Chapter 13: Hold the Line

A storm whispered across the Sanctuary, wind threading through the high towers like warnings from a watchful sky. Inside the war room, candlelight flickered over arcane maps and movement runes. Tension rippled like a drawn bowstring.

Kael, eyes shadowed by urgency, stood over the central table, his fingers tightening over a marked sector glowing red. He barely waited for Arasha to arrive before speaking.

"It's coming."

Arasha, dressed in her battered officer's coat, limped in, still recovering from her injuries but refusing rest. Her gaze flicked to him, then to the map.

"Where. When."

Kael's voice was low and heavy. "Northwest range. A rift unlike any we've seen before. It's… unstable. Like something's forcing it open from both sides. I recognize the pattern. It's the prelude to the Culling Event."

Arasha's brow furrowed, fingers brushing her father's signet ring.

"Culling… what is that?"

Kael swallowed hard, the memories not of this world—but still too vivid.

"… It was an end-stage event. A series of catastrophic rifts meant to wipe entire regions, thinning populations so certain factions could seize full control. The system doesn't just test you. It breaks everything—morale, resources, faith. It's a prophetic dream made possible by my awakened skill."

Kael, kept the fact that he knows the signs because he played this game for more than a thousand hour, so of course he knew how —the sudden change of season, the rising price of wheat, and the dwindling flu medicine and the nobles hunting ball, the sudden quiet in the miasma filled forest were all signs of the Culling event.

He needed to mitigate the loss. 

He needed to survive. 

And most of all, he needed Arasha to live.

He met her eyes.

"You've built a chance for peace and stability, Commander. A real one. But this… this could erase all of it."

A long silence followed. The candles trembled with the weight of it.

Arasha stared back at Kael, her eyes clear.

Arasha stood before her core commanders, Sir Garran and Kael, by her side. Sir Garran leaned forward grimly. Every face bore exhaustion. But hers held fire.

"We don't run. We don't break. We do not yield."

She turned to a map now riddled with markings—evacuation points, defense lines, sanctuary expansions.

"We reinforce the Sanctuary. Expand food routes. Reopen the Havenway tunnels. Move the civilians. The Awakened will form new perimeter shields. And we initiate alliance calls to the southern provinces. I don't care how bitter they are—they'll come when they see what's coming."

Sir Garran spoke hesitantly.

"Even at the risk of spreading ourselves too thin?"

Arasha didn't blink.

"If we hold back now, the Culling won't just undo our progress—it'll butcher any hope left."

She turned to Kael, her voice soft, rare gratitude threading through her resolve.

"You've given me more than just a warning. You've given me time. And time is the one thing we never had."

She stepped away from the table, her words for all to hear.

"I swore to protect this kingdom, not as a ruler, but as a daughter of its soil. A blade forged from its ruin. I will not watch it fall again."

Arasha took a moment to look into each of her knights' eyes. 

"If I must bleed, I'll bleed. If I must die, I'll die. But I will not let this light go out. Not while I draw breath."

Everyone in the Scion Order saluted Arasha and Sir Garran even bowed solemnly.

Kael's hands clenched as he knew this trial would be one of the hardest to face as of now. 

****

Kael found Arasha at the highest spire, staring at the stars. The wind pulled her hair around her shoulders, making her seem both mortal and myth.

"You're not afraid?" he asked.

She smiled faintly, gaze never leaving the horizon.

"Every day. But my fear isn't for me."

She turned to him, voice steady, full of old grief and deeper purpose.

"I do this for the people. For the Awakened who were cast aside rather than welcomed as heroes. For the children rebuilding the walls their fathers died defending. For the ones who still believe someone will choose them, even once."

She then paused,

"And most of all… for my father. For the creed he lived by. For the creed that I now carry."

Kaelen felt his throat tighten. "Must you?"

Her answer was a whisper—soft, sharp, eternal.

"Yes. And will always do so as my Father and Mother did."

She repeated the words her father once said long ago, —where the daffodils still bloomed in the backyard she once trained as a child, holding a wooden sword. 

"Protect those who cannot protect themselves. Even if it means standing alone."

Kael with his lips pursed into a line. 

And because of that creed, you will die…but how can I stop you when your creed is your raison d'être?

So he could only nod slowly.

"Then we'll stand with you. As many as you need. As long as it takes."

Kael vowed,

I'll support you no matter what. 

In the far distance, black lightning cracked the horizon—where the next great rift had begun to tear open, its shrieking light pouring into the sky.

And still, at its edge, stood the banner of the Dragon struck by three lightning spears—Arasha's banner.

Unshaken.

Unbroken.

And rising.

****

The sky split like broken glass.

Rifts tore open across the northwestern range, spilling forth twisted horrors bathed in crackling, abyssal flame. The earth groaned. Magic screamed. And the battle began.

From the Sanctuary's outer wards to the mountainous pass of Serenade Bridge, Arasha's forces met the onslaught. But this—this was not like any other incursion.

It was the most horrific and hellish clash the Scion Order had ever faced, yet.

Kael stood atop a command post, overseeing the Awakened strike teams deploying on his mark. Runes glowed across the land, marking fallback paths and beacon points.

"Move! Squad Noir, hold the flank—Squad Raven, prepare the ward anchor!"

But something was wrong. The rift in the heart of the range was growing, devouring surrounding space like a cancer. The beasts pouring out of it weren't just mutated—they were adaptive, intelligent. Forming tactics. Targeting mana sources.

Kael's gut turned to ice.

This isn't how it happened in the game...

And then it struck.

A phase aberrant—a shifting monstrosity of mirrorlight and bone—ripped through the warded ground and headed for the command node. Kael raised his hand to react, but he was a heartbeat too slow—

—until Sir Garran out of nowhere, intercepting the beast with a devastating lightward slash.

"KAEL, MOVE!"

Kael stumbled back as the beast and Sir Garran collided in a brutal impact. Blood splattered across the sigils. Sir Garran landed hard, arm broken, ribs crushed. The aberrant reeled back, stunned but alive.

Kael screamed for medics, but Sir Garran waved them away.

"Get to the rift...! Don't waste her effort...!"

Kael's fists clenched, heart pounding.

He knew what this meant.

Arasha would be doing what she always did—holding the line no one else could.

****

Arasha, bloodied and shaking, stood at the center of a crumbling canyon carved open by an aberrant with wicked talons and intelligent eyes. The Scion Order was being overrun, their formations breaking against enemies that should not exist—monsters from timelines never realized, distorted echoes of fallen heroes and corrupted kin.

And yet—she stood.

Her divine blessing—the Everlasting Luxfire, born from her father's soul-bound blade—blazed like a star behind her. Wings of light stretched over the battlefield, shielding those on the verge of death.

"Fall back! Get the wounded out now!" she roared, voice hoarse from hours of shouting, casting, bleeding.

Another wave of riftspawn surged.

Her legs buckled.

But she rose again, channeling the last threads of her divine magic into a radiant shockwave that tore through the ground like a judgment.

A path opened through the chaos—one road. One chance.

"GO!" she screamed to her knights. "Seal the rift!"

Her armor cracked. Her vision blurred. Her blessing began to flicker, strained to its very edge.

But she stood tall.

Kael watched it all from the ridge's far end—helpless, rage boiling in his chest.

"Arasha—gods, you can't—!"

He wanted to be there. To fight beside her. To protect her. But she had ordered him to lead the Awakened—to trust her.

And so he did.

Clenching his jaw, Kael turned back to his squad.

"We're ending this. Now. On my mark—shift formations and drive the anchor seal in together!"

The Awakened moved like one. Fire, light, shadow, and steel collided in a final charge.

They reached the core.

The seal struck true.

The rift howled, twisted, and—

Closed.

The battlefield had gone eerily still. Not silent—there were still the crackles of dying magic, the low moans of wounded soldiers, the rumble of shifting earth—but the storm had passed. The rift was closed.

Arasha stood at its edge, her boots half-sunk in scorched stone, her entire body trembling. Her breath came in ragged gasps, blood soaking into the fabric beneath her shattered armor. The once-glorious mantle of the Everlasting Luxfire hung in dim wisps around her, the last remnants of her divine magic burning low.

Yet her eyes—those sharp, hawk-like eyes—remained locked forward, watching.

She didn't move when the energy sealed shut.

She didn't move when the wave of force passed over her and the sigil lines stopped glowing.

Only when she heard it—

"Rift closed! The core is sealed!"

And the scattered shouts of her knights echoing from across the fractured field—

"We made it!"

"We're alive—by the gods, we're alive!"

"Commander, it's done!"

That's when her knees gave out.

Slowly, as though her soul were unraveling one thread at a time, Arasha lowered her blade to the ground. Her fingers, still wrapped around the hilt, twitched once… then stilled.

She let her eyes roam the field one last time—wounded knights being tended to, the wounded commander she had ordered back now surrounded by medics, Kael in the distance rushing toward them with fire in his eyes—and something in her finally… relented.

They're safe.

That was the last thought.

A faint, almost imperceptible smile ghosted across her lips—not one of triumph, but of quiet relief.

I held the line.

Then the light around her flickered out.

Her body slumped sideways, still upright for a breathless second as if the weight of her will kept it suspended—then fell to the earth with a muted thud.

****

The battlefield was still.

Ash drifted like snow.

Kael pushed through the rubble, finding injured Order knights huddled around the broken canyon.

"Where's the Commander?"

A trembling hand pointed forward.

Kael ran.

And there—lying at the center, unconscious, her light gone dim but her grip still tight around the hilt of her father's blade—was Arasha.

Kael dropped to his knees beside her.

He brushed hair from her face, brow furrowed with guilt and awe.

"You're more than a hero," he whispered. "You're the reason this world still has a future."

And for the first time since his transmigration, Kael wept.

Not for himself.

But for the woman who never stopped standing—even when the world tried to bury her.