Vivan
The Murai swordsman did not press the attack immediately.
He farther from his front lines that continued their assualt with his blade sheathed, head slightly inclined, as though listening to something beneath the noise of battle. Vivian pulled back from her own effort when she could and watched him through drifting dust and frost, every instinct warning her that the pause mattered.
He was finished measuring.
Instead of striking with another empowered blast, the swordsman shifted his stance by a fraction, aligning himself with the western tower—the oldest section of Crescent Hyr’s shell.
Vivian felt it before the stone moved.
The air did not compress. It slid, folding inward along invisible planes. Mana warped around the tower in a slow, nauseating curl, and the ward-runes flared in response—tightening, compensating—but this was not a blow meant to shatter them.
It was alignment.
The swordsman drew.
There was no explosion.
Instead, something vanished.
For a heartbeat, Vivian felt a hollowing sensation ripple through the battlefield, like a breath pulled from the world and never returned. The mana did not flare or surge—it thinned, stretched taut as if something elsewhere had been emptied to feed what happened here.
Sophie gasped softly behind her. “That’s not mana or demon power.”
Kaelus Renn stiffened. “Then what is it?”
Before Vivian could answer, her attention was pulled beyond the ridgeline far behind the emeryline but within a mana users' slight line. .
Far behind the Murai swordsman, just visible through gaps in the drifting fog, something flickered a magic cermonial circle.
She could not see details—only shapes moving in a deliberate pattern. Human silhouettes, bound or kneeling, their outlines blurred by distance and mist. The air above them shimmered weakly, like heat over stone, then dimmed as one shape collapsed and was dragged aside.
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People, the Demon Orcs were dragging people towards that ciricle. Vivian’s stomach twisted but she did not see what happened as the fog seemed to encase them.
The Murai and Vivian seemed to lock eyes and he smiled like a friend at the threater. She atched as he inhaled slowly, deeply.
The warped energy around him thickened. She expected corruption, but that wasn't the case what the Murai drew was something brighter and more intimate. It clung to the blade, not violently, but hungrily, as though it recognized what it had been given.
“He’s drawing power from somewhere else,” Elizabeth said, voice tight. “Not from the field. or his Sword Spirit. What is that?”
“Its not from the Pulse either,” Sophie added, her face pale. “The approcah to power cultivation of a Murai vs an Orc, even a demon touched one, are completely different. He isn't getting the power them.”
Vivian’s jaw tightened. She felt suddenly, profoundly angry.
The sword came free of its sheath.
Reality did not tear. It folded inward, layers of space sliding across one another as the force traveled toward the warded walls The impact rang hollow and deep, like a bell struck from inside the mountain itself.
The dwarven wards flared gold and white, screaming in protest as they absorbed the blow and the magic embedded with in was visably affected. Stone shuddered as dust fell in sheets. Somewhere inside the fortress, a supporting arch cracked.
The wards held but barely. Vivian knew now what made the difference. This strike had not cost the swordsman anything in its own power consumption. She could see it in his posture and the lazy flick of this sword. The cost... had already been paid and came from some other source.
She looked again toward the distant circle, just as another human form slumped and went still. The shimmer above the shapes flickered, then steadied, flowing back toward the ridge in a thin, sickly thread.
Vivian raised her sword, frost crawling along its edge as her voice hardened. “We aren't going to survive many more strikes like that..”
Kaelus followed her gaze and swore softly. “The scaling is crazy; he doesn't seem to have a extremely advanced Sword Spriit - he shouldn't be able to scale that kind of metaphysical strike.”
“And whatever he’s using,” Sophie said, her hands shaking, “It almost has a spirtual element to it. Dwarven defense wards are notoriously difficult to strick down becuase of their physical and spiritual nature. Those strisk are hitting both.”
The Murai swordsman lowered his blade.
For the first time, Vivian saw his face clearly; this was not really a man. He was a demon pretending despite beiong both calm and certain.
She looked passed the Murai and his cruel inhuman smile.
He raised a hand and at his signal, the Red Orcs roared and surged once more.
But Vivian no longer saw them as the true threat.
She had seen the source.
And she knew that as long as those circles existed beyond the ridge, the fortress would never be safe—no matter how strong its walls were.