The Regressed Heir of Ravencrest

On the fortress walls, Lady Luna and Commander Valen, along with the rest of the commanders, sensed the approaching army through the mountain pass. The sheer number of soldiers advancing through the pass created a pressure of its own, their synchronized footsteps rolling through the canyon like distant thunder.

"My Lady, I don’t think this is a good idea..." Valen said quietly, his confidence taking a noticeable hit as the vibration of thousands of marching boots echoed up the canyon. "It’s better to defend from behind the battlements. At least then we have a chance."

Luna didn’t answer immediately. She kept her gaze fixed on the mountain pass, knowing that the morale of her entire house hinged entirely on the execution of their first strike—and on the mysterious young man who had proposed such an absurd plan.

"Prepare the cavalry," Luna commanded softly.

Throughout the fortress, the soldiers felt the impending clash. Even though they had resolved to fight to the last man, they couldn’t help the cold knot of fear tightening in their chests as the heavy rhythmic thud of boots and iron shields echoed from beyond the outer gates.

Meanwhile, at the rear of the approaching army, Count Thorn, Peter, Count Randal Vane, and Baron Kyle remained atop their warhorses overlooking the valley.

From their position at the rear, the towering walls of Blackstone Ravine blocked their view of the carnage unfolding at the front. Even their aura senses found little through the dense, overlapping signatures of four thousand soldiers, leaving the carnage at the vanguard hidden beneath the sheer mass of their own army.

"Did we get any word from the spies inside House Bluemoon?" Peter asked. His tall, imposing frame and the deep scars across his face served as a constant reminder of his harsh life as a mercenary. The aura surrounding him was dense, heavy, and tightly controlled—a clear mark of his standing as a Knight Lord.

Count Greyson Thorn radiated an equally dense aura, implicitly challenging Peter’s presence.

"Yes, Sir Peter," Count Thorn replied, a light, condescending edge in his voice that didn’t escape the mercenary leader. "The word arrived a few days ago. They will hand over the fortress tonight. By tomorrow morning, House Bluemoon will be ours."

"Didn’t you say the bandit leader was also one of your men?" Peter insisted, his sharp instincts—honed in dozens of life-or-death battles—sensing that something felt off about the eerie quiet ahead. "Why hasn’t he reported in?"

"That bastard," Thorn spat, irritation creeping into his tone. "He must have gotten drunk in the forward camp. When this is over, I’ll personally chop his head off." Thorn’s eyes flashed with annoyance, but he dismissed it with a wave of his gauntleted hand. "Besides, even if he were here, what difference would a few dozen idiots make? We have four thousand armored troops marching in. A handful of men changes nothing."

Beside them, Count Randal Vane chuckled softly. "Yes, Sir Peter, do not fret. Count Thorn has this well in hand—you won’t even need to lift a finger. Once House Bluemoon falls, you will be rewarded handsomely."

These arrogant bastards,Peter thought, his jaw tightening slightly under his helm.

They call themselves nobles, yet not a single one of their actions resembles nobility. If it weren’t for that...

Peter forced the thought away, refocusing his gaze on the dark mountain pass ahead.

The heavy iron gears of the Eastern Fortress Gate groaned, echoing off the towering cliff faces of Blackstone Ravine. Thick, damp fog hung low over the narrow pass, painting the scene in eerie shades of gray illuminated only by the sickly emerald glow of the signal flare burning on the watchtower.

At the front of Count Thorn’s vanguard, the lead knight commander pulled his armored warhorse to a halt. Behind him, fifteen hundred heavily armored infantry, spear platoons, and light cavalry stood in dense, tight ranks, their torches flickering against the dark stone walls of the bottleneck.

Through the rising portcullis, the pitch-black interior of the fortress layout slowly revealed itself.

Expecting to see Julian waving them in or panicked Bluemoon guards running in confusion, the vanguard commander squinted through the mist.

Instead, there was only dead silence.

And a single figure.

Clad in dark knight armor beneath a heavy cloak, Ethan stepped smoothly out of the pitch-black threshold of the open gate, his left hand resting casually on the hilt of the Eternal Sovereign Blade. Beside him, Rune padded forward into the faint emerald light, his bright, brilliant blue eyes fixated on the front line of soldiers.

The enemy vanguard commander frowned, his confusion deepening. "Is that Julian? Why is he coming out alone?"

The squad leader beside him reached for his sword pommel, staring closely at Ethan. "Commander... is he the one Lord Thorn mentioned?"

"Hold," the commander barked, reining his horse forward a few paces into the narrow stone entrance. He pointed a gauntleted finger down at Ethan. "You! Are you Julian? Report! Is the fortress secured?"

Ethan offered no answer.

He didn’t draw his blade, nor did his posture shift. He simply stood there, his face half-hidden beneath the shadow of his cloak, locking his dark, calm eyes onto the officer with a gaze so cold and lifeless it sent an unexplainable shiver down the commander’s spine.

"Are you deaf?!" the commander snapped, his patience evaporating as his horse snorted nervously, sensing the sudden, unnatural drop in the air pressure around them. "I asked you a question—"

Ethan moved.

To the human eye, there was no wind-up, no shift in weight, and no warning. Utilizing the sheer, refined physical output from his recently boosted stats, Ethan’s form vanished into a terrifying blur of pure dark speed.

SWISH!

A sharp, metallic hum vibrated through the damp fog.

The enemy commander’s words died in his throat. Before he could even register the movement, a thin line of blood erupted across his neck. His head slid off his shoulders, tumbling onto the stone path, followed an instant later by his armored corpse collapsing off the saddle.

The squad leader’s eyes bulged in absolute horror. "C-Commander?!"

The soldiers nearest the fallen commander froze. A Knight Commander had just been killed before they could even understand what had happened. For a brief moment, no one dared move.

Before the squad leader could raise his shield, Ethan reappeared right before him. The black blade executed a brutal, vertical arc. Steel armor, bone, and flesh split cleanly down the middle as Ethan cleaved the man in two, flinging an arc of crimson blood across the cobblestones.

"Rune," Ethan uttered softly, his voice a flat, emotionless whisper.

A low, guttural growl echoed from the silver cub.

Rune didn’t roar with flashy aura. With his recent bloodline evolution, Rune’s raw strength had soared—he was now a force of absolute lethality. His silver frame blurred, moving with a terrifying speed that matched Ethan’s own, if not surpassing it.

CRACK!

Rune slammed into the front rank of shield-bearers like a cannonball. His jaw—lined with razor-sharp teeth backed by monstrous physical force—snapped directly around the neck of a heavy infantryman, crushing armor and windpipe instantly. Without dropping momentum, Rune leaped sideways off the canyon wall, his elongated silver claws flashing in a lethal streak.

SLASH!

Four soldiers in the second rank fell simultaneously, their throats torn open in a single, silent claw strike before they could even draw their daggers.

"What the hell is that thing?!" someone screamed from the rear.

"It’s a beast! Kill it!" another soldier shouted, though his voice trembled with fear.

"A-Attack!" an enemy captain screamed from behind the lead ranks, his voice cracking with sheer hysteria as blood splattered onto his face. "It’s an ambush! Spear lines up! Kill them!"

Panic erupted instantly through the front of the pass. But the layout of Blackstone Ravine, designed specifically as a fortified bottleneck, worked brutally against them.

Count Thorn’s vanguard had packed fifteen hundred men into the narrow approach, where the fortress entrance allowed only a handful of soldiers to pass abreast. The rear ranks, still hearing the false cheers from earlier and completely blind to the gruesome carnage occurring at the threshold, kept pushing forward into the fortress entrance.

"Move up! Why are we stopping?!" soldiers shouted from the back, shoving their own comrades straight into the grinder.

"Stop pushing! Back up! BACK UP!" the front ranks screamed in agony, but their warnings were drowned out by the metallic clatter of thousands of marching boots.

Inside the narrow choke point, Ethan leaped directly into the dense formation of enemy soldiers.

Every step he took cracked the stone ground beneath his boots. Two enemy spearmen lunged at his chest, their steel tips whistling through the air. Ethan didn’t even bother dodging; he raised his gauntleted left hand, caught both spearheads mid-air, and twisted his wrist.

SNAP!

The wooden shafts shattered like dry twigs. Before the spearmen could draw their sidearms, Ethan surged forward, driving his elbow into the first man’s sternum. Steel plate collapsed inward with a sickening crunch, blasting the soldier backward into three others behind him.

A heavy knight swung a two-handed broadsword downward at Ethan’s head. Ethan tilted his head half an inch, letting the heavy blade graze his cloak, then drove the hilt of the Eternal Sovereign Blade into the knight’s visor.

BANG!

The iron helmet caved in, spraying blood and teeth into the fog.

Ethan swung his sword in a wide, fluid semicircle. A dense arc of pressurized dark force exploded from the blade, slicing through armor plates, wooden shields, and raised forearms. Seven soldiers in the front rank collapsed instantly, their blood painting the stone walls of the bottleneck.

Beside him, Rune was a terror of pure physical speed. He bounded from wall to soldier, his heavy claws sinking into shoulder plates and tearing open throats with surgical precision. Whenever an enemy tried to spear him, Rune simply stepped off the flat canyon stone, leaving a trail of snapped necks and shredded armor in his wake.

"Crossbows! Load crossbows!" a captain shouted from ten rows back.

A squad of heavy crossbowmen scrambled to raise their weapons, aiming over the heads of their panicked comrades straight at Ethan and Rune.

Ethan didn’t give them the chance. He grabbed a fallen heavy infantryman by the breastplate with one hand, hoisted the three-hundred-pound armored corpse off the ground, and hurled it through the air like a siege missile.

CRASH!

The flying body smashed into the crossbow squad, shattering bowstaves, crushing helmets, and bowling over six men in a tangled heap of steel and screams.

Seeing their front line being systematically slaughtered by just one man and a wolf, three Peak Great Knights — the vanguard’s most seasoned officers — managed to lock their tall iron tower shields together, forming a hasty barricade across the narrow pass.

"Hold the line!" one captain bellowed, his aura flaring as he thrust a heavy spear over the rim. "Brace! Surround him!"

Dozens of iron-tipped spears bristled through the gaps, aimed straight at Ethan.

Ethan didn’t slow his pace. He gripped the Eternal Sovereign Blade with both hands, his dark eyes locking onto the center shield. With an explosive burst of speed by concentrating his aura into his legs, he stepped into the spear wall, brought his blade up, and slammed it down with terrifying, raw physical force.

BOOM!

The heavy iron tower shields split down the middle. The shockwave tore through the three captains’ arms, snapping bone and muscle, and sent all three men crashing backward into the dense ranks behind them.

The front line of Thorn’s vanguard completely shattered, leaving a pile of bodies, broken weapons, and blood-soaked cobblestones stretching through the choke point.

Ethan didn’t stop.

He carved forward through the disorganized remnants of the vanguard, his blade finding gaps in raised shields, exposed necks between helm and gorget, the soft joints behind knee and elbow. These weren’t the rank-and-file soldiers anymore — the ordinary Knights had already broken and scattered toward the rear. What remained here were the vanguard’s hardened core: Great Knights, the men Count Thorn had trusted to anchor his front line.

An Intermediate Great Knight lunged with a spear, aura condensed along its tip. Ethan sidestepped and opened his throat in the same motion.

An Advanced Great Knight tried to flank him from the left, his twin blades a blur of practiced speed. Ethan caught one wrist mid-swing, snapped it, and drove his own blade through the man’s chest before he could scream.

Even a pair of Peak Great Knights, desperate and cornered, threw themselves at him together, their combined aura cracking the stone beneath their boots. It bought them perhaps two seconds longer than the rest.

By the time the dust settled enough to count, close to two dozen more lay dead across the stones — Intermediate, Advanced, and Peak Great Knights alike, fallen one after another with barely a pause between them, their blood mixing into the churned mud of the pass.

"ENOUGH!"

A voice cracked through the chaos like a whip.

A broad-shouldered officer shoved through the collapsing ranks, his aura flaring a heavy, saturated crimson — far denser than the Great Knights who had already fallen. An Advanced Knight Commander, the vanguard’s true ranking officer, finally forced into the fight by the sheer scale of what was unfolding in front of him.

"You bastarddd?!" he roared, drawing a broadsword that hummed with condensed aura as he closed the distance in a single, aura-assisted bound. "I’ll carve you apart myself!"

He didn’t get the chance to swing.

Ethan met him mid-stride, slipping past the descending blade with impossible precision. The Eternal Sovereign Blade flashed.

SLASH!

The Commander’s aura shattered before his body even realized it had been cut.

A thin line of crimson appeared across his throat.

His eyes widened.

Then his head slid from his shoulders.

The body of the Advanced Knight Commander crashed heavily onto the blood-soaked stones.

Silence.

For a single heartbeat, the entire vanguard seemed to freeze.

Another Knight Commander had fallen.

And Ethan hadn’t even needed a second strike.

On the fortress wall, Luna’s breath caught.

She had felt aura before — the ebb and flow of combat, the surges and dips of soldiers locked in battle. What she felt now was something else entirely. Even through the dark and rolling fog, Ethan’s presence cut through her senses like a blade through water — sharp, absolute, and utterly without hesitation, each flare of his aura marking another life extinguished in the space between heartbeats.

Even from the fortress walls, the sudden disappearance of that powerful aura had been unmistakable.

An Advanced Knight Commander.

Dead.

Her gaze locked onto the lone figure standing in the middle of the shattered vanguard.

"He killed him..." she whispered.

Her fingers tightened around her spear.

Beside her, Valen had gone completely still, his knuckles white around the hilt of his sword.

"My Lady..." he said quietly, his earlier doubt gone, replaced by something closer to disbelief.

Luna didn’t answer immediately.

Her eyes remained fixed on Ethan.

What exactly are you?

Along the rear of the shattered vanguard, the surviving Great Knight captains exchanged glances thick with dawning horror. Their Commander lay broken on the stones. Their front line no longer existed. And the thing responsible for both had barely slowed its pace.

No one gave the order to retreat.

No one needed to.

Just as the surviving troops broke into utter disarray, screaming in horror and trying frantically to push back out of the tight stone pass...

CLANG!

High atop the inner wall, the massive secondary gates of the fortress swung wide open, revealing the brilliantly lit inner courtyard.

A heavy war horn sounded across the canyon walls, its deep blast echoing through the night fog as Lady Luna’s voice commanded:

"Forward, House Bluemoon!"