Harold set the mallet against the timber joint, but his hands stilled. The tower's frame creaked above him, half-built, while the bonds thrummed like bowstrings drawn to breaking. His face looked calm in the torchlight, but his mind raced.

Jerric's line faltered first. A heavy silence where the bear had been — sudden, jarring, as if a mountain had been ripped out from underfoot.

"Bear's down," Jerric growled, frustration rough in his tone. "Bled out faster than I could keep him standing. I'm drawing mana for another summon, but it'll take time."

The gap pressed on all of them. Harold felt it through Lira most sharply. Her Dao stretched thin, forced to strike and heal Kelan at once. Life mana poured steady, cool against torn flesh, but each drop vanished the moment it touched.

"He's cutting faster than I can close," she said, her breath sharp and precise. "Life slows the wounds and bites him, but not enough. Death slides off him—if anything, it feeds him. His Dao is heavier. Every strike carries too much weight."

The Baron pressed harder, claws raking stone, speed bursting in jolts Harold felt through Kelan's line. Kelan's steadiness held — hammer blows like drumbeats, measured, unbroken — but even stone cracked when pressed long enough.

"He presses harder each exchange," Kelan said evenly, though Harold tasted the ache in his ribs. "I can hold him, but not forever."

Through Oath perception, Harold caught glimpses of the wider battle. Daran burned bright at the basin's center, each strike shaving the world thinner. His blade carved through blood mist and shredded knightly guards, sharpness pushing deeper with every cut. He was winning — not cleanly, not quickly, but undeniably.

"Quarter mana," Jerric muttered, strained but steady. "I can bring another shaman soon, send it to support the soldiers…"

"Do it," Lira answered at once, her voice calm though her bond flared with strain. "I won't have mana left for them after this."

The Baron struck again — a sweeping blow that staggered Kelan, ribs screaming through the tether. Still, he did not falter.

"Feels like penetration," Kelan noted grimly. "Each strike pushes through my stone as if it wasn't there."

"Your healing keeps me upright," he added, calm even as his breath rattled. "But this won't last."

Harold could feel it in the threads: the Baron's Dao crushed down on them with inevitability. Life stitched only shallowly, death found no purchase. Both forces washed over him like mist.

"Too much power in him," Lira admitted, her tone clipped, frustration rare in her voice. "He walks through me as if I weren't there."

The bonds strained near breaking. The Baron's claws lashed, inevitability in every blow. Harold braced for the snap.

And then Halvor came.

The young wolf's presence tore through the bond like a storm breaking. His howl cracked across Harold's chest, raw and savage, every note filled with hunger.

"Mine!" Hal thundered through the tether, his voice shaking them all. "The red one is mine!"

The impact was immediate. Kelan's steady beat surged brighter, strength returning with Hal at his side. Lira's mana sharpened, her rhythm flowing cleaner, her strikes finding surer purchase. Even Jerric's pulse flared, mana building faster on the back of the wolf's fury.

For the first time, the Baron reeled.

The tide hadn't turned fully — not yet — but Harold felt the shift in his bones. The Baron was no longer an unstoppable weight pressing them down. He was bleeding ground. And Kelan, steady and unyielding, was forcing him to stagger.

The hardest paths forged the sharpest steel.

The bonds strained, every thread stretched to the edge of breaking. Harold's voice cut through, steady and inexorable.

"You are my Branded. The chosen of Calamity. Your story does not end here. None of you will break here. None of you will bend. If the world must shatter, let it — but you will not."

The words rippled outward, steadying them all. But Harold's focus locked on Kelan, the tether thickening until it felt like they stood eye to eye.

"You are not stone, Kelan," Harold said, his tone sinking like iron into the marrow. "Water erodes it. Fire shatters it. You are the mountain. You are immovable."

He pressed harder, his voice a forge's heat through the bond.

"Think of the mountains of home — looming above us, older than time, immovable. Everything must bend around them. The winds, the rivers, even men themselves — all learn to move by their presence. We adhere to the mountain's conditions; it does not bend to ours. Its power doesn't come from the stone that it's made of, but from the earth beneath, deep and endless. The secrets that it hides within. The mountains are the bones of the world… just as you are the one that holds us together."

For a heartbeat, silence filled the tether. Then Kelan's breath rumbled through, low and steady.

"…The mountain," he murmured, the word grounding itself in the bond like bedrock. "Not stone. Not something to be broken or carved. I am the weight beneath. I endure."

Harold felt the rush of qi gather, surging through Kelan's core, pressing outward until even the bond seemed to strain beneath it. The rhythm of his hammer shifted — no longer just steady, but inevitable. Each strike landed like the earth itself moving, deep and immovable.

Behind him, an image stirred: slopes rising into the clouds, roots plunging into darkness, a vastness that could not be shaken. The mountain was there, and Kelan stood at its heart.

The Baron struck again, claws ringing against hammer and guard. But this time the force did not stagger Kelan. It sank into him, devoured by weight that would not move.

And for the first time, Harold smiled, feeling the mountain's weight settle into his side of the bond.

The clash in the basin slowed. For a heartbeat, all eyes turned.

Behind Kelan, the image swelled into being — vast shoulders of stone rising above the snow, roots sinking unseen into the deep. The mountain loomed, immovable, its weight pressing into the world until the very air seemed heavier.

The Bloodnights faltered. Their discipline, already fraying, bent under the sight. Despair rippled through their ranks like cracks racing through glass. Against fire, against wolves, against steel, they had held. But this — this was inevitability given form.

Daran did not waste the moment. His blade shone brighter, edge honed to a scream. The vampire knight before him raised a wall of blood in panic, but sharpness cut through it like silk. One clean strike split guard, armor, and chest, the force of it shattering the knight's balance. He crumpled, his last gasp swallowed by the storm of steel.

Hal's fury surged across the tether, his howl splitting the night as he hurled himself at the Baron. For the second time, the red-clawed retainer staggered. Hal's fangs sank deep, his weight slamming the vampire back in a spray of blood and frost.

The basin erupted again — not as an ambush, not as chaos, but as the tide turning. The Calamity's Branded surged, and the Bloodnights broke beneath them.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The basin rang with dying screams.

The Bloodnights were breaking, their lines shattered, their captains dead. Wolves dragged men down thrashing into the snow. Lira and Hal's teeth carved through the last Vampire Knight, beast and dao joined in purpose. Kelan stood unyielding, pickaxe braced like the mountain itself, each blow shaking the ground.

The tide was theirs. Victory was in reach.

And then the air thickened.

A pressure swelled at the center of the crumbling line, sudden and brutal. The last of the Bloodnight elites, cornered and dying, bared their fangs and poured the dregs of their existence into one last act. Qi and blood mana detonated outward in a blinding surge, a wave of crimson and black fire that tore across the battlefield.

Men screamed as they were caught in the blast. Shields splintered. Wolves yelped and scattered, some collapsing mid-stride.

The pit-fighter trio — who had laughed their way through the melee, swords and knives flying — were nearest the blast. Their defiance carried them a step further, one even managing to cut a vampire down as the wave consumed him. But the explosion took them all. When the smoke cleared, nothing of them remained but charred steel and silence.

Even the hardened soldiers staggered. A handful fell, bodies smoking in the snow, their lifelines severed from Harold's perception in an instant. He felt the loss like strings cut from an instrument — sharp, final, impossible to replace.

But the Bloodnights had burned everything in that final act. Their corpses littered the basin, their last strength spent. The honor they held dearest made killing them costly and was a loss for the surrounding area. Those willing to stand up and fight were always in short supply.

Silence followed, heavy and broken only by the crackle of scorched ground and the ragged breathing of the living.

The Calamity's Branded still stood. Barely. Bloodied, scarred, marked forever by what they had endured.

The shaped basin was theirs. But it had been paid for in blood.

The battlefield stank of iron and ash. Smoke drifted low where the Bloodnights' last explosion had scorched snow to black slush. The cries of the wounded filled the basin, broken only by the rasp of men still breathing hard through bloodied teeth.

Daran stood over the carnage, his blade dripping red, his sharpness Dao still humming faintly around him. He raised his voice, steady and commanding.

"Ferin! Auren! Outward. Check the ridges, the gullies. If they had another signal, we'll know it before their friends fall on us. Move."

The scouts staggered, but they obeyed, vanishing into the darkness beyond the basin.

Daran turned back to the soldiers. "The rest of you — loot. Now. I don't care how tired you are. Their steel is better than ours, their mail thicker, their boots warmer. Strip what you can carry. Leave nothing."

Jerric lifted his staff with a grunt, sweat streaming down his temple. Threads of mana flared, and half a dozen small kobolds blinked into being — scrawny, wide-eyed things, too frail for war but perfect for labor. They hissed and muttered in their tongue as he set them to work, dragging breastplates, weapons, and packs into rough piles.

Hal limped near the edge of the field, licking at a long, ugly gash that split his flank. Blood streaked the snow where he walked. Lira knelt beside him, her hands glowing faintly with life mana, but the wound resisted her efforts.

"It isn't taking," she murmured, frowning, her brow lined with strain.

Harold's presence brushed her shoulder through the bond. He spoke low, his voice cutting gently into her thoughts. "You did well. They stand because of you."

She exhaled, a tremor in her voice. "I can feel it, Harold. The death energy here… it's clinging to everything. And with so much blood spilled, it will only grow stronger. This place will sour. It will draw things. Especially with their Blood Dao feeding it."

Soldiers sat in ragged lines, binding their wounds with poultices from Rysa's dwindling stores. A rare few glass vials — precious healing draughts — were poured into the worst of them, the pale light of recovery struggling against torn flesh and crushed bone. The bodies of their own dead were gathered gently, lifted onto makeshift stretchers of broken shields and carried with quiet care.

Not all the sounds were grim. The axe brothers leaned against one another, laughing raggedly through split lips.

"Tier Three!" one shouted hoarsely, slapping his chest. "You see it? We made it, brother!"

His twin grinned, teeth stained red. "Yeah. Though I think my Dao's thin. Might need to… consolidate. Or whatever word the bookworms use."

Kelan sat apart, his hammer braced across his knees. His branded dwarf crouched beside him, eyes wide.

"I felt it," the dwarf said, voice hushed. "When your Dao shifted. When it rooted deeper. It called to me too. How did you do it? How did you reach it?"

Kelan drew a long breath, his presence steady as bedrock. "I didn't. Not alone. Harold's words… the mountain was already there. I just had to see it."

The dwarf nodded slowly, awe flickering in his eyes.

Above them all, Daran's voice cut through again, sharp as ever. "Work faster. The dead don't wait, and neither will the enemy. Strip what you can and move. We march before the next shadow falls."

The men groaned, but they obeyed, hands moving even as exhaustion weighed on them.

The battle was won. The cost had been paid. And the basin — soaked in blood and qi, thick with the residue of death — was no longer just a battlefield. It was a wound on the world, one that would not close easily.

Hal limped across the field, his breath steaming in the cold night air. One by one, he nosed at the fallen wolves of his pack. His ears drooped as he lingered over their still forms, muzzle pressed to their fur as though memorizing their scents before turning away.

At the basin's edge, the Ashen pair huddled together, their flanks scored with wounds but alive. Hal pressed his head against each of them in turn, a low rumble in his chest that was neither growl nor whine. They answered in kind, their tails brushing his side, muzzles nudging at his wound as if to remind him he still stood. For a moment, it was not the battlefield but something closer — pack reaffirming pack, blood and closeness mingling until they leaned against one another in silence.

Jerric, meanwhile, strode toward Lira, sweat still dripping down his brow but his eyes bright with something close to excitement. "Lira," he said quickly, almost tripping over his own words, "I gained levels. A lot of them. How should I spend my points? Do I put them into fortitude? Mana? I can push higher—"

"Not now," she cut him off, her voice taut but calm. She pressed her hands into the soil, faint green light leaking through her palms. The air around her trembled as she forced life qi outward, breaking apart the cloying miasma that had already begun to thicken in the basin. Her face was pale, but her will did not falter.

"Wait until we're back behind the walls," she said firmly, eyes still shut. "The death energy here is gathering. It's not much now but in a few years this place will die, and a couple years after that something more monstrous will be born here. I will not be responsible for more death and destruction in this area."

Jerric swallowed, the edge of his eagerness dulled by her words. He nodded, quieter this time. "Alright. I'll wait."

The kobold summons he'd left behind scurried around them, arms full of looted steel, looking more like ants than soldiers. But his eyes stayed on Lira as she worked, watching as she fought to keep the battlefield's corruption settling .

The children lingered near the treeline, pressed close together, eyes wide as they watched the soldiers pick through the basin. Torches burned bright against the darkness, throwing long shadows over bodies, steel, and blood.

One boy whispered, voice trembling. "We started that."

His sister nodded quickly, clutching her arms. "When those monsters dragged us back into the woods I got so scared."

A smaller child shivered, glancing at the blood-dark snow. "But… what if they had seen us?"

The question hung in the air, heavy as the silence that followed. Awe and fear twisted together in their young faces.

"Hey," came another voice. Jerric stepped out from the dark, still breathing hard, his clothes spattered with grime and soot. Sixteen, trying to look older, but the wild gleam in his eyes betrayed him. "Don't just stand there looking all spooked. You were awesome."

The kids looked at him — relief flickering, but the fear still clinging.

"Stick with me on the way back," Jerric added, puffing up a little as if he were leading a squad. "It'll be… safer. And, uh—" He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly awkward. "If Meala finds out you came back limping, she's gonna kill me. Like, worse than the Bloodnights. No kidding."

That broke the tension; the children giggled nervously, trading looks as if Meala's scolding might truly be more terrifying than vampires. Jerric grinned at that, his bravado sliding back into place.

"C'mon," he said, jerking his thumb toward the fort. "We're heroes now. Let's not make your mom mad about it."

When the last of the soldiers began their march from the basin, Harold finally let go of the mallet in his hands. The wood clattered against the half-built tower, but his focus had already turned inward.

The system's glow pulsed at the edge of his vision, threads of levels and numbers ticking higher.

His level ticked upward, again and again, until the numbers settled just shy of two hundred.

The ascent stopped, held fast by more than numbers.

[Divine Test Pending] [Gerold- God of Contract Additional Task Incomplete]

Harold exhaled slowly. The plan had been clean — complete Gerold's task before the final battle with the Bloodnights, Now? He would have to adjust. The strength was close enough to taste, but it was locked behind trials not yet claimed. Also Gerold was the God of Contracts? That was wild? And what he just worked for Vero?

The bonds hummed faintly, each Branded soul alive, battered, but still with him. He could feel how his web branched out from Hal, Lira, and Kelan. Their additional Brands a slightly less bright star in his minds web. He drew a breath, forced the edge of frustration down, and let the thought settle into resolve.

There would be no perfect path. But now he had to adjust and how could he do that? The initial plan he had for the city would no longer work. He needed more information. But how to do that when he was out of time.

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