Marcus slammed his fist against the damp stone wall of the cellar. Dust cascaded from the cracked ceiling to coat the maps scattered across the wooden table.

The underground safehouse offered complete isolation from the burning capital above. The muffled screams of the rioting mob filtered down through the ventilation grates.

Noah paced the length of the confined room, repeatedly checking the locking mechanism on the reinforced oak door while wiping sweat from his forehead.

Mia sat on a crate in the corner with her knees pulled tightly to her chest, chewing on her thumbnail until blood welled around the cuticle.

"The citizens literally tore the King apart." Olivia stood beside the table and activated her magical radar by pointing her hands toward the ceiling. "They butchered the royal guard and dragged the ministers into the streets. We have absolutely no army left to protect us."

Marcus stepped away from the wall and pointed his broadsword toward Olivia’s face. "Keep your voice down. If those peasants hear us down here they will flood this cellar and rip our armor off our backs."

Elena placed a hand over Marcus’s wrist and pushed the weapon aside. Her fingertips glowed with a radiant silver light to soothe the bleeding scrapes across his knuckles. Marcus jerked his arm away and sheathed the blade with a loud clatter.

"We need a safe route out of the city." Ethan traced a line across a parchment map before looking directly at Olivia. "You possess magical radar. You can easily map out the surrounding earth to find an extraction path. We just need to reach the southern border."

Olivia folded her arms across her chest and stared at the cracked stone floor. "I cannot map a gap that wide. The Vanguard forces secured the entire perimeter. The moment I project my radar their tracking grid will pinpoint our exact coordinates to send assassins straight to us."

"Rubedo is a fake title." Mia rocked back and forth on her crate, her eyes darting around the dim cellar. "We watched the Mages cast Soul Flay on him in the throne room. A dead man cannot become a god and command an army of monsters."

Marcus gripped the edge of the table, splintering the wood under his crushing grip. "Rubedo is him. Tyler and Jessica are captured. Chris and Megan detonated in the desert. He survived the abyss and now he is hunting us down to settle the score."

"We own this world." Ethan slammed both hands flat onto the map. "We leveled up for three years. We cleared entire regions of chaos beasts. A glorified outcast from a group home cannot just walk into our kingdom and delete us."

"He already did." Noah grabbed his hair and pulled at the roots. "He turned the entire population against the crown. He possesses a biological war machine that slaughters our top commanders. We are trapped in a basement waiting to die."

Marcus gripped the edge of the table, splintering the wood under his crushing grip. "We leave the continent. We abandon Transtead entirely."

Ethan looked up from the map. "We have no ships. The Vanguard controls the shipyards and the coastline."

"Julian and Julia." Marcus turned his back to the table and looked at the surviving members. "They vanished during the ambush. They took the crimson crystal and abandoned the fight entirely. They are out there on the run." 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Noah stopped pacing and dropped his hand from the locking mechanism. "Julia possesses instantaneous teleportation. Julian can manifest impenetrable hard-light barriers to shield the transit."

Marcus gripped his scabbard. "They are cowards. They will hide until the mob forces them into the open. The rioters will broadcast the news of the King’s execution across the entire capital by sunrise. The twins will panic and attempt to flee."

Elena wiped the remaining blood from her fingertips onto her robes. "We can force Julia to open a spatial channel if we find them. We can bypass the borders completely and jump across the ocean."

Marcus drew his broadsword again. Golden light flared along the edge of the weapon to illuminate the cramped cellar. "We hunt the twins. We track them through the ruined estates. We secure their spatial magic and we leave this graveyard behind us."

Sometime later, somewhere in Gildreath.

Julian dragged a wooden spoon through a bowl of gray stew. A hearth fire cast flickering shadows across the crowded tavern in the lower districts of Gildreath.

He kept his hood pulled low over his face to obscure his features from the drunken patrons packing the adjacent tables.

Julia sat across from him with her hands wrapped tightly around a ceramic mug.

A burly patron named Bael slammed a tankard onto the scarred floorboards a few feet away. Ale sloshed over the rim to soak into the dirt. He leaned across his table to grab the tunic of a traveling mercenary.

"Tarnstead is gone," Bael slurred loudly enough for the entire room to hear.

Julian froze with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Julia snapped her gaze upward while her knuckles turned white against the ceramic mug.

"The royal guard fought them," the mercenary countered while shoving Bael away. "King Voranthar had the high walls and the entire coalition military."

Bael laughed a harsh, barking sound. He wiped a streak of foam from his beard. "The Vanguard paralyzed the entire military with a single weapon pulse. They dragged Voranthar out of his panic room and strung him up in the central plaza alongside King Alden."

Julian lowered his spoon back into the bowl. A drop of stew splashed against the wood. He exchanged a wide-eyed glance with Julia across the table.

"They unleashed the starving citizens on them," Bael continued while leaning closer to his audience. "The Vanguard fed the peasants some kind of alchemical paste. The mob tore both kings apart with their bare hands and trampled the remains into the cobblestones."

Julia dropped her mug. The ceramic hit the table with a loud clatter to spill ale across the wood. She stared blankly at the spreading puddle.

Julian gripped the edge of the table until his fingernails dug into the wood. His chest heaved with shallow breaths.

Aethelgard possessed the strongest military force on the continent. Voranthar had commanded absolute authority over millions of subjects and an elite royal guard.

The Vanguard had systematically dismantled that entire empire and fed the rulers to the peasants. If the vanguard army was capable of defeating Vorathar and his supporters, who were the biggest tyrant of the fourth continent, then what else could they do.

Julian gripped the weaponized crimson soul crystal hidden beneath his cloak. He stared at Julia across the sticky tavern table. Running across the continent offered zero safety from an army capable of dismantling Aethelgard and Transtead.

Julian shoved his bowl aside and stood up. They desperately needed a new strategy to survive the expanding war.