest tactical misstep of the aggressors, they mercilessly bled their attackers with incessant counterstrikes.
Within the heart of Whitetown, the tides of conflict surged violently within a particular structure, repeatedly exchanged from defenders to attackers. Rifle fire within, once echoing from corners of mercenaries holding last stands, dwindled until silence prevailed. The howls surged with Werewolf and vampire warriors rushing into the opening, only to find themselves caught between layers of explosive traps in hidden compartments.
The building had by now collapsed into absolute carnage, littered from its rooftop to cellar steps with corpses clad in dark-colored armor. After a brutal cost exacted in blood, the darkness finally seized this pivotal holdout — establishing their first critical beachhead deep within the mercenary zone.
With Whitetown’s city core under siege, resistance would quickly fragment; each mercenary would battle for themselves, and the war — decisively tipped against the daylight-aligned alliance.
Yet even before the nighttime forces of Evernight could utter a cry in triumph, the very air surrounding them began distorting as if with a pulse unknown. Romier’s sharp senses, honed through decades, detected anomalies — a whisper of change.
One experienced Werewolf scout reacted on instinct, glancing downward… only to stare horror-struck at a set of unfamiliar grenades suddenly clustered around bootprints beside him!
A detonation exploded through the crumbling ruin, obliterating the entire terrain with violent concussions and razor-edged shrapnel tearing the Evernight troopers apart. Nowhere provided shelter; the smoke rose thick into an almost lung-strangling fog. No one expected hand-crafted bombs of crude gunpowder would create such cataclysmic carnage! Within that building’s shattered remains, the Evernight warriors were wholly erased — transformed into the latest lifeless heaps.
Silhouetted against dust and flame, Song Zining stepped from cover, signaled with sharp hand gestures — and a full fire-team of surviving mercenaries raced from alleyways to storm and re-seize that key redoubt.
It had been he, cloaking movements deep within the folds of personal mastery called Domain, planting silent death beneath oblivious attackers’ feet. And crude yet devastating gunpowder arms had once more rewritten their fate.
Qian Ye did not target normal foes, choosing instead to strike the unfortunates caught in proximity to his movement — he reserved his focus entirely on the two aerial threats now dominating above him, seeking out where to fracture the strongest line first.
There could be no denial – the gulf in ability was stark. Qian Ye would gain, at best, just a single opportunity at surprise strike.
As seconds bled by amid falling dust clouds, focus settled. Romier. Always the fiercer force, where Qian Ye would make his play. Prater had once fled, abandoning final confrontation — and if broken hard enough again, there was real chance he would take to flight.
He breathed out once. Then his presence simply folded in with the landscape of devastation.
Above, Romier abruptly shivered with unplaceable unease.
Prater glanced sideways, noting his movement without comprehension; to Romier though, only a cold reply escaped his lips, “A moment of reflection before this dance starts. Now go.”
With eyes still locked upon Romier, Prater couldn’t possibly know the unspoken wariness behind those calm tones.
High above, Romier drifted across Whitetown’s ruined skyline at an angle, gliding at a stately hover fifty feet up. Occasional bursts burst forth from his limbs — tendrils of dark crimson clouds spilling downward, swallowing groups of the defenders in toxic vapors that left only death behind, even as non-sanguis warrior companions staggered out, grievously bloodied but somehow spared the absolute end that greeted others caught within the mists.
Misfortune followed the lesser servants: a single sanguimaw burst downward, crushing two mercenaries and several of warping-spider ilk; a barely surviving noble spider-warrior managed only fragmented retreat under withered limbs toward distant obscurity. The battle would still claim him.
Watching closely from slightly behind, Prater offered no commentary, expression calm, while thought processes were anyone’s guess.
From his aerial path, the skies of Wraithgate burned red, a swath cut in death trailing every movement of Romier’s passing.
Yet through chaos, multiple Force-grenades arced toward him from unseen angles — to strike and do utterly nothing at all. Their launchers, revealed in response, vanished under his retaliatory mists, extinguished within instants.
Suddenly he sensed something again… but could not define the presence.
Cynically, Romier released another pulse at the empty space ahead.
And as expected, from behind, a low chuckle followed.
He twisted back. “Mocking something, Prater?”
A voice half amused: “Oh no. Just observing how your dukeship is checking if even debris dares to stab you.”
Romier’s nostrils flared, lips thinned but made no reply — he’d practically forced Prater to return to this death-drenched battlefield, forcing a reluctant sweep of Whitetown’s ruins together again in a grudging truce. The spider-born subduke’s grudge was evident, simmering beneath that smug smile.
That smirk vanished the moment Romier’s own retinue sustained critical losses. Even within such a renowned, primordial sanguis line as Mamon, there would come a breaking point should they sustain this.
While overhead the war escalated unseen, beneath the ash-choked ground level within ruined husks below, Qian Ye crouched within a crack between shattered walls, peering outward through broken slats and broken bricks, eyes catching upon that mist now curling around his presence, latching hungrily in search to corrode flesh.
Only they never took hold.
Rather, upon touching his frame, they recoiled in retreat.
His brow twitched as he dared reach one finger’s touch — and detected only a neutral calm response.
Understanding bloomed: they weren’t recognizing a predator.
They considered him, perhaps… kin.
He grabbed the nearby corpse of a fallen Mamon sanguis-warrior by shoulder grip. Rifling through armor plating sewn in secret pockets and hidden inner armor linings beneath, one sigil struck clear recognition: the inverted silver chalice, an identifying mark only the most elite bore — the banner of the Mamon house indeed. His pulse quivered.
The familiarity hit home — as if the essence pulsating through his marrow bore the slightest kinship with their ancient house. The distant echo of that forgotten sanguine resonance resonated within the deep corridors of his body. Could that purer violet essence, once wielded from a now-vaned crystal wellspring spoken loosely of by Wilhelm himself — have once come from the same fountain of Mamon blood?
If it did, this gave Qian Ye a singular opportunity. Romier’s own blood memory might falter instinctual aggression — yet Qian Ye’s dark gold ichor burned pure poison in any vampire lineage.
He remained still and silent. Watching. Waiting.
Above ground — the presence of two ducal-class combatants ensured the odds, regardless of Song’s guerrilla interventions across sectors, were merely prolonged — and even that by slivers that could still shift.
By dusk’s waning, Evernight’s tide flooded into over two-thirds of Whitetown. The desperate fires of the Ember Shadow Mercenaries smoldered underground… an existence no different than trapped in tombs with lids drawn shut.
Elsewhere in the wreckage, a squad scoured the remains of another shattered estate — their heavy footsteps echoing on the broken steps of its half-melting staircase. One particularly aggressive fighter kicked open a final intact room’s doorway. Instantly, he paused.
From where the others would have barged and slaughtered at the first sign of resistance was instead… hesitated.
Inside that shattered chamber sat an impossibly serene young girl — delicate of skin in unmarred ivory robes that shimmered despite dust and blood. He hesitated just a second longer than he should. Then she parted soft red lips.
And she *blew* upon him.
He slumped sideways soundlessly. Others within followed — the remaining ten warriors within that collapsing edifice each dropped lifeless within quiet seconds.
An expanding, undetectable aura spread rapidly from walls out, turning entire sections outward of that building into a graveyard of black-armored corpses — only at great distance did survivors barely resist the silent slaying effect. Their final gaze was one of wordless despair.
Within ten breaths — the killing zone had expanded a hundred entire meters in radius. The field claimed close to a thousand elite operatives — transformed without warning, into statues of the dead.
Romier, still suspended among ash-wreathed ruin, turned suddenly. Eyes flared at the spreading patch of death radiating below.
At that precise moment though: his own hair suddenly swirled as no breeze stirred.
He spun with a snarl, sensing the invisible presence. A streak of obsidian-white light descended toward his chest! A heartbeat later saw Qian Ye vanishing into smoke behind shadows cast by falling masonry and shattered walls.
Romier made his choice within that instant.
Decisions made at ducal ranks came not from cowardice but calculated reflex. He rejected dodging. Channeled everything into his defense while releasing a binding cloud — that wrapped tightly around Qian Ye’s figure.
The dark red aura collapsed inward like thousands of steel bands squeezing tighter upon their prey.
Only, Qian Ye screamed — and that pressure exploded outward. The tendrils of binding unraveled from terrifying energy uncoiling his form!
A spasm crossed his face. He coughs a spurt of bright red blood from parted lips.
Then in a blink, gone.
In tandem, the obsidian-white blade vanished… into Romier’s chest.
Romier froze — not merely in posture, but his entire expression solidified within a mask.
Prater, standing at careful distance, watched the unmoving form with glinting calculation.
Within moments, slight movement trickled back. His eyes twitch; for a flash, their glare lingered upon *Prater.* Then flicked back to gaze upon expanding field of silent death beneath them. The spread finally ended somewhere past nearly one-and-a-half hundred meters total radius: but not a survivor stirred.
Over a thousand slain. And each — of the darkness’s own.
A devastating blow, especially in a force already bleeding for every foothold won. Worse — not one single ember-shadow soldier within that field suffered loss at all, the losses utterly belonged to Evernight.
Romier exhaled once. Pale. Composed. Again. But within that one moment: Prater, ever alert, saw it.
And a grin blossomed on his lips, sharp, unguarded.
“…The remaining embershadow survivors must be thinning,” Qian Ye’s enemy mused aloud. “And Qian Ye will not be left unshattered after breaking free of my hold. Send the last reserve forces in now and seal fate itself.”
“That last batch, you mean the noble personal guards? Barely a thousand across *both of us.*”
“That’s enough!” Romier shot back sharply, “Conscript the remaining ship crews. Remove those no longer necessary in navigation. If the war requires it: we throw all against this moment.”
“Throw mine away for *your* gain?” Prater spat. “That was a long campaign against Vareth. I came to see *victory… not ruin* myself to fuel *yours*.”
Romier glared. “That is borderline insubordination.”
Unfazed, Prater simply arched one dark brow towards the horizon beyond Romier’s shoulder. Where far beyond smoke-filled air — a new presence flickered into view, carrying a whip crackling thunder with its every flick.
Carol had arrived.
Romier’s gaze flickered sharply. “Leave Carol to me. I’ll end this one easily.”
“And *I’ll take care* to finish the other job beneath us. Kill off the rats Qian Ye hides among?”
“A fitting fate.”
Romier spoke with calm control; though beneath that, he understood one fundamental truth now. He must seem *unshaken*, unwavering — because every tremble within his aura was measured… evaluated like a blade aimed straight for his blind spot by the cunning eight-eyed schemer standing beside him.
Prater bowed mockingly.
Qian Ye might be weakened, Song Zining possibly tired from sustained battles — yes, but what Romier never anticipated…
…was the next shift that began when far across skies erupted into fire.
A plume of violet flames erupted in the sky — a flare no Evernight general could mistake.
It was the herald signet of the ancient Zhao clan, announcing a new arrival.
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