Chapter 249: Chapter 249: What Falls
Chapter 249: What Falls
The brutal sound of shattering iron and breaking bone echoed across the killing ground.
CRACK.
The Cult Elder wrenched the spiked dark-iron mace backward.
Lord Commander Gunther Stillbane did not fall.
He had taken a lethal strike directly to the center of his spine. His nervous system severed instantly. The heavy earth mage should have collapsed into the frozen mud.
But his boots were locked to the stone. [The Concrete Tomb] was still active. The ground recognized his authority and physically refused to let him drop. The earth held him upright like a gruesome, armored statue.
Gunther coughed a thick spray of dark blood.
He was starving. He was paralyzed. He had exactly one conscious action left before the shock rendered him comatose.
He ignored the Cult Elder standing behind him. He looked at the screaming, regenerating anomaly thirty yards away.
Gunther raised a trembling, iron-clad hand.
The bedrock beneath the anomaly violently split open. Massive jaws of jagged stone snapped shut around the monster’s pale, root-covered legs. The earth ground inward, crushing the anomaly’s lower half and locking it permanently into the mud.
Gunther’s golden eyes rolled back in his head. The Lord Commander finally went limp, held up only by the jagged pillars of stone gripping his boots.
Ten yards away, Bram Stonehelm was on one knee.
His collarbone was snapped. His shoulder was ruptured. His heavy Vanguard armor was slick with his own blood.
He watched the Lord Commander slump forward.
Bram forced himself to stand. The pain was a blinding white flash behind his eyes. He ignored it. He ignored the Cult Elder advancing on the gate.
He stumbled across the ice. He grabbed the thick iron collar of Gunther’s breastplate with his one good arm. Gunther in full armor was a dead weight, and Bram had one working arm and a collarbone in pieces. He dug his boots into the dirt and pulled.
Every single step was agonizing. The muscles in Bram’s back tore under the immense strain. He dragged the paralyzed Lord Commander backward, inch by inch, pulling him toward the open Vanguard gates.
On the high wall, Aegon Logcheville watched the board collapse.
The Cult vanguard was recovering from the lightning strike. The uninjured Elder was advancing unopposed. Gunther was down. The anomaly was trapped but still regenerating its chest wound.
Aegon had to make the call.
"Fall back!" Aegon roared over the wind. "Abandon the bottleneck! Get behind the gate!"
It was his worst order. He was giving up the killing ground they had spent eight days building. He was ceding the terrain advantage.
Reina had warned him about this exact scenario in the war room. She had been right, and neither of them said a word about it as they scrambled off the outer barricades.
The Vanguard garrison moved to cover the withdrawal.
Three hundred and twelve starving, wounded men locked their shields. They formed a desperate wall of iron, taking the brunt of the Cult infantry charge so Bram could drag the Lord Commander inside.
Bram finally hauled Gunther over the threshold.
"Close it!" Aegon shouted from the inner courtyard.
The heavy iron doors groaned. They had been warped by the Cult Elder’s initial mace strike. The massive runic hinges on the inside of the wall shrieked and jammed. The gates would not shut.
Vinicius saw the jammed gear.
The young, scarred Vanguard officer did not hesitate. He unbuckled his heavy sword belt and dropped it on the cobblestones.
He slipped through the narrow gap in the iron doors. He stepped out into the mud of the killing ground.
Vinicius grabbed the external manual release wheel. He braced his boots in the dirt and hauled the heavy iron mechanism with all his strength.
CLANG.
The warped gears forced themselves into alignment. The massive iron doors slammed shut. The heavy locking bar dropped into place on the inside, securing the city.
Vinicius stood alone on the wrong side of the wall.
He drew a short iron trench knife. He did not look back at the gate he had just sealed. He looked forward at the thousands of screaming Cultists rushing toward him.
He died in the freezing mud ten seconds later.
The Bastion Six command post was chaotic.
Vanguard medics yelled frantic orders. They laid Gunther Stillbane face-down on a heavy wooden table. They cut away his dented backplate, revealing the deep, catastrophic crater in his spine.
Bram Stonehelm sat heavily against the far wall. He was bleeding profusely through his white bandages. A medic tried to approach him, but Bram waved the man off, pointing a thick finger toward the table.
There was no top-tier healer in the city. Seraphina Vance was four hundred miles away in Bastion Seven.
Aegon held the silver communication crystal.
"His spine is shattered, Draven," Aegon reported, his voice shaking. "He is unresponsive."
Four hundred miles south, Draven listened to the frantic voices.
He possessed [Cellular Suture]. He knew exactly how to weave severed nerves back together. He had the power to fix the Lord Commander. But he was trapped behind a famine wall, managing a city that would starve to death if he left.
"Put the senior field surgeon on the crystal," Draven ordered.
A sweating Vanguard medic grabbed the silver stone. "I am here."
"Listen to me," Draven instructed with cold, clinical precision. "Take a runic scalpel. Locate the L4 vertebra. Do not look at the bone. Look at the fractured mana channels running through the marrow. You have to weave them together before you close the tissue."
The surgeon held a glowing runic needle over Gunther’s ruined back.
He squinted. He pushed his healing mana into the wound.
"I cannot see the channels," the surgeon whispered in panic. "There is too much physical damage. I am just hitting dead bone. I cannot see what you are describing."
Draven went silent.
He realized the brutal truth. He could describe the exact biological architecture. He could explain the microscopic weave.
But he could not give the surgeon the [Microscopic Perception] required to actually see the threads. It was the exact same impossible wall Cole had hit at the forge. You cannot teach a sense.
"Close the wound," Draven ordered softly. "Stop the bleeding. Keep him breathing."
The surgeon frantically packed the wound with sterile gauze.
Gunther Stillbane would live. But his legs were dead. The horrifying nightmare from the central plaza had returned. The Lord Commander was paralyzed, trapped in a broken body while his city fought a war without him.
Being Level 200 does not make them invincible. Helion Goldmane was an exception. Level 200 was just a milestone. In front of true power, it was just useless.
---
Night fell over Bastion Six.
Aegon stood on the southern wall. The freezing wind bit at his face.
He looked down at the killing ground. The Cult infantry had pulled back, setting up a dark, sprawling camp just beyond bow range.
But the anomaly had not moved.
It was still locked inside Gunther’s stone jaws. It had stopped trying to break free. Instead, the pale, weeping man at the center of the mass had gone completely still.
Thick, white roots began to burrow out of the monster’s flesh. They drove straight down into the bedrock. They bypassed the stone and sank deep into the mud.
The ground around the anomaly began to change.
The frozen brown dirt turned a sickly, pulsing ash-white. The corruption was spreading through the soil like a web of diseased veins. The pale rot crept forward, moving steadily toward the deep stone foundations of Bastion Six.
It was no longer a siege.
The anomaly was not trying to break the walls down. It was growing into them. It was an infection, and it was going to digest the city from the ground up.
Aegon lowered his field glass.
He felt a crushing, suffocating weight settle over his chest. He had lost the high ground. He had lost the killing bottleneck. He had lost the Lord Commander. His heaviest defender was bleeding out in a barracks corner.
Aegon raised the silver crystal.
He opened the blue channel. He did not offer a confident tactical assessment. He did not try to prove his worth to his mother’s legacy.
He was seventeen, and he was terrified.
"Draven," Aegon asked quietly into the stone. "Tell me what to do."
Draven sat in the dark war room in Bastion Seven. He stared at the blue projection map showing the massive corruption bloom eating the southern foundations.
"I do not know, Aegon," Draven answered.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter