Dain was spinning. His eye may be squeezed shut, but sounds and faint colors beyond his eyelids smeared into a single, nauseating blur in his head. His stomach he no longer owned tried to turn itself inside out.

  Then, just as quickly, the pressure eased once more. He gasped and pried his eye open, reminding himself that this was not reality. The lightning javelin wasn’t real.

  But for the world beneath him, it very much was.

  The garrison was still there, but now it was ruined. Several days must’ve passed since the surprise lightning javelin attack, and the plains around it had been carved into something utterly unrecognizable. The old stone walls had collapsed into jagged teeth. The hills were charred black, split open in long chasms and crooked rifts that spiderwebbed across the land. It didn’t help that a terrible rainstorm was drowning the world, leaving visibility the worst he’d ever seen in his life… and still the battles all across the western front were ongoing.

  Up above, a dozen smaller lightning javelins flew east like falling stars, arcing across the sky toward Obric lines. From the opposite side, enormous stone spikes were hurled westward as counter-artillery, tearing long scars through the air before crashing into Auraline lines. Directly beneath him, in the ruins of the garrison, the training yard had turned into a killing field. Auraline soldiers bearing gold-threaded banners surged over broken walls and burnt rubble. Lightning and golden lights blossomed from their hands and relic weapons, stabbing towards Obric positions.

  But the garrison was not yet lost.

  Two Obric soldiers flew muddy-red banners in the middle of the old training yard, clad in full, heavy armors so thoroughly lacquered with dried blood and dust that their original colours were nearly gone. Against them came a dozen Auraline lightning-bearers at once, but they knew no fear.

  They held their ground.

  As the Auraline soldiers surged into the yard, the first Obric soldier slammed a warhammer into the ground. Stone shattered and then reformed. Out of the scattered chunks rose a hulking golem, then another, and another, each one hauling itself out of the rubble with stone fists. Every time the hammer struck, more of the broken garrison climbed back to its feet as a new golem, shambling forward to bash, smash, and crush the Auraline charge with brute force.

  The second soldier moved very differently. They had a stonescale cloak that blended into whatever material they crossed, its surface rippling from blackened rock to ash-grey, then to the colour of cracked ramparts. One heartbeat they were standing behind their banner. In the next, they vanished against it. Whenever they reappeared, it was behind an exposed Auraline back, their twin daggers flicking once, twice, before leaving throats and joints spilling red across the rubble.

  It was ugly. It was loud. It was a battlefield trying its very best to grind everyone into meat and dust.

  And Dain scowled, because he recognized that stonescale cloak now on the second soldier’s back now.

  … Hm.

  Minutes passed. Hours passed. Eventually, reinforcements arrived. From the east, a tide of muddy-red banners crested the opposite side of the ruined garrison, and a flood of Obric soldiers poured in with their own relics and linked shield-lines. A fresh wall of stone spikes erupted from the ground to slow the Auraline push, and with the added weight, the golden soldiers had no choice but to scramble back to the west. Retreat signals flashed along the Auraline ranks, and lightning-bearers began to fall back under the renewed pressure.

  While the Obric reinforcements cheered and fired cannons at the retreating army, the two soldiers who’d held the line by themselves staggered towards the medics, armor dented and slick with blood that wasn’t all enemy. Other soldiers rushed to them instantly, slinging arms over their shoulders to keep them from collapsing. Even further behind, work crews were already setting up new earthworks and planting heavier relic artillery onto whatever flat ground remained.

  As the two soldiers rested on the mud between two tents, being handed water and rations by medics around them, an Obric general in reinforced plates strode towards them, his long cloak dragging ash.

  “You two,” he said. “What are your names and ranks?”

  The two soldiers looked at the general for a second before removing their horned helmets.

  It was the sisters.

  They were much older now. Much harder now. The older one, taller and broader of shoulder, looked weary but mostly uninjured beyond old scars and bruises. The younger sister swayed where she sat, her armor stabbed and slashed all over. Blood leaked in thin streams from gaps between her plates, and her face had gone a sickly pale under all the soot.

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  Dain clenched his jaw.

  It’s not been a few days.

  How many weeks have you two been holding this entire line by yourselves?

  “... We have no names,” the older sister said at last. “I think… we forgot them.”

  The general’s brows knit. “Then your family name, at least.”

  Neither sister responded immediately as they simply stared at him with flat, empty eyes.

  “Fortress Yorvikar has fallen a long time ago,” the older sister said quietly.

  “We have no more family,” the younger sister whispered.

  The general grimaced. Compared to the other soldiers milling about, these two looked like something scraped off the bottom of the war’s boot. Bloody, battered, and somehow still standing. It clearly unsettled him.

  “... Rank and file soldiers like you couldn’t have been given earth-type relics of that calibre,” he said carefully, eyeing the warhammer in the older sister’s hands and the stonescale mantle on the younger sister’s back. “Those are relics reserved for officers and generals. Where did you get them from?”

  “The Garrison General,” the older sister said plainly. “He died when the surprise attack was first launched. We decided not to waste what he left behind.”

  The general’s mouth opened. Then closed. No words came out, and Dain understood why. After all, they hadn’t been trained for that warhammer and mantle—and they hadn’t even looked like they had the mana to use them for such long stretches—but somehow, they’d still managed to hold this entire line this long using their relics.

  They were monstrously talented soldiers, and the general knew it. He cleared his throat, trying to reassert command.

  “Regardless, you’ve… you’ve both done Obric proud this time,” he said, voice loud enough now for nearby soldiers to hear. “We’ll set tents and fortifications and re-establish this point as a temporary bastion. I’ll ensure both of you—by the crowns—receive the glory and honor your deeds deserve, so rest here for the time being. An official investigation into the surprise attack that happened here will be—”

  “They don’t seem to care much for ‘glory’ or ‘honor’, Mountain General. Do you?”

  The three of them turned as another voice cut in from the side, low and amused.

  Leaning against a broken wall in the shade, arms folded, was a man half-wreathed in shadow. His armor was darker than the others’, his cloak a deeper red, and something in his posture told Dain that the blood on his boots was older than today’s battle.

  His face lay half in darkness, but the sharp line of amusement in his mouth was visible. The general’s jaw tightened.

  “You… What business has the Ironshade Corps here at this hour? Could you not have arrived any sooner to support these two? We nearly lost—”

  “Watch your tongue, Mountain General,” the man murmured. “Our missions thread through every front—over your borders, beneath your foes’, and far deeper than any soldier of Obric is asked to tread. We are never late. We owe you no explanations. Do not question our timing again.”

  The general swallowed whatever retort had flared in his eyes, and the man in the shadows looked towards the two sisters instead.

  “Tell me,” he said, “have you truly forgotten your names, or do you simply refuse to carry them after the blood you have spilled on these fields?”

  The sisters didn’t answer. Their helmets dangled from their fingers, and their faces—ashen, gaunt, hollowed—betrayed neither pride nor fear.

  Only a cold, resigned emptiness.

  Dain felt a strange heaviness in his chest. Spirit or not, he knew the look of two people who’d already died long before their bodies ever did.

  “I see,” the man murmured at last. “Then names are chains you no longer bear.”

  He reached into his cloak with two fingers and flicked two items into the air. The sisters caught them with soldiers’ reflexes, palms snapping shut around the polished silver.

  Dain drifted down to get a better look.

  They were… medallions. Ornate. Grim. Each was shaped as a silver hand clenching the sharp edge of a dagger, almost as though it was trying to cut its own palm open.

  Dain recognized these medallions, too.

  The one-eyed lady had been carrying one.

  “If you can no longer walk as common soldiers, walk with us in the shadows,” the man said. “The Ironshade Corps has need of phantoms, and you two have already slipped far, far from the tether of ordinary life.” He nodded at the older sister first. “You. The hammer-bearer. The one who rends earth and births golems in the midst of battle. Your stride shakes the field when you move. You shall be called ‘Gargantyr’, for your foes fall like grain before the press.”

  The older sister didn’t react. Not even a blink. But her grip tightened slightly around the medallion.

  Then the man’s gaze slid to the younger sister.

  “And you,” he said softly. “The shadow on the rubble. The silent knife between stone and breath. You shall be… ‘Stonewraith’, for your cloak devours shape and light, and not a single Auraline dog can survive your passage.

  “Follow me, and we will end this war together.”

  And for the first time since Dain had seen the younger sister as a child, something flickered across her face. Not excitement—not exactly—but something a little bit warmer than the constant reminder that life was the cheapest thing to lose in this war.

  She looked almost happy, given a new name.

  It was then that the world swirled again, and this time, Dain felt himself being yanked into the sky.

  Wait!

  I’m not done yet!

  I have to see—

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