Chapter 77: The First Charge
"Forward, House Bluemoon!"
Lady Luna’s voice echoed like a winter gale across the cold stone parapets of Blackstone Ravine.
CLANG!
High atop the inner fortress wall, heavy iron chains rattled frantically in their rusted iron winches as the secondary fortress gates swung wide open. From the brilliantly lit inner courtyard poured a tide of silver and frost-blue steel—one hundred fifty heavy cavalry riding in tight, overlapping wedges, flanked by one hundred fifty armored infantry marching in locked, disciplined ranks.
Atop the high walls behind them, Knight Commanders Justin and Gerald remained with the rest of the garrison, holding the towers and preparing for the next phase of the plan.
War horns sounded in sharp, rhythmic blasts, their deep blares bouncing off the sheer canyon walls. The thundering clatter of iron-shod hooves, the metallic rustle of banners, and the unified roar of hundreds of men locking their shields shattered the eerie silence of the night.
The thick, damp fog hanging over the mountain pass didn’t just drift—it was ripped apart by the sheer kinetic force of two armies colliding within the narrow choke point.
Before Count Thorn’s disarrayed vanguard could recover from the sheer horror of Ethan and Rune’s bloody threshold stand, the Bluemoon cavalry hit them like an unstoppable iron battering ram.
BOOM!
"House Bluemoon!"
The soldiers’ war cry echoed through the mountain range, carrying a fierce mix of desperation and soaring hope. The troops—who had learned of the impending war just days prior and faced an inevitable clash with House Thorn—had been terrified, but they had not broken. Their morale, ignited by the mysterious youth who fought at the absolute front and devastated Thorn’s vanguard, had hardened their resolve into iron.
The front ranks didn’t merely clash; they completely dissolved under the impact. The raw, momentum-fueled weight of armored warhorses traveling at full gallop threw enemy soldiers upward into the mist, snapping spear shafts like dry twigs and crumpling heavy iron chest plates into twisted metal.
Crimson sprayed everywhere as steel pierced through armor, carried forward by the wild momentum Ethan had created.
War was not clean. It was cruel, ugly, and demanded every drop of strength and will from men fighting for their beliefs, fully aware that their lives were on the line.
A Bluemoon Great Knight surged forward with a roaring battle cry, his broadsword swinging downward with brutal power. The blade sheared clean through an enemy spearman’s shoulder armor, carving deep into the man’s ribcage. But before the knight could pull the heavy steel blade free, a panicked Thorn infantryman thrust a heavy hunting pike upward from the mud, catching the knight in the inner thigh and wrenching him backward out of his saddle.
The knight crashed onto the cobblestones with a deafening metallic clatter, instantly engulfed by the frantic stomping of boots. He forced himself up through gut-wrenching pain, snatched up his weapon, and charged back into the fray. He cleaved through the nearest infantry, killing two disoriented enemy soldiers, before swinging his broadsword toward an elite Thorn Great Knight.
The Thorn knight blocked the strike, deflecting the heavy blade sideways. Before the Bluemoon knight could recover his guard, the Thorn knight thrust his sword straight through the Bluemoon knight’s left shoulder, drawing a thick spray of blood.
"Ngh—!"
His teeth clenched as pain shot through his entire body.
Yet the Bluemoon knight didn’t back down. Gritting his teeth through the blinding agony, he reached out with his left hand, gripping the enemy blade lodged in his own shoulder to trap it in place. With his right hand, he snapped a heavy dagger from his shoulder sheath and drove it violently through the Thorn knight’s visor.
Ripping the enemy blade out of his shoulder, he gasped for air—only for another Thorn soldier to thrust a spear clean through his stomach from behind.
"Ahh—!"
The knight’s body jerked violently.
The Bluemoon knight slowly turned, his eyes bloodshot as he looked down at his bleeding abdomen. With a final, wild surge of adrenaline, he shot his gauntleted hand forward, gripped the Thorn soldier’s neck, and twisted with brutal force, snapping it instantly before falling to the stone.
Ten paces away, a young Bluemoon soldier stood shaking, his knuckles white around the wooden shaft of his spear. He froze in sheer terror as a massive Thorn captain—covered in blood and wild-eyed—charged directly at him with a heavy battleaxe raised high. Panic paralyzed the youth’s legs.
"E-Ehh...?"
The world seemed to slow down as he stared into the captain’s murderous eyes.
Just before the axe could descend, a veteran Bluemoon Great Knight stepped into the gap, slamming an iron heater shield violently into the captain’s jaw.
CRACK!
"Gah!" The captain’s head snapped sideways, blood spraying from his split lip as he staggered.
The force knocked the captain sideways, spraying blood onto the stone wall. "Keep your guard up, boy!" the veteran barked, shoving the terrified youth back into rank with his shoulder. "Keep your shield high and push! Don’t look at the ground! Look at the enemy!"
A few rows back into the chaos, another Thorn captain watched his squad leader get trampled into the dirt beneath a heavy warhorse. The confidence on his face vanished, replaced by hollow, wide-eyed panic. "They... they were waiting for us! It was a trap all alon—"
Before he could finish his sentence, an iron spearhead pierced his throat, cutting off his frantic warnings mid-gasp.
At the absolute spearhead of the cavalry charge, Lady Luna moved like a winter tempest given physical form.
Riding atop her snow-white warhorse, her frost-blue aura exploded outward in continuous, pulsing waves that chilled the damp night air down to freezing temperatures. Whenever the enemy tried to reform their broken shield lines or set up wooden pike barricades across the narrow pass, Luna swept her spear forward in sharp, elegant arcs.
CRACKLE!
A wave of concentrated frost rippled across the blood-slick cobblestones, instantly freezing the boots, leather gaiters, and shield bases of the enemy vanguard directly to the stone floor. Before the trapped soldiers could break the brittle, sparkling ice, the heavy cavalry behind Luna trampled through the immobile line, shattering shields and bones in equal measure.
Her presence on the very front line acted as a roaring beacon for House Bluemoon. Seeing their young Matriarch fighting at the absolute front, unharmed and radiating terrifying power, sent a wild, fierce surge of adrenaline through the ranks. She drove her spear through enemy armor with surgical efficiency, striking down Great Knights with fluid speed while deflecting blows that threatened her formation.
Beside her, Commander Valen roared tactical orders, his booming voice carrying over the ringing steel and screaming men. "Keep the flanks tight! Do not let them wrap around the bottleneck! Maintain the double wedge and keep pushing!" He thrust his spear with bone-shattering force, sending the iron tip through the heavy chest plates of two enemy infantrymen at once.
Behind the cavalry, at the head of the infantry line, Teresa anchored the foot soldiers’ advance with the steady, grinding discipline of a veteran. Her spear found gaps between enemy shields with mechanical precision, each thrust ending a life without wasting an ounce of her stamina.
"Hold the line! Don’t let them scatter us!" Teresa shouted, her voice carrying the same icy calm that had earned her reputation among Bluewind’s garrison.
Together, Luna, Valen, and Teresa formed the spine of House Bluemoon’s advance—not overwhelming in the terrifying way Ethan fought, but relentless, disciplined, and utterly unshakable.
While the main army created an absolute wall of noise, iron, and blood, Ethan moved like a silent phantom through the chaotic fringes of the clash.
He didn’t leap foolishly into the center of the heavy cavalry push to show off, nor did he waste his energy cutting down fleeing, low-ranking foot soldiers who were already broken in spirit. Ethan fought with cold, surgical, and calculated intelligence.
His dark gaze constantly scanned the battlefield, instantly identifying the crucial lynchpins holding Thorn’s vanguard together.
SWISH!
Ethan’s form blurred into dark speed. Utilizing his enhanced physical strength, he reappeared directly beside a veteran Thorn commander who was desperately trying to rally a hundred spearmen into a tight, defensive square. Before the commander could even draw his sword to give the order, the Eternal Sovereign Blade took his head off in a clean, horizontal arc.
Beside him, Rune moved as a silver blur, tearing through enemy throats in swift bites or cleaving vital points with his sharp claws. His silver fur remained pristine, without a single drop of blood clinging to it, his sharp eyes constantly reading the terrain.
Ten rows behind the captain, a squad of heavy crossbowmen was scrambling onto a raised stone ledge along the canyon wall, aiming their loaded weapons directly at Luna’s exposed flank.
"Rune," Ethan called out cold and low.
FLASH!
Rune launched off the canyon wall like a streak of silver lightning. Power surged through the cub’s frame as Rune landed directly in the middle of the ledge. His elongated silver claws flashed in a lethal circle, moving faster than the human eye could track. In under three seconds, all six crossbowmen collapsed onto the stone, their heavy bowstaves splintered and their throats torn open before a single trigger could be pulled.
Ethan moved systematically through the pass—decapitating mid-level officers, snapping the bowstrings of archer platoons, and taking out elite Great Knights before they could set up counter-charges against Valen’s cavalry. Every single strike was precise, targeted, and designed explicitly to strip the fifteen-hundred-man vanguard of its leadership structure.
Far back at the rear of the mountain pass, situated on a high rocky ridge overlooking the valley, Count Greyson Thorn observed the chaotic slaughter through his expanded senses.
"M-My lord... what’s happening?" Baron Kyle Vance stuttered, the confusion on his face evident. "D-Did our plan get leaked...?"
"The whole army of House Bluemoon is here... how is that even possible?" Count Randal Vane stammered, his knuckles white against his saddle pommel.
Thorn’s expression tightened into a twisted scowl. According to the latest intelligence report from the traitors within House Bluemoon, the garrison was supposed to be exhausted, poorly equipped, and barely capable of putting up a proper defense.
Julian and the vanguard commander were supposed to have handed over the fortress threshold hours ago, allowing Thorn’s army to capture House Bluemoon by dawn.
Those bastards... they discovered the traitors.
A cold realization struck him.
Someone exposed the entire plan.
"Useless, incompetent trash," Thorn sneered, his voice laced with heavy disgust as he watched his vanguard crumble through his expanded senses. "Fifteen hundred armored men held up by a tiny force... They can’t even maintain a single proper shield line against a few hundred of them!"
Beside him, Peter leaned forward on his warhorse, his scarred face grim and unreadable. His battle-honed instincts—sharpened through decades of life-and-death contracts as a mercenary—were firing loud alarm bells in his mind.
"It seems someone exposed your plans, huh?" Peter said, his voice cold. "Knowing the strength of your army, they are using the advantage of the narrow pass to slaughter your vanguard... and that black-armored knight has already killed your Vanguard Commanders."
Peter pointed a gauntleted finger toward the fringe of the pass where Ethan was operating.
"He isn’t recklessly throwing away his stamina," Peter continued, his eyes narrowing. "He is intentionally hunting your command structure. He is taking out your squad leaders, your archers, and your officers while the cavalry holds the center. He is dismantling the vanguard’s brain so the body dies on its own."
Baron Kyle Vance said nothing, his earlier bravado from Thornhold’s war room nowhere to be found. His eyes remained fixed on the distant carnage with the stunned, uncomprehending stare of a man watching his own investment burn.
Count Randal Vane kept glancing nervously toward Thorn, waiting for a confident dismissal that would let him relax, growing more unsettled by the second.
"My lord," Randal said carefully, "perhaps it would be prudent to—"
"I didn’t ask for your opinion, Randal!"
Thorn scoffed, though his gauntleted hand tightened visibly on the pommel of his broadsword until his knuckles turned white. "It doesn’t matter. The pass is narrow, but numbers are absolute. Let them wear themselves out against the vanguard. We still have 2500 rested troops."
"Their strongest known fighters are only Peak Knight Commanders! Don’t forget we have Sir Peter and myself—with our strength, killing them will be as easy as swatting a fly. Tactical parlor tricks won’t save them once stamina runs dry."
Down in the blood-stained ravine, Lady Luna felt the subtle shift in the battlefield’s momentum.
They had successfully driven Thorn’s vanguard back nearly five hundred yards from the Eastern Fortress Gate, leaving the narrow canyon floor littered with broken iron shields, shattered lances, and hundreds of fallen or fleeing enemy soldiers.
However, up ahead, near the wider mouth of Blackstone Ravine where the canyon walls opened up into the valley, the dense, fresh lines of Count Thorn’s main two 2,500-man force were beginning to lock their shields into an immovable wall of steel.
If the Bluemoon cavalry pushed any further out of the narrow bottleneck, they would lose their geographical protection. They would be drawn out into the open field where Thorn’s overwhelming numbers could easily encircle and crush them.
Luna raised her frost-covered spear high into the fog, her voice cutting sharp and clear through the din of clashing steel.
"Cavalry, disengage! Fall back to the gate!"
TRUMPET BLAST!
The Bluemoon war horns blew the sharp, two-tone call for a tactical retreat.
The cavalry began their disciplined retreat first, while the infantry and wounded soldiers followed behind them in a staggered withdrawal. Several injured Bluemoon knights were helped back toward the fortress by their comrades, some clutching blood-soaked wounds while others limped heavily, refusing to abandon the formation. The retreat was orderly, but the cost of the first charge was already visible.
Without a single moment of hesitation or greed, Commander Valen and the heavy cavalry executed a flawless wheeling maneuver. They turned their mounts smoothly, keeping their heavy iron shields facing the enemy as they began a disciplined, orderly backward movement back up the canyon toward the fortress gates.
Seeing the Bluemoon forces suddenly turn around and pull back, the surviving, frantic captains of Thorn’s battered vanguard completely misread the tactical maneuver.
Bloodied, breathless, and desperate for a turn in momentum, the enemy officers mistook the organized withdrawal for sudden exhaustion.
"They’re falling back!" a wounded enemy captain screamed, raising his chipped, blood-stained sword into the air. "Their charge is over! They used up all their energy and can’t sustain it! Don’t let them escape!"
"Charge!" another squad leader bellowed, his eyes wild with false hope. "Push them back into the fortress before they can close the gates!"
A ragged, desperate cheer went up from the surviving enemy troops as they broke their loose formations, surging forward in a disorganized wave to chase House Bluemoon straight back into the narrow, deadly shadow of the Eastern Fortress Gate.