Mother of Midnight

Chapter 170 – Nothing is Fair About Love and War

They marched forward in unison. Caelum and Faeruhn flanked Grunhilda in the shield wall as they advanced steadily, their steps crunching over frost-bitten earth. Each movement was deliberate, the wall a slow, implacable tide of shields and spears. The faint creak of leather and the distant thrum of tension in the air filled the gaps between breaths, each sound magnified by the silence that stretched between friend and foe.

Ahead of them, the lekine warriors moved like whispers on the wind, shifting in small groups that seemed to dissolve and reform without effort. They stayed out of range of the bows, but Caelum could see the glint of weapons catching the sunlight and the ripple of movement beneath their fur-lined cloaks. They weren’t scattered or chaotic like raiders—there was purpose in their steps, precision in their positioning. Soon enough, they would draw close enough for the Empire’s exomancers to begin their work.

Caelum couldn’t help but imagine the chaos that would unfold when they finally clashed. His grip tightened on his spear, his knuckles pale beneath his gloves. The thought of facing a foe like Tarric sent a cold shiver down his spine, and it wasn’t just the morning chill that made him feel it.

Tarric’s image was burned into his mind: the smaller of the two Serkoth brothers, his lean figure and wolfish grin a sharp contrast to Kavren’s hulking presence. Caelum was sure Tarric was an exomancer—everything about him screamed power, from the almost imperceptible hum in the air when he spoke to the predatory glint in his eyes. He didn’t carry himself like a warrior but rather like a predator who could strike when the moment was perfect, with devastating effect.

While Kavren was the obvious threat—an enormous, imposing figure whose sheer strength would crush anything in his path—Tarric was a different kind of danger. His demeanor had been friendly, even playful during the parley, but there was an edge to him, a sharpness that couldn’t be ignored. He seemed to revel in being underestimated, and that made him all the more dangerous.

Caelum’s heart hammered against his ribs as his mind raced. He knew what kind of devastation a powerful exomancer could bring. He’d seen it in training, the way their energy could tear through formations or lay waste to entire battalions if left unchecked. Tarric’s aura during the parley had been overwhelming, like standing too close to a fire while knowing it could explode at any moment.

He would have to trust their own exomancers to deal with that threat. Caelum didn’t envy them; facing someone like Tarric required skill, precision, and a level of nerve that few possessed. The lekine’s aura alone had been enough to set Caelum’s instincts screaming, but now, on the battlefield, the reality of their inevitable clash was sinking in. Tarric was out there, waiting, and Caelum had no illusions about the kind of damage he could cause.

Still, there was no turning back. Caelum reminded himself of the training he’d endured over the past two years, the countless drills designed to make the shield wall an unbreakable force. They were cogs in a greater machine, each soldier relying on the discipline and unity of the others. He and Faeruhn had stood shoulder to shoulder countless times before, and Grunhilda’s presence at his side was a steadying reminder that they were not alone.

Yet even as he tried to focus on the present, doubts crept into his mind. The lekine weren’t the scattered raiders he’d been told about—they were disciplined, strategic, and far more organized than anyone had let on. Their reputation as nomads clashed violently with the reality unfolding before his eyes. Kavren’s words during the parley still rang in his ears, a reminder that they weren’t just fighting warriors—they were fighting a people.

The shield wall advanced another step, the rhythmic march pulling him back to the moment. Caelum forced himself to focus on the feel of the spear in his hands, the weight of the shield pressed against his side. He couldn’t afford to dwell on Tarric or the implications of what they were facing. For now, all he could do was trust in his comrades, in the exomancers they had brought, and in the training that had shaped them into the Empire’s shield.

However, he would not falter. No matter the odds or the outcome, his country would not find him wanting.

Tarric did not revel in violence. He was a lover first—of people, of knowledge, of the endless mysteries of the world. He preferred teasing over taunting, banter over battle, and he would much rather be pouring over an ancient text than standing on the precipice of war. Unfortunately, life rarely aligned with his preferences. He had been trained by his mother and the greatest minds of the Clanlands from the time he could walk, shaped by the harsh realities of Nymoria and the necessity of his birthright. He had learned, and he had adapted. And now, despite his inclinations, he was very, very good at war.

Especially against armies that thought their numbers mattered.

He stood atop a rocky outcrop, surveying the enemy as Kavren’s troops moved with precision below, packs of twenty flowing across the battlefield in perfect unison. Their formations shifted like water, never giving the empire a solid front to push against. Serkoth was not known for its exomancers, not like the other clans. Their strength lay in the art of endomancy, in warriors who reinforced their own bodies beyond human limitations, in fighters who could rip through steel with their bare hands and move faster than an untrained eye could track. But aetherium— especially large-scale magic—was another matter. Even the strongest of their kin would struggle to counter it outright.

That was why they fought like this. Mobile, elusive, an uncatchable force that struck with precision and melted away before retaliation could land. But today, there would be no battle. There would be no drawn-out struggle, no heavy losses. Serkoth had never fallen, never known defeat, and Tarric would make damn sure that did not change.

He adjusted the aether gem embedded in his wristguard, a deep crimson crystal humming softly with latent energy. They were expensive, these enchanted stones, but worth every coin. Through them, Kavren maintained the delicate threads of connection with every regiment commander on the field. A thought, a whisper, and his orders would be known across the battlefield. They were the silent lifeline of Serkoth’s war machine, and today, they would ensure that not a single one of his soldiers perished.

He rolled his shoulders, letting out a slow breath. His fingers flexed, the telltale prickle of magic warming his veins. This wouldn’t take long.

“Kavren,” he said, tone light, almost amused, despite the gravity of the moment. “I need to get a little closer. Keep them off me, will you?”

His older brother side-eyed him, ever the picture of battle-worn impatience. “Are you going to leave enough for me to enjoy?”

Tarric scoffed. “Muscle-brained oaf. Yes, of course. Plus, that champion of theirs should survive. Probably.”

Kavren sighed, shaking his head, but he was already issuing the orders. “Fine. I’ll have our troops harry them a while longer. How long do you need?”

Tarric grinned. “Half a bell.”

“Fine,” Kavren grumbled, already raising his bracer to his lips. The embedded gem flickered with an internal light as he spoke, his voice carrying through the aether-linked stones worn by every commander. “Poke holes in their shield wall. Do not engage. Retreat before they can counterattack.”

The response was immediate. Even from his vantage point, Tarric could see the seamless shift in their forces. Mobile archers, fleet-footed and precise, wove through the battlefield like shadows, loosing arrows before vanishing behind the cover of their own lines. Melee fighters darted forward in coordinated bursts, striking with brutal efficiency—slashes to tendons, hammer-blows to shields, short, vicious engagements meant to destabilize the enemy’s formation before they withdrew just as quickly. The imperial army was disciplined, but they weren’t prepared for this kind of warfare.

Kavren knew what he was doing. That much was certain. So Tarric pushed everything else from his mind and turned his full focus to the task at hand.

He lifted his staff, the polished wood thrumming with latent power, and began to trace a massive enneadecagon in the air before him. Nineteen sides. Nineteen focal points. A shape meant to anchor something far larger than any ordinary spell. Lines of shimmering aether followed the path of his staff, carving glowing glyphs into the air, each mark locking into place like the cogwheels of a vast unseen mechanism.

This would not be a simple casting. It was not a matter of a few muttered words or a flick of the wrist. What he was about to unleash required precision, patience, and the kind of control that came only from years of ruthless training.

The battlefield around him faded. His brother’s orders, the distant clash of steel, the shouts of men—none of it mattered.

Tarric's magic filled the space around him, waiting, humming with restrained purpose.

Then he started to chant.

Caelum braced for impact, his spear wedged tightly between the gaps in the shield wall. The moment of collision sent a jarring tremor up his arms, threatening to rip the weapon from his grip. He gritted his teeth, dug his heels into the churned-up earth, and let his aether reinforce his stance. Without it, he would have been thrown back like a ragdoll.

The Serkoth warriors hit like a storm—sudden, brutal, and unstoppable. But then, just as quickly, they vanished.

This was no proper battle. They weren’t meeting the imperial forces head-on, weren’t forming tight phalanxes or pushing forward in disciplined ranks. Instead, they moved in small groups—no more than twenty at a time—striking with terrifying precision before peeling away. It was all fast, all calculated. They would tear through a few of his battle siblings, rip open gaps in the line, and then disappear before a counterattack could even be attempted.

The chaos set Caelum on edge. His heart pounded, and sweat dampened the collar of his armor despite the chill in the air. He hadn’t seen a single one of them die.

Injured? Certainly. He’d glimpsed more than a few of them being carried off, clutching wounds or limping back to their own lines. But dead? No. Not one.

And that was wrong.

The empire outnumbered the Serkoth at least eight to one. Even with superior tactics, even with their mobility, there should have been more casualties on their side. The rate of losses was too slow. Far too slow.

This was not a battle of attrition.

His stomach twisted as the realization took hold. They were a distraction. A diversion for something larger.

A warhorn blared from further up the line, signaling another charge. Caelum sucked in a sharp breath and readied himself.

The lekines came again, slipping like shadows between the spears. Their movements were precise, almost unnatural, their bodies weaving through the defenses with uncanny ease. He thrust his weapon forward, aiming for the chest of a warrior clad in dark leathers, but his target twisted at the last second. The spear only grazed his side, and then Caelum felt the brutal force of impact—his shield wrenched from its position, his balance ripped away from him.

He hit the ground hard, the air driven from his lungs. Before he could recover, an axe flashed above him, its edge glinting like a crescent moon descending from the sky. Instinct screamed through his bones. He rolled, twisting onto his back and wrenching his shield up just in time. The axe cracked against the reinforced metal with a deafening clang.

But no follow-up came.

By the time he gathered himself and scrambled back into the formation, the Serkoth warriors were already gone, their figures retreating into the shifting haze of battle.

Caelum's breath came in quick, uneven bursts. His arms ached. His grip on his spear felt like it was turning to iron, too tight, too stiff. He forced himself to breathe, to loosen his hold.

Then the air changed.

It was subtle at first. A faint pressure against his skin, like the shift in the atmosphere before a thunderstorm. But it grew. The weight of it pressed into his chest, coiling in his gut like something living, something vast.

Aether.

Not a trickle, not the subtle pull of a spellcaster working some small sorcery—but a flood.

A force of magic so immense it felt as if the entire battlefield had become the locus of some unseen storm. It surged past him, flowing like invisible rivers toward the enemy lines. He could feel it, the way a man might feel the hairs on his arms rise in the wake of distant lightning.

He couldn't see it, of course. He had no celestial aether, no gift of aethersight, merely enhanced vision from his own augmentations. But that hardly mattered. The evidence was all around him—the way the ground itself seemed to tremble, the way the imperial soldiers exchanged nervous glances, the way even the air itself hummed.

And then the Serkoth forces stopped fighting.

One moment they were striking, moving, harrying the imperial lines as they had since the battle began. The next, they were pulling back.

Completely.

Not in a disorganized retreat, not like soldiers breaking under pressure. No, this was different. Coordinated. Deliberate.

And Caelum knew.

His pulse pounded in his ears, each beat thudding like a drum of war. His grip tightened again, but this time it wasn’t from tension—it was from dread.

Something was coming.

Something huge.

The Serkoth warriors melted away into the distance, leaving only empty space where chaos had once reigned.

The empire’s shield wall stood firm. A thousand men, a thousand weapons, a thousand shields locked in perfect formation. Their discipline was unmatched, their training absolute.

But it wouldn’t matter.

Not now. Not against this.

A fresh gust of wind swept across the battlefield, carrying the faintest whisper of laughter—soft, lilting, teasing.

And then everything went silent.

Not the sort of silence where the distant cries of birds or the hum of insects filled the void. Not the muffled quiet of snowfall, nor the eerie stillness before a storm.

This was absolute.

Caelum felt his breath catch in his throat, but he couldn’t hear it. He shifted his stance, the weight of his armor pressing against his body, but no metal scraped against metal. He turned his head, and his joints should have creaked beneath the tension, but there was nothing.

The battlefield—the chaos, the war cries, the clash of steel—all of it had been swallowed by an unnatural void.

His heart pounded in his chest, though he couldn’t hear that either.

He turned his head. Soldiers stood around him, wide-eyed and panicked, their mouths moving in silent shouts. Officers barked orders, their expressions urgent, but no sound followed. Even the exomancers—some already in the midst of casting—had frozen, their aether dying mid-formation, their spells unraveling into nothing.

Caelum’s pulse quickened. This wasn’t natural. This wasn’t something any mortal exomancer could conjure.

His gaze darted to the enemy lines, to the lekine warriors who had so nimbly dodged their spears and harried their formations. They had stopped moving. They weren’t in a stance of preparation, weren’t preparing another charge. They simply stood, waiting.

Then he saw him.

Tarric.

The man stood apart from his kin, his stance relaxed, yet utterly commanding. The tip of his staff still traced symbols in the air, the glowing enneadecagon now completed. It pulsed once, the light shifting from deep violet to a blinding, molten white.

Caelum’s stomach twisted. His instincts screamed at him to run.

Then the silence shattered.

The sky split apart with a sound like the shattering of the firmament, a roar so deep it bypassed his ears and vibrated through his very bones. The battlefield lurched, and suddenly, the land itself rebelled against them.

The ground beneath Aegis’s forces convulsed, bursting open with a deafening crack. Not dirt, not stone, but a flood, a wave of impossible force surged forth as though the ocean itself had been waiting beneath their feet. It rose, massive and unrelenting, not sluggish like normal water but something alive. It came in a crashing tide, sweeping through the ranks with brutal precision. Armor crumpled like paper under its weight. Men were yanked from the earth as if they had never belonged to it, pulled under in an instant, limbs flailing before they vanished beneath the churning abyss.

Caelum braced, driving his spear into the trembling ground, barely managing to hold his footing. The tide hadn’t even touched him, but the wind that followed nearly took him off his feet. Not a breeze. Not a gale. A tempest.

The very air screamed.

The storm roared down in an unforgiving spiral, a howling force that stole the breath from his lungs. Lightning lanced through the sky, not striking at random, not obeying the whims of nature—it chose its targets. Soldiers beside him jerked, their armor glowing white-hot for an instant before they disintegrated, the sheer force of the strikes reducing them to nothing but charred remnants.

And then the earth itself fought back.

The already broken ground erupted in jagged spikes of stone, rising without warning, piercing through bodies and armor alike. Pits yawned open like the maw of some starving beast, swallowing men whole, their screams cut off as the ground closed over them again, leaving no trace that they had ever stood there.

The sky cracked.

Not with thunder, but with something other. The clouds above did not merely shift—they tore. Aether rushed through in violent torrents, celestial fractures bleeding a light too pure, too blinding to belong to this world. The glow spread, searing through the battlefield. Caelum barely had time to react before he saw soldiers around him begin to flicker, their outlines shimmering as their own aether turned against them. They didn’t burn, didn’t melt—they simply dissolved, their bodies breaking apart into radiant mist, erased from existence by the sheer weight of the celestial energy.

And then came the dawn.

Golden light flooded the battlefield, rushing forward in an all-consuming wave. It was beautiful in a way that made his stomach churn, its brilliance so overwhelming it seemed to stretch beyond mortal comprehension. It did not burn like fire. It did not crush like the waves or tear like the wind. It simply swept everything away.

The ranks of Aegis were no longer being slaughtered—they were being undone.

Armor. Weapons. Bodies. Even the blood staining the battlefield. Gone.

And where the dawn passed, the dusk followed.

A creeping tide of shadow slithered across the land, swallowing whatever the light had left behind. It did not rage like the storm, did not roar like the tide. It was quiet, insidious. It stretched across the battlefield like a living void, consuming everything in its path. Caelum saw a soldier stumble ahead of him, saw the fear in his eyes as he turned to run. The darkness caught him, brushed against his ankle.

He was simply… no longer there.

Caelum dropped to his knees.

His spear slipped from his fingers.

The shield wall was gone. The battlefield was gone.

Half of Aegis’s forces had simply ceased to exist.

The wind howled one last time before settling into an eerie stillness. Across the battlefield, the forces of Serkoth remained standing, untouched, unmoved. Their ranks were whole, their warriors calm. Not a single one had fallen.

And at the center of it all, lowering his staff, stood Tarric.

He had not taken a single step forward.

Caelum’s breath came in shuddering gasps.

This was not a battle.

This was not a war.

This was annihilation.