Date: Seventeenth Day
Location: Forested Route to Narshia
POV: Nameless Narrator
---
The night was too quiet.
No crickets. No rustling. No wind.
And when silence walks too softly, blood always follows.
It began with a single dagger.
Thrown not at a soldier, but a wall — Gideon's shield. It cracked, but did not break.
Then came the fog.
Thick. Cold. Crawling with magic.
Riya shouted something — a spell flared.
Lily's light couldn't pierce the veil.
They were split.
The ambush had begun.
---
Anna was the furthest.
She moved by instinct. Her illusions flickered like wild paint strokes — brilliant, chaotic. But illusions faltered when the heart did.
She couldn't see the enemy.
But she could feel them.
One step behind her.
Then beside her.
Then—!
The assassin lunged from the fog. Fast. Too fast for a mage. A glint of steel—
She reacted.
Her fingers found the hidden dagger. A gift from Teacher David.
She didn't think. She didn't speak.
She stabbed in neck.
A sound escaped — not hers.
The body fell.
She stared at it.
Then her fire dimmed.
Her legs gave out.
And she whispered, as if the forest would answer:
> "I didn't want to… I just wanted to live…"
Her hands shook. Her face paled.
The mask she wore — bright, loud, warm — cracked.
And she fell into despair.
---
Then came Leander.
He found her in the fog, kneeling beside the corpse.
She was crying. Not loud. Not broken. But the kind of quiet that hurts more.
He dropped his sword.
And wrapped his arms around her.
> "Shh… You're okay. You're alive. That's what matters."
> "But I—"
"No. You survived. That's enough."
His voice didn't joke.
Didn't laugh.
It was the first time Anna truly listened to the real Leander.
---
Somewhere else, the war still raged.
One of the assassins cast a field — a magic-lock.
No spells. No mana. Just steel and silence.
But that was where Nitsuo thrived. Before his overwhelming mana a magic lock was just useless.
He had already set the field. His mind had mapped the battlefield like a warboard. Every tree, every breath, every shadow.
He moved like wind with weight.
Seven assassins surrounded him.
One lunged.
Dead before he landed.
Two flanked.
A tripwire spell activated — their legs burned with cursed fire.
The rest hesitated. Too late.
> "This is not a fight," he whispered.
"This is war."
He didn't spare.
He didn't hesitate.
Because mercy to trained killers meant sentencing others to death.
And Nitsuo knew that all too well.
---
Gideon had been wounded. His shield splintered, defending Elric and Selene.
Lily and Riya fought blind — illusion walls disoriented their spells.
Until Alice broke through.
A blur of fang and steel, she carved her way in and pulled them free. Her cloak was soaked in enemy blood. Her eyes glowing crimson.
> "They die tonight," she whispered. "May the Moonlight guide them."
And they did.
---
By the time dawn arrived, it was over.
The bodies burned. No graves.
Just ash and silence.
Anna didn't speak for hours. She sat by the fire, holding the dagger.
Leander never left her side.
Alice sat on a branch, watching the horizon like it might betray them.
Riya cleaned their gear in silence.
Elric and Gideon stood together, guarding the edge of camp.
And Nitsuo?
He wrote. Alone, under the Dawn.
His face unreadable.
But something had changed. In all of them.
---
> "Some nights carve scars you don't show."
"But the sun will rise anyway."
— From the Journal of the Silent Tactician