Chapter 131: When the Beasts Fell Silent

Ethan snapped his eyes open inside the shadowed alcove. The mental and physical exhaustion he had endured during the early hours of dawn was gone, replaced by a sharp clarity, his strength recovered to a large extent.

Beside him, Rune stood up smoothly, his eyes retaining their usual calm. Even though he had fought all day, he didn’t show any signs of exhaustion. Down the narrow stone corridor, heavy boots clattered against the flagstones as Iron Wolf led the squad back up from the barracks.

Ethan stepped out of the alcove and looked back across the battlements.

The atmosphere on the wall had subtly shifted. The quiet awe that had followed Ethan’s fight in the breach had been swallowed whole by the endless, grinding reality of the Tide. The soldiers occupying the battlements were visibly weaker than the first wave. Their armor was dented, their eyes were sunken and hollow with dark circles signifying the lack of rest, and their movements had lost the sharp precision they had carried earlier. None of them had eaten a proper meal in the past two days.

The Black Raven Captain remained where Ethan had left him hours ago, his black cloak shredded at the hem, leaning heavily against a stone merlon while shouting low directives to a line of archers and mages. He gave Ethan a single nod as the squad fell back into position. Van had just left, after the horn blew, to defend another area where the soldiers were struggling. He knew Ethan’s squad would arrive in no time, so he had left without worry, having witnessed Ethan’s strength.

Ethan quickly took his position with the rest of the squad, and they began to fight the beasts that climbed over the fortress wall and the collapsed section.

The rest of the second day blurred into a brutality of survival.

It wasn’t defined by duels or glorious stands, but by the bleakness of attrition. Normally, the stockpiled supplies would have lasted a Tide for several days, but the unforeseen numbers of this one were draining them far earlier than they should have run out. Quartermasters moved up and down the narrow rear stairwells, dragging wooden crates that grew lighter with every pass.

Ballista crews on the higher bastions worked in strained, silent harmony, their arms slick with grease and sweat as they loaded their final heavy bolts, reserving them only for targets larger than a Glacier Troll.

In the Inner Fortress workshops, blacksmiths hammered against glowing anvils without rest, forging endless quivers of iron-tipped arrows, their whole bodies burning with heat and sweat. Yet they didn’t stop as they looked at the soldiers fighting without proper rest or food.

Near the central battery, a young Mage Commander collapsed mid-chant, her mana completely drained. She didn’t even let out a word; she simply fell forward against the stone, her robes catching fire from her own lingering spellwork before two infantrymen hauled her back into the shadows.

By nightfall, the mountain of beast corpses piled against the base of the fortress walls had grown considerably. The battlements had been halved by a towering, frozen ramp of black blood, severed limbs, and crushed bone. Monsters no longer needed to scale thick stones; they simply sprinted up the corpse mound and leaped directly onto the ramparts. The fortress’s greatest defense, its towering height, was vanishing inch by inch.

When darkness settled over the mountain pass, the dreaded Shadeblink Falcons struck again, diving out of the freezing clouds like black daggers. But this time, the garrison was ready. Instead of panicking, the Knights instinctively raised their high collar guards and tucked their chins, covering their exposed throats with iron gauntlets while the back-line spearmen thrust precisely upward into the shadows.

The Knight and Mercenary captains worked relentlessly, killing the beasts while also helping the soldiers against the threats from above that they couldn’t handle alone. Every soldier in Northwatch slashed, thrust, and pierced again and again, even though the injuries were mounting on their bodies... Yet they never wavered in their minds.

By the morning of the third day, a thunderous roar shook the frozen valley as thirty Advanced Tyrant Beasts, massive behemoths clad in thick fur and hides, hit four separate sectors of the wall simultaneously.

For the past two days, Marcus and Evelyn had managed the battlefield effectively, keeping their energy consumption to a minimum. But with thirty Advanced Tyrant Beasts pressing the wall at once, they finally let out their true strength as dense aura swept across the fortress.

Marcus leaped from the high parapet, his spear blazing with compressed aura. But his strokes were no longer short, surgical thrusts. To keep the behemoths from shattering the iron gates below, he was forced to unleash wide, explosive sweeps of his techniques. Heavy shockwaves of aura blasted across the plain, obliterating the Tyrants, but the recoil kicked up clouds of pulverized stone and snow that hung thick in the air.

Beside him, Evelyn unleashed massive, sweeping waves of infernal heat to incinerate the dense swarms of beasts crawling up the corpse ramp. Her crimson hair flared wildly, and there was a slight tremor in her hands as the exhaustion finally began to catch up. For the past few days, both Marcus and Evelyn hadn’t rested a single moment, from emergency preparations to the constant battle.

Down on the lower battlements, the veteran soldiers watched in stunned silence. Evelyn landed lightly next to Marcus, wiping a streak of black soot from her cheek. Her eyes burned with anger and worry as she looked out over the endless horizon. Finally, her gaze landed on Marcus, as beads of sweat began to roll down his face, which he quickly burned away with his aura. His chest heaved slowly, but it was only noticeable to the sharpened senses of a Heaven Knight. Marcus didn’t let the soldiers, or even the Black Raven Knights, notice the traces of exhaustion he was feeling, so that their belief in him and the morale of the soldiers wouldn’t break.

By the afternoon of the third day, the continuous slaughter had turned the lower battlements into an open-air abattoir.

Ethan stood amidst the carnage, his black blade moving in familiar, instinctual arcs. An Ice Claw Bear that had reached the Realm of Peak Beast Lord lunged at his flank; Ethan pivoted smoothly, driving his blade straight through its eye socket and channeling a trace of Intent and Unknown Energy, then rotated his sword clockwise to shatter its brain.

As the beast died, Ethan felt an imperceptible pulse from the Unknown Energy.

It was something he had barely noticed on the first night, and the sensation had been similar to how it usually drew mana, so he hadn’t paid it any specific attention... But now, in the endless grind of the past two days, it was undeniable that something else was being mixed in. Every time his blade ended the life of a beast, the Unknown Energy gave an imperceptible tug. He wanted to see what was happening, but the relentless Tide didn’t give him the luxury.

Ethan expertly parried a follow-up strike from a Glacier Troll, decapitating it in a single clean sweep. Again, the moment life left the monster’s eyes, the thread was drawn in. A few paces away, Rune tore the throat out of an incoming Apex Beast, a Frost Hound.

———

Miles away, hidden deep within the frozen crags of the mountain range, Riennal stood atop a jagged peak.

Through the shared vision of the Shadow Beasts, Riennal watched Marcus and Evelyn’s exhaustion. He then reached into his robes and pulled out the obsidian, eye-shaped artifact. He squeezed it tightly in his clawed fist as he imbued it with his demonic energy.

Far behind him, at the edge of the Outer Mountain Range, where Riennal had moved it earlier, the enormous Ice Dragon woke from its brief slumber. Unlike earlier, the crimson glow didn’t surround its whole eyes, and only tiny traces of it remained, but the madness and killing intent it radiated were unlike anything seen before.

Riennal’s lips peeled back into a manic, bloodthirsty grin.

"Now," he whispered, his voice sounding like dry leaves rustling across a grave.

———

At dusk on the third day, the impossible happened.

Across the entire miles-long front of Northwatch, the deafening roar of the horde suddenly died.

For a heartbeat, no one understood what had changed. Then they heard it: their own ragged breathing, the creak of bowstrings and the heavy sounds of their boots.

Tens of thousands of beasts charging up the corpse ramps stopped dead in their tracks. Glacier Trolls, Frost Hounds, Beast Lords, and Orcs all froze simultaneously, their eyes blank, their breath misting in the freezing air. Without a single growl or snarl, the vast, chaotic ocean of monsters slowly parted down the center of the valley, pulling back to the left and right like a dark sea opening a grand welcome for the ruler of the skies.

On the battlements, the abrupt silence was deafening.

The defenders stood frozen, their weapons raised, their chests heaving. A few young soldiers who were participating for the first time let out breathless, confused cheers, believing the horde was finally retreating. But as the silence dragged on, the cheering quickly withered and died, replaced by a suffocating, unnatural dread.

Then, the temperature crashed across the atmosphere.

It wasn’t the normal, biting cold of the northern mountains. It was an unnatural frost that instantly froze the sweat on the soldiers’ skin and turned the fresh blood pooling on the flagstones into brittle red glass. Spiders of thick, white frost crept up the granite walls of the fortress from the plain below at a terrifying speed, crackling as they coated the iron merlons. Mages gasped as their mana flickered like candle flames in a draft, and the steel in every hand turned cold enough to burn.

High up on the central parapet, Marcus’s expression changed for the first time since the siege had begun. His stoic, unyielding composure vanished. Beside him, Evelyn’s eyes turned toward the mountain range as something in her bloodline suddenly stirred.

Beside Ethan, Rune’s fur stood completely on end, his lips pulling back to reveal his fangs as a deep growl echoed from his throat. Ethan’s Predator Sense, which had been quiet all day, went completely frantic, screaming at him. Beneath his boots, the stone began to tremble.

From the dark, open corridor in the center of the parted horde, a sound echoed across the valley, a sound so ancient, heavy, and filled with ruin that the very air seemed to fracture.

ROOOOOOOOOAAAR!