The main forces had pulled back and Frostvele had been left in the hands of Leo.

It was not an assignment anyone took lightly and Leo had not taken it lightly either.

He had settled into the position with the steady and practical focus that defined most of what he did and had spent the days since going over defensive arrangements, patrol rotations, and supply lines until he knew the layout of Frostvele’s defenses the way most people knew the inside of their own homes.

Wales was with him and that helped. The man had put together a monster garrison that was genuinely impressive in both scale and coordination, constructed units working in layered formations across the outer perimeter and key chokepoints throughout the town. It was not a small operation and Wales had not treated it like one.

The two of them had fallen into a working rhythm without much discussion about it. Leo handled the knight formations and direct combat deployment while Wales managed the garrison units and coordinated the constructed forces with the efficiency of someone who thought in systems rather than individuals.

It had been quiet for long enough that quiet started to feel normal.

Then the sensors along the eastern perimeter went off all at once.

The sound cut through the command post like cold water and Leo was on his feet before the echo of it finished, his hand already on the hilt at his side as he moved toward the nearest window. What he saw through it made his jaw tighten.

Monsters.

Not a scouting group and not a minor incursion. A genuine wave of them pushing in from the treeline with the kind of density and momentum that meant something had driven them out of wherever they had been and sent them moving in one direction together.

"All units, defensive formation!" Leo’s voice went out sharp and immediate across the command channel and he was already moving toward the outer wall before the order finished leaving his mouth.

Wales turned from his own display and his eyes swept the incoming numbers with a rapid and calculating look.

"Garrison units to sectors two, four, and six. Hold the flanks and do not let them compress the line," he said, his voice even and clipped as his hands moved across the control interface and pushed the constructed forces into position.

The chaos hit almost immediately after that.

The first wave of monsters crashed into the outer defensive line with a force that shook the ground and the Blank forces pushed back hard.

Knights held the front with shields locked and weapons active while the garrison units struck from elevated positions and the flanks, pouring coordinated pressure into the mass of creatures trying to push through. It was loud and it was brutal and it was not clean in any sense of the word. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

Monsters broke through in spots and had to be driven back manually. A section of the eastern wall took heavy damage in the first three minutes and Wales redirected two garrison units to reinforce it before it collapsed entirely.

Leo moved through the middle of it with a focus that did not waver regardless of what was happening around him. He called adjustments as the situation shifted, pulled knights from stable sections to reinforce breaking ones and kept the overall shape of the defense from coming apart even as individual pieces of it bent under the pressure.

"North flank is holding," someone reported through the channel.

"East wall needs more support, we are losing ground on the lower section," another voice came back.

"Garrison units are moving," Wales confirmed without looking up.

For a stretch of time that felt considerably longer than it actually was, the defense held its shape. The monsters were numerous but the coordination between Leo’s forces and Wales’ garrison kept them from finding a clean break in the line.

Then something changed in the air.

It was not a sound exactly and it was not a visible change in the battlefield but both Leo and Wales felt it at almost the same moment.

A pressure that had not been there before settled over the area like a weight being placed on top of everything else.

The monsters at the front of the wave shifted their behavior, pulling back slightly and opening space in a way that felt less like retreat and more like something making room.

Then it appeared.

The creature that came through the treeline was not like the ones that had preceded it.

The scale of it alone was massive compared to everything else on the field.

It moved with a weight and a presence that sent a visible ripple of reaction through both the defending forces and the monsters around it.

The knights closest to it pulled back instinctively before they had consciously decided to and the garrison units registered it as a threat class that pushed several of them into defensive posture automatically.

Leo’s expression went very still as he looked at it.

"Send the signal," he said quietly.

Wales was already doing it. His hand hit the emergency signal without waiting for the order to be repeated and the transmission went out immediately.

The creature moved.

It rose upward and the sheer size of the wings that spread from its body as it lifted off cast a shadow over Frostveil that swallowed the light like a curtain being drawn.

The wingspan stretched across the width of the town and the downforce from a single beat of those wings hit the outer formations like a physical blow, staggering knights and sending loose debris skidding across the ground in all directions.

It climbed higher and then began to descend, angling downward with its full weight and momentum aimed directly at Frostveil below.

The shadow grew darker and the air pressure built as it came down and the ground itself seemed to brace against what was coming.

Leo raised his fist and began pushing his aura to its limit even knowing it was not going to be enough on its own and Wales threw every garrison unit into an intercept formation out of pure instinct even knowing the same thing.

Then a voice came through clearly from somewhere above them, calm and unhurried and carrying across the entire battlefield without effort.

"Don’t worry. I am here."