The teleportation device deposited him onto a platform at the citadel’s edge.

Damon stepped off and stopped.

The post station was empty.

Not abandoned in the way of a place that had never been occupied, abandoned in the way of a place that had been occupied recently and vacated deliberately.

An overturned cup near the station wall, still wet inside. Boot prints in the dust leading away from the platform toward the castle interior. The particular quality of silence that came after people had been somewhere and chosen to leave rather than the silence of somewhere nobody had ever been.

He stood still and let his eyes move across the surrounding area.

No guards. No patrol. No reaction to the teleportation device activating.

They’d known he was coming, and they deliberately allowed him to.

The device activated behind him before he’d finished the thought. Ivy stepped off first, her hand already moving with flames at her side, her eyes reading the empty area in the same two seconds he had.

Ning Xiaoyu stepped from behind her, sword already drawn, moving immediately to cover the left approach without being told.

Nyla stepped to the right, hammer raised high, her golden eyes moving fast across the space.

Eve stayed a step behind, revolver in hand, her expression carrying the quiet alertness of someone who had already decided something was wrong.

They grouped around him instinctively.

"Where is everyone?" Nyla asked.

"Gone," Damon said.

"They knew we were coming," Ivy said, in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t a question.

Damon didn’t respond, he simply continued scanning the surroundings with a thoughtful frown on his face.

They waited as the rest of the force came through in groups, the device cycling through its activations with the mechanical patience it had always shown.

Theodore arrived with his cluster and took one look at the empty station with the expression of someone who had been promised a fight and wasn’t happy about the delay.

Moments later, the remaining people assembled around them, surrounding the ground in less than five minutes, each person looking around the empty post with the same look.

"Theories?" Ivy asked quietly, standing beside Damon while the last of the group came through.

"They pulled everyone inside," Damon said. "They must’ve known we were coming and chose to face us only with the debuff."

"The castle," Ivy said.

Damon nodded. "We’ll be walking into an ambush."

She was quiet for a moment, running the same calculations he’d already run. They would be on enemy grounds, territory they know better than them, being outnumbered 10 to 1 and dealing with the citadel’s debuff.

The fact that they were still planning to go ahead with their plan sounded ridiculous.

They moved through the citadel in formation, Damon at the front, the group spreading behind him in the organised clusters Ivy had established before sunrise.

The citadel itself was quieter than anything he’d expected.

Not just the post station, the entire outer grounds were empty.

Training areas abandoned mid-session, equipment left where it had been dropped or set down. A meal preparation area with food still in various stages of being prepared, fires burned low but not yet out. The particular stillness of a place where everyone had received the same instruction at the same moment and followed it without question.

Whoever led this citadel seemed to command complete obedience.

The debuff hit them as they crossed the castle’s threshold. The familiar pressure of unregistered visitors entering a registered space settled across Damon’s shoulders like additional weight, his stats dropping to levels they hadn’t been at in a while.

Around him, he could see the same effect landing across his group. Their postures adjusting, breathing changing slightly, the hundred fighters absorbing the disadvantage with varying degrees of visible reaction.

"Push through it," Ivy said quietly, projecting just far enough to carry through the group without carrying further. "You’ll get used to it."

There was no way the effects would get weaker with time, but it was a lie the group needed to hear.

They moved through the castle’s entrance corridor, which was still empty. Just like the desolate inner courtyard that followed after.

Damon kept his expression steady and his pace controlled, reading everything around him as they passed. There were no enemies in sight, no sounds from above or below, just the particular hollow quality of a large structure with all its people concentrated in one place.

He stopped the group twenty meters back with a raised fist, the formation compressing behind him in practised silence.

He looked at the doors in front of him. They were large, ornate in the way of a citadel that had put effort into its common spaces, currently closed in a way that doors in active use never were.

Beside him, everyone looked ahead with the same look in their eyes, reaching the exact same conclusion as him.

The ambush was about to unfold.

A grin flashed across Theodore’s face as he watched Damon take a deliberate step toward the doors.

Whatever was behind them had been waiting for them from the second they took a step onto the teleportation device.

Damon paused for a moment, tightening the grip on his sword before pushing the doors open.

The grand hall was filled with fighters.

They spread from one wall to the other, every available space occupied, faces turned toward the entrance with the eager collective focus of people who had been told something was coming and waited long enough to want it to arrive.

At the far end of the hall, standing before the throne with his arms crossed and his eyes already on Damon, was a figure he hadn’t seen before.

He was a tall, middle-aged man with broad shoulders and a bald head. Scars ran across every visible inch of his skin, suggesting he had been through more than just a little.

Damon didn’t need an introduction to know immediately who the man was.

The leader of the enemy citadel.