An Asura lunged through the smoke before Herald could keep searching for the owner of the thought. He shifted the Yama Danda across his body and struck the creature across the face, the carved skull cracking against bone hard enough to send a dull vibration through both hands.
Nearby, Culpa’s rings clicked together as she brought her hands into Suchi Mudra. Both index fingers extended toward Peril just as another cluster of Asuras closed around him, their feet churning the blood-darkened sand.
A sharp kinetic charge struck Peril between the shoulders, and his next step exploded forward. Sand sprayed from beneath his boots as the Vel punched through an Asura’s chest before its claws had fully risen.
Peril tore the weapon free and turned toward Culpa with blood streaking one cheek. "Again!" he shouted, already searching for another opening while she redirected her hands toward him.
Another charge struck him, and Peril shot forward into the next cluster of Asuras, loose sand bursting behind his feet. Culpa’s hands were already moving elsewhere as another creature broke through the line.
Her next charge struck the approaching Asura instead. Its momentum collapsed mid-stride, its next step landing heavy enough to bury one foot deep in the sand while its claws arrived just late enough for a nearby Siddha to slip beneath them and bury a blade beneath its ribs.
Peril ripped his spear free from another body and called for Culpa again. She answered almost immediately, sending another burst of force into him while the displaced air kicked warm grit against Herald’s legs.
Herald watched the exchange long enough for the rhythm between them to become obvious. Culpa did not need to tell Peril where she was sending him, and Peril did not need to look back to know when her ability would reach him.
They had fought together enough times that the coordination had become instinct. Even amid screams, smoke and the copper stink of blood, there was something almost effortless about the way one created openings and the other filled them.
The sight almost pulled a smile from Herald. Then his attention drifted toward the distant dune, and whatever amusement had survived the battle disappeared.
The white horse remained where he had first seen it. Its pale mane snapped in the wind against the brown sky, but the figure that had been sitting upon it was gone.
Several Asuras remained near the horse, and their behaviour bothered Herald more than the empty saddle. They had lowered their heads, weapons hanging loosely at their sides while the battle continued below.
They were not retreating. Their posture looked closer to reverence, as though whatever had occupied that saddle still commanded the space around it.
A cold pressure settled beneath Herald’s ribs as he searched the ridge for black armour or the black-purple haze that had distorted the air around the Knight. The moving dunes offered nothing except the horse, the bowed creatures and sheets of sand sliding around their feet.
"Peril," Herald called without taking his eyes from the ridge. Peril tore the Vel free from another body and glanced toward him, his breathing heavier now but his grip still steady.
"What?" Peril asked while Herald searched the dune again. "The Knight’s gone," Herald said, shifting his gaze across the higher ground for movement that did not belong to the wind.
Peril followed his stare toward the white horse. The animal was plainly there, but whatever Herald had seen sitting upon it remained invisible to him, and his confusion deepened as he searched the empty saddle. Follow the newest chapters on novelping(.)com.
Before Herald could explain further, Peril’s attention snapped elsewhere. "Ludicrous! Behind you!" he shouted, and Ludicrous spun immediately as wind burst around him.
Sand rose in a tight wall around his legs, robes cracking against the force of the gust. Nothing stood behind him when the dust cleared, only loose sand flowing down the slope.
Herald’s pulse kicked harder against his throat. Whatever had made Peril shout, the Knight still remained invisible to him, and Herald searched the battlefield again.
He stopped looking toward the abandoned horse and swept his gaze across Kurukshetra itself. Chariots crossed broken formations, Asuras collided with Siddhas, and ancient weapons appeared and vanished beneath the shifting sand.
Then he found the black-purple haze hanging in the centre of Kurukshetra where the fighting should have been thickest. The Knight stood inside it as though he had always been there.
No one had seen him arrive. Humans and Asuras fought only paces away, yet their movements bent subtly around the space he occupied, neither side seeming aware that they were avoiding him.
The Knight ignored them all. Black armour covered him from head to foot while the haze around his body warped the battlefield behind him, distorting smoke and distant figures whenever it moved.
His crimson eyes turned south, and Pinaka rose in one hand. The enormous bow cut a dark curve against the pale sky, unlike anything carried by the archers scattered across Kurukshetra.
Herald’s mouth dried as he watched the Knight draw. Steel still struck steel around him, people screamed, chariot wheels ground through sand, yet the faint strain of Pinaka’s string seemed to reach him through everything else.
The Knight released, and the sharp twang disappeared into the battle almost immediately. A single arrow climbed into the sky, small against the open light until its shape began to divide.
One became ten, ten became hundreds, and hundreds multiplied again until thousands of arrows spread across the sky. None descended toward either army; the entire swarm turned south and vanished over Kurukshetra with a scream of displaced air, lifting enough sand in its wake to sting Herald’s face.
He stared after them while the battle continued around him. There was nothing close enough to justify that many arrows, and the Knight had fired without so much as turning toward the Asuras surrounding him.
The horizon flashed before Herald could make sense of it, white light spreading across the distant sky and flattening dunes and ruins into dark silhouettes for a fraction of a second. Several soldiers nearby turned toward it, confused, while the battle stumbled through the few heartbeats it took the sound to reach them.
Kurukshetra lurched beneath Herald’s feet when the impact arrived. The force travelled through the soles of his sandals and into his knees, while a roar rolled across the plain so deep that he felt it inside his ribs before his ears properly caught the sound.
Loose sand jumped from the ground in rippling sheets. Ancient bones trembled where they protruded from the dunes, and one of the colossal half-buried chariot wheels gave a grinding crack as a fracture opened along its weathered rim. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Another detonation followed before the first had fully faded. A second pulse rolled beneath the battlefield, then a third, until the separate impacts merged into one continuous thunder somewhere beyond the horizon.
The fighting began to falter as the noise travelled across Kurukshetra. Weapons remained raised, but soldiers and Asuras alike turned south while the pressure of the distant impacts continued beneath their feet.
A column of dust began climbing above the horizon. Herald first mistook it for another sandstorm, but the cloud rose too vertically and carried darker fragments inside it.
The darker material was stone, a colossal amount of it. Fragments of something built to endure generations were still climbing into the sky while the distant rumbling refused to stop.
High above the battlefield, Facade changed direction. His enormous golden-brown wings drove him sharply upward through smoke and disturbed air, carrying him beyond the winged Asuras still circling overhead.
Herald raised one hand against the glare and watched him climb. Facade rose until he was little more than a dark shape against the bright sky, then his ascent stopped so abruptly that Herald noticed even from the ground.
His wings remained spread against the wind while he stared south, and the posture alone was wrong for someone Herald had only ever seen composed. When his voice tore down across Kurukshetra, Herald barely recognized the urgency in it.
"THE WALL!" Faces lifted throughout the battlefield as confusion spread through ranks that had already begun losing their rhythm.
Facade kept staring beyond the horizon, and when he shouted again, the calm Herald associated with him had vanished completely. "They breached the Wall!"
For several breaths, Herald understood the words without understanding what they meant. His eyes returned to the enormous column rising in the distance, and only then did the darker material inside the cloud make sense.
Stone fragments were still climbing through the dust while the distant rumbling continued. Somewhere beyond Herald’s sight, the Divine Wall had been torn open badly enough for Facade to see the breach from Kurukshetra.
A path now existed straight through the barrier humanity had trusted for generations. Herald could not even see the Wall from where he stood, yet the Knight had reached it from here.
He slowly turned back toward the centre of the battlefield while the distant collapse still vibrated beneath his feet. The Knight remained exactly where he had been, surrounded by fighting that continued to bend around him without touching him.
Pinaka rested at his side as though nothing extraordinary had happened. Behind him, the black-purple haze moved lazily through the wind while stone dust continued climbing over the southern horizon.
Herald looked from the bow to the destruction in the distance. One arrow had done all of it.