The Umbra did not move like scavengers. They flowed from the deep shadows between the ancient trees, a tide of charcoal-grey fur and scavenged metal. Six of them. Their silence was more terrifying than a war cry. It was the silence of purpose, of a task to be performed. Lauri felt the last of his strength drain into the damp soil, his deduction about a culling now standing before him as a grim, armed reality.
— Shield wall! Form on me! — Anastasya Orlova’s command cut through the dead air, a blade of pure discipline.
Her voice was the catalyst. Dmitri Volkov, her pragmatic second, slammed the base of his heavy shield into the earth. Anastasya mirrored the motion on her other side, the interlocking plates of their Crystalline Myxoid armor forming a short, unbroken wall of cold blue light. It was a textbook Regalis formation, a small island of perfect geometry in a world of chaotic growth and decay. Lauri stumbled back behind it, his body a trembling liability. He was the gap in their logic, the flaw in their design.
The Umbra attacked. They did not charge as a unit but as individuals, a flurry of unpredictable vectors. They tested the wall of light, their crude axes scraping against the glowing crystal with a sound like grinding stone. They were probing for a weakness, a moment of hesitation. They found none. The Regalis held, their movements economical and severe, each blocked strike a statement of doctrine.
Their leader was a hulking Ailuropodine, taller than the others, his gaunt frame radiating a palpable aura of wrongness. This had to be Yegor Voronov. His right arm was not his own. It was a glistening parasite of black sludge, a forced, cancerous symbiosis with a Corrosive Myxoid that pulsed with a faint, sickening light. As he swung his own notched axe, the parasitic limb wept, flinging droplets of acid that sizzled against Anastasya’s shield. The smell of burning ozone and melting crystal filled the air. The blue light of her armor wavered where the acid hit, the corrosion spreading at a rate of one percent per second.
The stress of the fight was a physical weight, pressing down on Lauri. The world began to shrink, the sounds of battle—the clang of metal, the hiss of acid, Anastasya’s clipped commands—fading into a dull roar. The tremor in his hands, a constant companion for years, escalated into a violent, full-body shudder. His knees buckled. He fell to the damp earth, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. His stamina was gone, a mere five percent of what it should be. The withdrawal was a predator, and the combat had given it the opening it needed.
Yegor Voronov saw it. The Umbra leader’s dark, feverish eyes locked onto him. The chaotic assault on the shield wall lessened as two of the Umbra moved to keep the Regalis occupied. Yegor stepped away from the main fight, his movements fluid, predatory. He stalked around the edge of the shield wall, ignoring Dmitri to close the distance to the fallen Silvanus. He was not just a brute; he was an evangelist, and he had found a potential convert.
Lauri tried to push himself up, but his limbs refused to obey. Yegor loomed over him, a silhouette of ruin against the overcast sky. He did not raise his axe. Instead, he unhooked a skin flask from his belt. It was made of some dark, leathery hide. He held it out.
— Drink this, — Yegor’s voice was a low, wet rasp, like stones grinding in a polluted stream.
Lauri stared at the flask. He could feel the phantom weight of his own empty Nectar Flask at his belt, a hollow ache of memory. The temptation was a physical thing, a coiling in his gut.
Yegor knelt, bringing the offer closer. He uncorked the flask. The fluid inside was not black like the Tears of Ash. It was a deep, shimmering violet, thick and viscous, like a bruise on the world. It promised power. It promised an end to the shaking.
— A better symbiosis. Quick strength. No more shakes, — Yegor urged, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
The words were a key turning a lock in Lauri’s soul. No more shakes. To be still. To have a hand that did not betray him. To have the strength to stand, to fight, to not be the one who freezes while others die. It was everything he had wanted, offered to him in a skin of stitched hide. The price was clear. He had only to look at the monstrous, dripping limb Yegor called an arm. It was a pact with the blight itself. Power, at the cost of his soul.
His gaze drifted past the hulking Umbra. He saw Anastasya. Her shield was scorched and pitted, the blue light flickering, but her stance was unbroken. She parried a blow, her movement precise, disciplined. She was a wall of certainty against the chaos that threatened to swallow him. She was everything he was not. And she was holding the line.
He saw the choice. Yegor’s path was an end to the pain, a surrender to the decay he had been fighting inside himself for years. Anastasya’s path was the agony of the present, the hard reality of the fight, the unwavering discipline to face the horror and not look away. He chose her reality over Yegor’s.
— No, — the word was barely a breath, but it was solid. He pushed the offered flask away with a trembling hand.
The choice was made. The price was the continued agony of his own broken body, the rejection of relief. A flicker of something—annoyance, disappointment—crossed Yegor’s face. He had lost a convert. He raised his axe.
Anastasya had seen it all. The offer. The hesitation. The refusal. In that moment, Lauri Vatanen ceased to be merely a useful asset. He was an ally. He had faced the core temptation of their enemy and chosen integrity over solace. He had chosen pain.
— Dmitri! To the asset! — she commanded.
The shift in tactics was instantaneous. The shield wall broke. It was a desperate, illogical move by Regalis standards, sacrificing a defensible position to protect a single, compromised individual. But it was the correct move. Anastasya and Dmitri charged, not to drive the Umbra off, but to get to Lauri. Their movements were a blur of blue light and steel, a focused application of force.
Yegor was forced to pull back from the downed Silvanus, meeting Dmitri’s charge. The Umbra, who had been fighting a static wall, were now faced with two furious, advancing Regalis. Their chaotic tactics faltered against the sudden, direct assault. They were executioners, not soldiers. They were not prepared to die for a failed recruitment.
With a final, guttural snarl, Yegor disengaged, melting back toward the tree line. The rest of his warband followed, vanishing into the deep woods as silently as they had appeared.
The clearing was quiet again. The only sounds were the drip of rain from the leaves and the ragged gasps of three Ailuropodine standing over the dead.
The rain fell harder now, washing the grey dust of the dead from the broad green leaves. A single drop traced a clean path down the scorched surface of Anastasya’s shield.
