Chapter 118: Bloodbath on the Riverbank

“All positions, brace!”

“Archers

ready!”

Elara’s voice cut clean through the gathering thunder of hooves.

Thirty thousand soldiers tightened at once, every face setting into hard, focused readiness along the line.

Behind the shield wall, rows of archers drew their bows to full extension, steel points catching the moonlight in cold, scattered glints.

She held her position behind the heavy infantry, staff in hand, watching the black wall of cavalry close the distance with grim, unwavering focus.

A hundred paces out, her eyes narrowed, and the order came sharp and immediate.

“Loose! Loose!”

Bowstrings sang in near-perfect unison, a storm of arrows tearing into the night sky, each one wreathed in faint skill light.

Shock arrows every one carrying a stun chance on impact. The volley crashed into the front ranks of the charge, momentum doing the rest, riders dropping hard to the ground as inertia ended what the arrows started.

Those following too close behind collided into the wreckage before they could react.

Heavy plate carried its own resistance to crowd control, though, and the riders who shook off the stun pressed forward through the rain of arrows undeterred, closing fast toward the shield wall.

Elara wasn’t about to let them have the easy approach. “Mages area fire, now!”

A wall of flame bloomed across the open ground ahead of the line, swallowing dozens of meters in roaring fire.

It barely slowed them. Heavy cavalry built for exactly this kind of assault carried dual resistances high enough to shrug fire off almost entirely, the charge rolling through the inferno like it wasn’t there at all.

Arrows and spellfire kept landing regardless, chipping steadily at a force that refused to stop.

Just as the lead riders closed into charge range, a furious roar tore the air apart.

Void Colossus dropped from the sky, slamming into the open ground squarely between the shield wall and the oncoming charge, already standing twenty meters tall before it had even finished landing.

Titanshift.

Its frame surged upward further still, climbing to a full thirty meters in the span of a breath strength and skill range both scaling up with every inch gained.

It threw its head back and loosed a furious roar.

Voidrupture.

The ground split wide in a circle nearly thirty meters across, jagged bone spikes tearing free beneath the charging riders, launching dozens of them skyward in a chaotic tangle of men and horses.

Before any of them touched ground again, Void Colossus’s jaw split wide a second time, a warped, distorting shriek rolling outward.

Hollowscream.

The cavalry’s average level ran high for this stage of the war fifty-three, considerably past the forty-to-fifty baseline most of the seven kingdoms’ standing forces carried, Elara’s own thirty thousand included.

Heavy plate on top of that made for a genuinely dangerous force, small in number but brutal in quality.

None of it mattered against two skills landing back to back. Riders already bled down past half health by the arrow and spellfire barrage simply stopped existing health bars collapsing wholesale, bodies crashing lifeless across the churned earth.

Void Colossus’s reach only covered so much ground, though. The wider flanks of the charge simply swept around it, closing the final stretch and triggering their charge skill without hesitation.

Horses screamed, hooves thundering, and the impact tore straight into the shield wall.

The line buckled hard under that weight more than a few heavy shields knocked loose entirely, soldiers staggering under the force of it.

Spears answered from behind the broken shields almost instantly, driving up through every gap the collision had opened, punching clean through plate wherever the angle allowed.

The first wave barely had time to finish before a second crashed in behind it, then a third, each one testing the same stretch of line without mercy.

The defense held barely the whole formation shuddering under sustained, relentless pressure.Then fresh movement broke from behind the distant hills.

Five thousand light cavalry surged out behind the heavy vanguard, bows already in hand, loosing arrows mid-gallop in retaliation against the archers still raining fire down from the line.

Closing distance, they dropped the bows for blades and pressed the charge home at full speed.

Behind them, a dense wave of infantry poured out of the same hills, battle cries rolling across the riverbank as they surged toward the Winterwatch Legion’s position.

The two forces crashed together in full, the whole southern bank of the Silverflow erupting into open, chaotic war skill light flashing in every direction, steel ringing against steel, the night air thick with shouting and the screams of the dying.

Something about the raw scale of it swords flashing, banners torn through smoke, the ancient, primal rhythm of open battle lit something hot and eager in Kael’s chest.

He summoned his full roster without hesitation and threw himself straight into the heart of it.

Wraithlord raised a hand, and a line of Bonecaster Mages rose from the fractured earth behind him, staves already crackling with necrotic fire.

He gave his charger its head a heartbeat later, triggering Cinder Charge, and tore through the packed enemy ranks like the formation simply wasn’t there, cutting left and right with brutal, uncontested ease.

Thunder Roc dove again and again from above, each pass raking the battlefield with another storm of golden lightning, clearing wide swaths of ground with every strike.

Lyra held position near the rear, bow steady, starlit arrows flying out in a continuous, merciless rhythm, every shot finding a target somewhere in the press of bodies below.

The Hollow Emissary moved through the chaos like something that didn’t belong to the same physical rules as everyone else on that field flickering in and out of sight, closing on anything already bled low, a single clean strike from the scythe ending each target outright, soul after soul drawn silently into the blade with every kill.

Beneath the moon, the whole riverbank had become something closer to a reaping than a battle steel, fire, and starlight tangled together into one long, merciless harvest, and at the center of it, Kael’s roster moved like they’d been built for exactly this night.