The Eve
Nova's distant valley. Above the reserve fortress, now called the decoy castle. The wind was hot, scattered ashes brushing against the walls. At the highest point on the castle, Zan stood with eyes closed. Faint red energy seeped into the hem of his black cloak. Red lines like shattered prayer fragments flickered on the back of his hand, appearing and vanishing repeatedly.
Zan raised his hand, drawing it upward toward the heavens. A thin red curtain unfurled across the sky above the decoy castle. Before it could solidify, he steadied his breath and dispersed it himself.
"Too thick..."
His low mutter hung in the air. Seven curtains over the decoy castle. Curtains that would later shift to Nova. Zan needed to gauge how far his power could hold before the real battle. Opening his eyes, he spotted Nova's fortress in the distance. For now, just a thin veil over Nova. Thicker here above the decoy.
He clenched and unclenched his fist. Lines to make the decoy look like the main stronghold. Lines to leave Nova as the final breath. He knew the answer—whether he could draw them right—lay in his own hands.
"One mistake, and that many more die..."
Rak's words rolled in his mouth again. Once, prayers from the heavens chose who burned. This time, Zan's hand would decide the order.
He raised his hand once more. Thinner this time. Longer. The red curtain draped across the sky like a breath.
Nova fortress center, treatment zone. A large inner hall partitioned into sections. Faint smells of blood and herbs lingered, but the floors, beds, and tools gleamed spotless. El moved quietly between the beds. Her clothes were neat, no bandages on her arms or body. Blood splattered quick and wiped just as fast—her hands clean, at least in this moment.
On the demon's chest atop a bed, an open scar hadn't yet closed. When El placed her hand there, a dull red light forced its way between flesh and blood. Skin knit, vessels reconnected, breath stuttered out then gasped back.
"Done. Next."
El withdrew her hand with those short words. The scar remained. The pain too. But one more breath to reach the next battlefield clung on.
In the empty space at the treatment zone's heart, El stared at her palm. Hands that had touched blood, flesh, hell's screams countless times—now washed pristine. Somewhere in her mind flickered the small circle Rak had drawn on the map. Centered on her body, ten steps wide. A plan not yet fully voiced.
One thing mattered to El now.
Until that moment comes, how long can I hold out?
She dipped her hand in the basin beside a treatment bed, shook off the droplets, and stepped back into the zone. Into the tangle of breaths from those saved, those yet to save, those beyond saving. The thought that Rak's breath might one day mix among them trailed her without end.
Before Nova's main gate, beneath the outer wall. Balrag sat leaning against the wall, thick arms drumming the ground slowly. Thud—. Pressure rippled out across the floor then faded. A demon atop the wall nearly lost balance in surprise, then steadied its feet.
"This should hold the first wave."
Balrag muttered. Scorched cracks marred his skin, faint red-metal sheen glinting through. Beneath his feet, Nova's foundation and floor were studded with his bones and metal chunks scattered here and there. The weight bearing the battlefield tilted ever so slightly toward him.
"Gart'll handle the gate."
Balrag glanced up at the gate. From the war's start to end, this ground was his to crush. Whose ankles to pin, whose weapons to drive deeper—he already knew. His body knew.
Nova fortress interior, small meeting room. Nas erased and rewrote the troop chart on the table without pause. Top line of the chart: 'Don't get wiped out, and it's victory.' Rak's words bolded in.
Decoy castle. Nova. Outer ambushes. How many battalions to burn through, how many to hold back. Nas tore off another sheet, muttering low.
"Gotta burn 'em this far..."
Erasing one line shifted dozens wholesale. Reserve battalions thrust into the decoy's first wave, companies meant to survive pushed deeper into Nova's core. Nas paused the pen, then gripped it again. Knuckles white. He knew faces unlisted here abounded, yet lines had to be drawn somewhere. The moment they were, someone's night ended.
Nova fortress interior, prayer-line archive. Black binders crammed every wall of the cramped room. Navriel knelt, several volumes splayed on the floor. Blue eyes scanned lines swiftly.
'Sanctuary reinforcement.' 'Descent focus.' 'Passage seal.'
Prayer-line patterns split three ways. Navriel quietly picked out the 'when,' 'where,' 'how much' between them.
"Sanctuary skew, descent skew, passage skew..."
She murmured low.
"Whichever it is, there's always a day the power falters..."
Conclusion checked dozens of times. So she hunted finer tremors. Today, the voices in the prayer-lines repeated the same phrases hundreds of times, yet laced with hesitation. Decoy or Nova? Her role: judge faster than a sigh, feed it to the battlefield.
Navriel closed the binders, eyes shut. Heaven sought no mistakes. She merely never missed patterns revealed without error.
Nova outskirts, training ground. Demons packed the circular dirt pit. Harsh breaths and clashing weapons mingled clumsily, scattering. At the center stood Kama. Tall, solid but lean. Thin patterns intertwined over blue-gray skin, flushing dark red as breath quickened.
Wings on his back weren't feathers but horn-hard. Same patterns etched faintly atop them.
Kama loosely gripped a black sword in one hand. But the sword was always secondary. The real force: patterns. Demonic energy spun by patterns. The battlefield heat they brewed.
He brushed the back of his hand over them. Demonic energy circled inside once. When Rak first saw it, he'd said the same. Like aura or mana, this guy's power was similar. Overbearing, black force. Too like the Heavenly Demon from his past life.
That day, Rak named it: Patian Black Patterns.
Rak taught Kama to open and close the patterns—not by instinct, but control. Kama exhaled low; patterns spread thin. Opening. Not full activation, just partial.
The training ground air shifted subtly. Not cold, not hot, yet skin prickled like burning thin. Things jolting in the demons' chests sank slowly downward. Fear. Rage. Flight impulse. Kama stole none. Patterns absorbed emotions and moments on their own. Absorbed feelings mixed into demonic energy, recirculated. Spin right, it became power. Wrong, poison.
Kama knew.
"Just opening."
His low voice.
"For now, that's it."
Someone among the demons swallowed. Fear hadn't vanished. Just pressed down, unable to burst out. Kama raised the sword. Slashed thin at empty air.
"Patian Strike."
Blade cut air; demonic energy followed. Less a slash, more drawing a 'line' in space. Where it passed, air snagged sharp. Like a hairline crack spidering an invisible wall. Demons swallowed in unison.
Rak's teaching. Not shattering in one blow, but crafting the 'start' to crumble the field.
Kama clenched and unclenched his fist. Red glow on patterns rose briefly, sank. Not to manifest host. That heard more. Where allies faltered, foes shook—near prediction. But patterns devoured emotions and energy deeper. Past a line, patterns used Kama, not vice versa. Cross it, allies swept too.
Kama lowered the sword slow.
"Again."
Demons reset stances at the short word. Fear lingered, but didn't hobble. That was the way of Patian Black Patterns.
Nova outskirts, corpse mound zone. Raphael's battlefield swept once. Now blanketed in rotting flowers and plague mist. Astamar walked it slow. Rotten petals slid underfoot, half-melted bone and flesh crumpling soft below.
She shook her wilted bouquet; faint plague mist bloomed between petals, then scattered at her finger snap.
A path opened.
"Ally passage here."
Astamar muttered.
"Plague doesn't touch feet. Spreads aside only."
She swung her hand; dark-blue mold and rotting flowers rose wave-like, laying a broad carpet toward the fortress exterior.
"Here, intruders rot slow."
Languid voice, clear. Survive to this line. Cross it, die slow. Astamar rolled Rak's words quiet.
"Don't get wiped out, victory..."
She shook the bouquet once more.
"Then I'll rot 'em short of total annihilation."
Plague mist turned direction sans wind, rippling slow toward Nova.
Decoy's curtain. Fortress wall's pressure. Treatment zone's breath-stink. Training ground's hot pants, archive's hushed whispers. Each in their place did their task.
Leaving the strategy room, Rak retraced red and black lines on the map in his mind. Nova and decoy. Gate and foundation. Red curtains and one ten-step circle. If Nova avoided annihilation, the math won the war. Else, hell ended there.
Over Nova, the long-prepared war descended slow, but certain.