Erudite’s order had barely finished crossing Kurukshetra when the retreat began to tear what remained of the formations apart. Siddhas turned from the Asuras, some dragging wounded companions with them while others hesitated long enough to look toward Ludicrous’s body or the shattered structure where Peril’s Vel had disappeared.
"FALL BACK!" Erudite shouted from the chariot, pulling hard on the reins as the horses stamped through blood-darkened sand. His voice came rougher than before, and that alone seemed to break whatever hesitation remained among the fighters nearest him.
Herald moved with them, but his attention kept slipping toward the Knight. The crimson eyes had left the distant breach and settled on the retreating humans, following their movements without the urgency of someone worried they might actually escape.
Around Herald, the battlefield dissolved into scattered groups rather than armies. Wounded soldiers leaned against one another, Siddhas abandoned positions they had held only moments earlier, and the smell of churned sand, blood and smoke thickened whenever hurried feet disturbed another body.
The Jack of Yuddharajya appeared among his soldiers before the Asuras could fully exploit the retreat. Herald caught the man raising one hand, then the air around an entire formation warped inward until armour, bodies and weapons blurred together and vanished.
Loose sand spun briefly where they had stood. The Jack appeared much farther across Kurukshetra almost at once, gathered another group within the same distortion and removed them before the nearest Asuras could reach them.
He was not evacuating only Yuddharajya. Herald saw warriors from another kingdom disappear beside him as well, including men who could barely stand without support, and for several moments whole sections of Kurukshetra emptied wherever the Jack appeared.
The battlefield was simply too wide for him to reach everyone. Formations had been thrown apart during the fighting, wounded soldiers lay among ruins far from their units, and the retreat had begun too suddenly for anyone to gather into clean groups.
When the Jack vanished again, people were still scattered across the crimson sand. Some stared at the empty ground where their companions had disappeared, while others shouted names that received no answer over the remaining clash of weapons.
Herald looked across what remained and realised how many of the armies that had marched beside Vishishtarajya were already gone. Not everyone had been taken with them, and those left behind now looked little different from the cursed soldiers they had fought beside.
A wounded Yuddharajya soldier leaned against a broken chariot with one hand pressed beneath his armour, blood slipping between his fingers. Nearby, two Siddhas from another kingdom dragged an unconscious companion between them and kept looking back toward the places where their own formation had vanished.
"Of course," Culpa breathed beside Herald as she shifted more of Althea’s weight onto herself. The spiders around Althea’s missing arm continued wrapping silver threads over the wound, their legs moving through blood-wet cloth while Althea fought to remain upright.
Erudite saw the abandoned fighters as well, and his jaw tightened hard enough for Herald to notice even from a distance. Whatever anger might have followed had no time to settle, because Erudite immediately turned toward the scattered survivors and shouted, "Anyone still breathing comes with us! Move!"
No one questioned which kingdom the order included. The remaining Siddhas of Vishishtarajya opened enough space for the abandoned soldiers to fall among them, and within moments people who had been fighting in separate formations were retreating shoulder to shoulder.
Facade descended through the dust above them, his enormous wings driving sand outward as he angled toward Herald, Culpa and the wounded. "I’ve got you!" he called, extending one arm as he lowered himself toward them.
He never reached the ground by choice. Facade’s expression changed first, confusion flashing across his face as the rhythm of his wings broke and his body suddenly began dropping.
"No..." He beat them harder, feathers shuddering with the effort while the distance beneath him disappeared too quickly. "Fly!"
The wings folded against his back despite him fighting to keep them open. Facade struck Kurukshetra hard enough to throw sand and fragments of stone outward, and Herald raised an arm across his face as the impact travelled through the ground beneath his feet.
Facade pushed himself onto one knee almost immediately, breathing through clenched teeth while his wings twitched behind him. He forced them outward again, muscles tightening visibly beneath the feathers, only for both wings to fold back against his body before they had opened halfway. You are reading on novelping . com, the official source.
Herald searched them for damage but saw no blood, torn feathers or obvious wound that could explain what had happened. Whatever held Facade’s wings had not broken them; it was making them submit.
He turned toward the Knight and found him still approaching at the same measured pace. There was no urgency in the black-armoured figure’s movement, no attempt to run down people who had not yet shown they could escape him.
Behind Herald, Althea made a strained sound when Culpa adjusted her hold around her. Silver threads remained packed around the stump of her arm, slowing the blood running down her side while Culpa dragged her forward one careful step at a time.
Peril, however, had not followed them. He stood staring toward the ancient ruin where the Knight had thrown the Vel, his empty hand opening and closing once as though his body had not yet accepted that the spear was gone.
"Peril!" Herald crossed the distance and caught him by the shoulder, pulling hard enough to turn him away from the ruin. Peril blinked at him with an expression Herald barely recognised before awareness returned and his eyes moved toward the people already retreating.
"Move," Herald told him, keeping his grip for another moment before forcing himself forward again. Peril finally followed, his silence more unsettling than any of the jokes or complaints Herald had become used to hearing from him.
The surviving fighters abandoned anything that could not be carried. Shields, packs and broken weapons disappeared behind them while healers passed wounded people they would normally have stopped to treat, because slowing down now could trap everyone around them.
Kingdoms mattered less with each step. A Yuddharajya soldier limped near Herald with one hand buried against a wound in his stomach, while two strangers carried an unconscious Siddha between them and struggled to keep his feet from dragging through the sand.
Then a voice entered Herald’s mind with such clarity that his stride nearly broke. "...Futile," the Knight said, not loudly enough to carry across the battlefield in any ordinary way, yet every syllable reached Herald as clearly as his own thoughts.
"So many centuries..." The Knight walked past Ludicrous’s body without looking down, his pace unchanged by the retreat unfolding ahead of him. "And still, you crawl toward death."
Herald kept moving, but distance did nothing to weaken the voice. The Knight continued through the ruins while saying, "You offer prayers. You offer blood. You offer your lives."
His crimson eyes travelled over Kurukshetra as he spoke. Humans and Asuras lay among ancient weapons and shattered stone, while beyond them the southern horizon remained stained by the enormous column of dust rising from the wound in the Divine Wall.
"And still..." The Knight’s gaze returned to the fleeing survivors. "They watch."
No one answered him, and the silence between the retreating fighters made the scrape of boots and sandals through the sand seem suddenly louder. The Knight lifted Pinaka slightly and asked, "You call this Dharma?"
A pressure tightened beneath Herald’s ribs as the next words followed. "When your people perish, where are your gods?" the Knight asked, his calm voice carrying more weight than shouting would have.
The survivors kept moving, but Herald could feel the question passing through them. "When children cry beneath burning skies, where are your gods?" the Knight continued, letting another stretch of silence pass before adding, "When mothers bury their sons... where are your gods?"
Only the wind moved between the broken structures. Herald began hearing the thoughts around him again, fewer now that so much of the battlefield had emptied. Read the latest chapters at g.com.
〈Vishnu... please.〉
〈Someone answer him. Anyone.〉
No divine answer followed those thoughts. Herald heard only ragged breathing, distant fighting and the soft drag of wounded feet through sand.
The Knight disappeared from where he had been walking, and Herald’s eyes immediately searched the retreat. A few paces ahead, Raka was standing near one of the wounded soldiers when a thin crimson line appeared across his body.
His expression barely had time to change before he came apart and collapsed onto the sand. Ketu stared at what remained of him for a fraction of a heartbeat before instinct finally moved him.
Ketu raised his weapon with both hands and stumbled backward. "K-Knigh—" was all he managed before the Knight appeared close enough for one black-armoured hand to pass directly through his chest.
Metal cracked around the Knight’s wrist. Bone and flesh offered no more resistance as his hand passed through Ketu’s chest, leaving Ketu’s mouth open around whatever remained of the word.
Only a broken breath escaped him before the Knight withdrew his hand and allowed the body to fall beside Raka. Herald stopped for half a step before forcing his legs to move again, two people who had marched out with them dead almost before his mind had finished accepting the first one.
"Enough!" Erudite’s voice shook across Kurukshetra, carrying something beyond command now. He stood high on the chariot, staring at what remained of Vishishtarajya and the scattered survivors fleeing alongside them, and Herald saw helplessness on his face for the first time.
Erudite seized the reins and snapped them hard. The horses turned sharply enough to drag the chariot sideways, one wheel lifting as he forced it between two broken pillars and sent a sheet of crimson sand spraying behind him.
An Asura lunged at the horses from the side, but Erudite changed direction at the last possible instant. The creature missed the front of the chariot, and the raised wheel slammed back onto the ground across its body with a crunch that Herald heard even through the surrounding battle.
Erudite never slowed as he drove through the retreating survivors. He threaded the chariot between wounded soldiers, scattered weapons and attacking Asuras while the horses strained against the reins and the bronze-rimmed wheels struck buried debris beneath the sand.
Even Culpa looked over despite supporting Althea. A brief flicker of pride survived the exhaustion on her face as she muttered, "Best chariot rider in Vishishtarajya," before turning her attention back to keeping Althea on her feet.
Herald barely had time to watch Erudite approach before the reins snapped back again. The chariot swung sideways across the sand and stopped between the fleeing survivors and the Knight, its wheels carving deep tracks as the horses fought to hold themselves steady.
Erudite jumped down and looked once toward the people still escaping behind him. When he turned back toward the approaching Knight, whatever fear Herald had heard in his voice remained there, but it no longer stopped him from acting.
"Buy me time!" Erudite shouted as he dropped to the ground and drove both palms into Kurukshetra. A pulse of bluish light spread beneath his hands, racing outward through the blood-darkened sand as the first lines of something vast began to form.