Chapter 107: Wings Over Korven

"I’ve made enough adjustments that Saintess Rosaria won’t be coming here either. Please don’t worry about that, Princess Yunxi. I’ve already..."

Kai never finished the sentence. The woman beside him had reached out and settled a hand on his shoulder, and her fingers closed with a grip that was far from gentle. Her face held no expression at all. Her eyes simply held his, flat and unblinking.

"I told you not to speak my name or my station while we are here," she said. "Call me Yuri. We do not yet know for certain that there are no enemies close enough to hear."

Kai’s gaze flicked along the wall. She was right.

The rampart was filling up. Soldiers pounded past in clusters, townsfolk scrambled up the stairwells to see what the bells meant, and every few steps a runner shoved through the crowd with a message and nowhere to put it.

Smoke drifted low across the stone, thin and gray, and the air tasted of ash and horse sweat.

The two of them eased away from the busiest stretch of the wall, moving toward a quieter corner where fewer ears were turned their way.

"Are you sure your method is sound, Kai?" Yuri asked, her voice kept low. "Deceiving both them and the Oracle?"

"Rhaiven’s reports have been stranger than I expected, I admit. But on the matter of Saintess Rosaria, I’ve prepared a special decoy. It will keep her eyes fixed on a rival rather than on Korven."

Kai spoke the way a man recites a ledger he has already balanced. "As for the Oracle, I’m confident she won’t come down into the city herself. So long as the Dark Beasts keep their attention on Korven alone, she will not send out her main body."

Yuri nodded slowly, a hand at her chin. Every piece of the plan, as Kai laid it out, was falling into place without a single snag.

Then both of them stopped walking.

Far across the plain, a column of dust was rising from the west, a long brown smear against the pale sky that grew thicker with every breath. It was still many kilometers away. But it was moving, and it was coming straight for the western gate.

Kai’s pupils shifted. For a moment they tightened into narrow cylindrical rings, and the distant haze snapped sharply into focus as if he had pressed a lens to his eye. Beneath the dust rolled an ocean of riders. Banners cracked above them in the wind. Lances glittered in rows.

"Reinforcements," he said. "Nearly a hundred thousand, by my count. Perhaps more."

His eyes narrowed.

"And from the look of those colors, we’re about to receive another sacrifice from the Sarnel line."

"The Sarnel family?" Yuri frowned. "Why would they send their children here again? Shouldn’t the elders, or the ones who matter most, be the ones taking the field?"

They stepped up to the parapet where only a handful of onlookers stood watching, and Kai leaned on the stone beside her, speaking as casually as if he were discussing the weather.

"You may not know this, my lady, but in the great families of Bravenheart, a child of exceptional talent is given real standing in the house no matter how young they are.

The higher the authority they are handed early, the better their chance of becoming the next Patriarch or Matriarch."

"For that reason, those gifted children are desperate to win some great achievement. Achievement buys them authority, and authority buys them the house."

He gestured vaguely toward the dust.

"Take House Sarnel. Of Cassius’s children, two hold standing high enough to rank above the family’s Elders. The eldest, and the second, Jeanne. With that rank, no one beneath them can give them orders. Not even a senior Elder."

"House Austur’s eldest, barely approaching thirty, is already Vice-Patriarch. The Imperial family itself picks its heirs by the same method, weighing which child can steer the empire better than the last."

Yuri’s mouth curved, thin and thoughtful. "Then the habit of the Seven Pillars is, in truth, a gift to us."

"Exactly." Kai smiled. "Take one gifted child from each house, and every house will turn the world over to find them. Sadly, we can’t touch the Winter or Augusta heirs."

"Ah. The two prodigies who took top marks, and are therefore excused from the promotion exam."

"Precisely."

It was Orvis Academy’s old tradition. Whoever held the title of the year’s best student received finer facilities than their classmates, and one more privilege besides: the right to skip an examination. Cecilia Winter and Claudia Augusta had claimed that title, and so neither of them was within reach.

"Still, there’s no need to worry, my lady. Even without those two, we have the second children of House Austur, Pneuma, and Versys. If the Sarnel girl hadn’t noticed the Dark Beasts when she did, we would have had every one of them."

That part of the account was true. Patricia had been the first to sense that something was wrong.

Out on the exam grounds, nearing the edge of the Calamity Forest, her instincts had prickled, and her wariness had been enough to wake the nobles’ children around her to the Dark Beasts closing in to snatch them. Most of them had fallen back to Korven in time.

Patricia had not. She was still somewhere inside the Calamity Forest.

And Kai’s plan did not end with her. The remaining children of the Seven Pillars were still inside this very fortress, and he meant to take them the same way. The more of them vanished, the more soldiers each house would send.

What had begun as thousands would swell to a hundred thousand from every family, and an army that large could comb the forest for whatever he was truly after.

"Even so," Yuri said, "there is one party I would watch. They say Supreme Commander Flemming’s Fulgur force is formidable. If I’m not mistaken, his strength nearly rivals your own?"

Kai laughed under his breath. In his estimation, no one in Bravenheart could match him.

"Do not take such things lightly, Kai." Her voice sharpened. "Underestimating the Order of Selenea cost us dearly. That failure was what earned us this punishment, and the reason we were thrown out to this place."

"At least Mother only punished the three of us by giving us this chance."

"It won’t happen again, my lady," Kai said, and his smile did not change. "And I am not underestimating Supreme Commander Flemming. I’ve already prepared a gift for him, something that will make him very easy to fight."

Yuri turned to ask what he meant.

Crash!

A knot of soldiers came pounding up the stairs and slammed straight into them, nearly knocking them both against the stone. Kai’s eyes flashed with a sudden desire to break the man’s neck, thinking only that Yuri might be hurt.

But she lifted two fingers, a small, curt signal to stand down. The soldier had already stammered out an apology and fled. Neither of them could afford to draw eyes now.

Then something far across the wall pulled their attention away.

On the northern rampart, the defenders had opened fire. Thousands of arrows rose in a long, dark curtain and fell upon the Dark Beasts crowding the base of the wall.

Behind them, fireballs arced into the sky with heavy, rolling booms, trailing orange light and black smoke. Every few heartbeats a flash of flame lit up the stone, and the roar of the beasts below answered it, closer and closer.

The air along that stretch of wall had begun to taste of burnt hair and iron.

Kai only laughed.

"Fools. Do they think fireballs and wooden arrows are enough to wound a Dark Beast?"

He watched it with a smile, entirely untroubled, as though none of those creatures would ever turn toward him.

Then the smile slipped.

Someone was climbing the ladder at the corner of the wall, a woman in the same Orvis uniform as his own. Blonde hair, tied back, ash-streaked at the temples. She paused to wipe her glasses on her sleeve, smearing soot across the lenses, then looked up and found him.

"There you are, Dean Kai. Please, come help the other deans. The Dusk Feathers are coming in greater numbers, and we need you down there at once."

"Ah, Dean Lucy." Kai’s voice smoothed into something genial. "No need to be anxious. I’ve seen the Dusk Feather flock myself, and I was just about to inform you all. Let’s go."

He half turned toward the spot where Yunxi had stood a moment ago. She was gone. She had slipped away the instant Lucy appeared, with no sound, and no trace.

But as he followed Lucy toward the stairs, his eyes caught on the horizon once more, and what he saw there made his steps falter.

Not only a flock of Dusk Feathers. Beyond them, wing after wing, thousands of Gargoyles beat across the sky, their wings churning the smoke, all of them pouring toward the city.

"Strange. Why are there Gargoyles here? Didn’t Rhaiven say the Gargoyles weren’t under his control?"