Naem froze midair. Only instinct kept his wings flapping, holding him suspended in the sky. It felt as though his stomach was rising into his throat as the screams of pleading and pain filled the air.
What is this!? Naem thought, unable to do anything but stare at the incoming horde of beasts in the distance.
“Naem! Help me, Naem!” The sound of Vlad’s voice rang out, slightly louder than the other screams.
“No, no! Please, God, no! Help me, Naem! Help me!” came Veyra’s desperate cry.
“This... this is all wrong!” Naem muttered in panic. “My brother and sister were back at the house behind me. So why are there voices coming from out there?”
“Raise the shells!” A deep voice yelled out from the wall behind Naem, pulling him from his trance.
He looked back to see the Vegan soldiers scrambling along the top of the middle ring. In a second, however, order was restored among them. A moment later, a mana-infused barrier appeared along the top of the wall. It stretched from the west gate all the way around to the east on both sides of the city. Then Naem watched as the ring grew higher into the sky, arching slightly toward the center of the city as it ascended.
“Heavenly Shield...” he said to himself, recalling the skill he had read about countless times in his studies with Veyra. This was the first time he had ever seen it in action, let alone on such a grand scale.
Naem looked back toward the horde of incoming beasts. The faint blue hue of the shield slowly began to extend and form into existence like a giant dome across the entire middle and central rings. Even though he could still see through the spiritual art that now guarded them from the outside, as the last bits of the dome connected at its peak, the presence of the flying beasts in the distance became nearly nonexistent. The only indicator that he could see was that now the moon, Koshua, was completely gone.
Oddly, the same went for the screams that had rung out in the distance.
“So... the screams weren’t coming from brother or sister?” Naem said to himself, before looking back again through the spiritual art of defense toward the direction of his home beyond the middle wall in the outer ring. “But what will happen to them?”
He looked below him, down at the west gate itself. It still stood wide open, with people beginning to pour through it into the middle ring from the outside. It had to have been the farmers and everybody else who lived in the outer ring. They were all rushing to seek refuge here.
“I’m sure Brother and Father will bring everybody inside the walls as well,” Naem said to himself. Right then, a large, thundering crash rang out behind him to the east.
Naem quickly looked back to see the remnants of balls of fire disappearing as they were reflected off the dome. He watched as several more balls of fire rained down from the sky and exploded as they hit the blue dome.
“The demons are already here!? How did they get past Vayrin so fast!?” Naem asked aloud, voicing his surprised thoughts. He glanced over his shoulder toward the west gate one more time, battling with himself on what to do.
“Vlad would want me to stay safe. I shouldn’t leave the city to go and look for him… He needs to focus on fighting the demons, not finding me,” he said before looking back down to the ground below him. He paused for a moment before spotting Relker leading the rest of the group along one of the side streets. “I’ll just stay with them and keep out of trouble.”
Naem pulled his wings tightly to his body and careened through the sky, ripping through it like an arrow. The feathers of his wings and the fabric of his clothes sounded like tearing canvas before he spread his wings wide again, just before pulling up to a stop at the back of the group.
Nobody seemed to notice him, and at this point—even despite his limp—everyone was running to keep up with Relker.
“Relker!” Naem hollered to the front, trying to get his attention, but everyone acted as if he wasn't even there. “Relker…!”
“Naem, stay up here with us!” Relker hollered back in a panic, giving the first sign that anyone had acknowledged his presence. “Hurry!”
“My house is this way!” one of the Trojan boys shouted before pulling away from the group and running up a back alley.
For a split moment, Naem caught sight of tears streaming down the side of the boy's face as he ran as fast as he could. He looked back at the rest of the group and noticed the same thing with many of them. Everybody seemed to be competing with each other to stay closer to Relker, sometimes tripping over one another, and most of them were crying.
It was at that moment that Naem remembered the screams of Vlad and Veyra coming from the horde of beasts, and how they disappeared once the dome was complete.
Those screams were a lie, Naem thought to himself. They had to have been… I did think that Vlad’s scream was real at first, thinking he might have flown in that direction when he heard the horns. But Veyra would not have gone, not at all. And neither of them would have screamed out for me to help them.
Naem focused back on the children in front of him. “Hey, did any of you hear my brother screaming?”
Seiker looked back at him with tears rolling down his face. Naem hadn’t even noticed it was him at the back of the group until then. “No, it’s my parents! They’re in trouble! They needed me! They needed my help!”
Naem looked from Seiker back toward Relker at the head of the group. I heard Vlad and Veyra, and Seiker heard his parents. Did everybody else hear the same scream? he thought to himself before trying to get Relker’s attention again.
“Relker! Relker, stop! The screams were fake!” Naem hollered out, gaining several looks from the other children, but Relker never stopped. “Relker! Those screams were from the demon beasts! They stopped once the dome went up!”
Naem propelled himself up above the rest of the children with a powerful thrust of his white wings. He flapped several more times, then turned and landed on the snow-covered ground a few paces in front of Relker.
“Stop for a second…!” Naem held out his hands in front of Relker, and he did indeed stop, though begrudgingly.
“What!?” Relker barked in frustration.
“The screams were fake! I heard my brother and sister coming from that way too. But I know they would’ve been behind me, and they wouldn’t have screamed for me to help them!” Naem explained hurriedly, trying not to lose Relker’s attention. “Seiker heard his parents as well. But trust me, it wasn’t them! It was from those flying beasts! The screams stopped once the barrier went—”
Relker growled and cut Naem off. “Did you say flying beasts…!? How many!?”
Naem swallowed visibly. “I don’t know… A lot of them…?”
Just then, Naem looked down and watched as Sakura fell to the ground. Her legs gave out underneath her, and she looked forward with a blank stare, trembling in fear.
“No, no, no, no, no, no! No, no, no!” Sakura began to say as she covered her ears with her hands. Her voice grew louder the more she spoke. “This can’t be happening again!”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“Sakura?” Sakiri said, her voice filled with worry as she rushed over to her sister, but Relker scooped Sakura up into his arms before she could reach her.
“What’s wrong with her?” Naem asked, but Relker continued forward past him, leading the rest of the group.
“No time to explain… Now, we really need to get back to our homes. Sakiri, stay close to me,” he demanded.
Sakiri ran forward to catch up and grabbed the cloth belt wrapped around his waist. “Oh, all right!”
“What’s going on?” Naem asked again as Relker led the group down another side street.
“Yeah,” Dillion said. “I didn’t even know there were any flying demon beasts!”
“There’s not supposed to be…” Relker said plainly, giving the children just that little bit of information, which only sparked more questions. But Naem had already figured out that much.
However, before he or anyone else could ask Relker anything more, a large crashing sound—like a giant plate had shattered on a stone floor—rang out through the sky. Everyone looked back in the direction of the sound to see a giant hole had opened in the dome that protected the city, and large black beasts began to pour into the city through it.
Vlad flew as fast as he could, each wingbeat feeling as if the flesh were ripping from his body. Yet, he did not care about the pain. With help from the icy wind raking against him, he forced the pain from his mind as he had been trained to do in the past, causing his body to slowly grow numb.
He had a duty—responsibilities he needed to uphold. He could not allow his mind to wander with distractions, especially not from the roar of screaming and pleading civilians he was supposed to be protecting in the distance.
He was aware of the dangers he faced to an extent—a darkness that engulfed the moon, Koshua. Something this powerful could not be overlooked.
Vlad closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. Even though the air was icy cold, he felt his lungs burn with a heat that warmed his soul—cleansing his body of its impurities and his mind of all distractions. He opened his eyes to see that his men had already started raising the barrier to protect the city.
“Good,” he said, feeling some assurance that he would only have to deal with the dangers already within the city and not worry about reinforcements or projectiles—at least for a little while.
He looked past the barrier forming over the city toward the east gate, where the night sky had turned into a black abyss.
“God be with you, brothers… I'll take the rest from here.”
After saying his piece, Vlad tucked his wings close to his back and dove toward the west gate, dropping like a tossed stone as his body sliced through the air. At the last moment, he spread his wings and pulled up hard, soaring through the top of the open west gate, well above the farmers and other citizens fleeing into the city from the outer ring.
Using the momentum of his fall, he shot himself back up into the sky, rising about two wall-heights above the middle ring. He hovered there, surveying the land. While there was chaos, there was no destruction. It took him a moment to realize that the screaming had stopped as well.
"What's this…?" he muttered to himself before looking farther ahead toward the east gate, past the center ring. If there truly had been an attack, there should have been some visible destruction. But from what he could see, that side of the middle ring was intact—and the screams were gone.
He looked up at the faint blue hue of the heavenly shield forming a dome over the middle and center rings. Its effectiveness in defense and protection was unmatched by any known skill—a force impervious to both spiritual and physical attacks. It was regarded as a sacred art, handed down directly from Veylar himself.
"Were the screams a spiritual attack?" he wondered.
Before he could think further, two stars in the sky slowly began to burn brighter and grow larger. It wasn’t until the last moment that he realized what they were.
Instinctively, he guarded his head just as pillars of fire exploded against the top of the dome. More fiery projectiles followed, growing brighter before detonating in rapid succession, sending shockwaves that rang louder than anything else in the city.
Vlad’s brow furrowed in anger and confusion as he tried to make sense of what exactly was attacking them from the heavens.
“General!”
Vlad looked back toward the voice that had called out to him and saw three armored Vegan soldiers flying up from the top of the middle wall.
“Does anyone have word from the outer wall?” Vlad called out as the three Vegans pulled closer, trying to speak loud enough that the men could hear him. “What could we possibly be up against that swallows the moon and attacks us from the heavens!?”
“We have no word from your brothers on the outer wall, Vlad…” Abiky replied, his voice gruff as ever as he hovered closest to Vlad. His sheer size dwarfing both Vlad and the two other Vegans flying behind him. “However, the screams have caused real panic—even among the soldiers.”
“Well, I thought the city was under attack,” Vlad said, turning away from Abiky and looking eastward. “Those screams were not ones of war… I could have sworn that I was too late.”
“You're right,” Abiky said. “It was the demons. Did you not hear anyone familiar calling out to you?”
Vlad’s brow furrowed as he looked back at his friend. “What do you mean?”
“In the screams,” Abiky repeated. “Did you not hear anyone you knew? Many of the soldiers heard their loved ones—screaming for help in the direction of the attack.”
Abiky paused for a moment and swallowed hard. “I heard my father and my sister, but I know they’re back in Vega, Vlad… as are most of the men’s families. I swear, it was the demons!”
Vlad slowly drew his eyes away from his friend and down to the commotion in the streets below. A great number of civilians had gathered on the main street, which stretched from the middle wall’s west gate to the inner wall’s west gate. It acted like a river, with the people its rushing water. And like a river, the more Vlad studied it, the more he noticed a pattern—all of them were running eastward, branching off into smaller side alleys as they neared the inner wall.
"They're being lured…? They’re being lured!” Vlad muttered under his breath before looking back at Abiky, who nodded in agreement.
“By the screams… Somehow, the demons have bewitched our minds—making everyone think their loved ones are in danger…”
“How the hell did they do that!?” one of the other Vegan soldiers said, hovering just to the left of Abiky.
The three men looked to Vlad as if he had the answers, but he was none the wiser.
“Right now, we just need to keep everyone calm and in their homes. The demons have their reasons for trying to lure everyone to the east gates—if that’s truly what they’re doing. And I do not want to find out.”
“Right!” the two other soldiers said, slapping their fists against their metal breastplates before Vlad shot them a dismissive look.
“Vlad,” Abiky started as the other two soldiers pulled away and dropped back down to the wall below, “Naem is still in the city…”
Vlad drew in a deep breath as he looked back out over the buildings and the panicked people below. “I figured as much…”
“At least, I didn’t see him leave through the west gate.”
“No matter,” Vlad said before Abiky could continue. “All I want you to do is find him and get him and Veyra to safety.”
“But Vlad! I should be fighting beside you!”
“Naem is more important than that,” Vlad said, turning back to his friend with serious eyes. “Please… knowing him, he's probably gonna try and do something stupid. Once you're done with that, come and find me. But not before.”
Abiky hovered in place for a moment as he absorbed Vlad's words, finally consenting with a nod of his head. “Don't you do anything stupid either… Not until I return, at least.”
And with that, Abiky gave one last powerful flap of his broad wings and flew past Vlad down toward the center of the city below. Vlad watched his friend for a moment before looking back up to the dome, trying to piece together the little information he had.
“Demons can't use spirit arts like we can,” he said to himself, right before a large fire blast exploded off the top of the dome. “So how are they wielding fire…?”
He thought back to what Abiky had said about the screams. He had heard them as well, but he heard nobody familiar to him like everyone else did.
“None of this makes sense!” he said, frustrated in his confusion. “Nothing related to a Demon can fly or use spirit arts, but the fire is clearly spirit arts… I can only guess that the screams would be as well…”
Vlad paused as he noticed that the fire attacks had suddenly stopped pounding the top of the dome, revealing a soft twinkle of a lone star right above him. He narrowed his eyes to try and peer further past the faint blue hue of the dome, and slowly he saw that the star began to speed up before it disappeared.
“What the—” Vlad was cut short as the top of the dome covering the city shattered.
The sound was so loud that Vlad’s ears instantly began to ring, and his vision turned to haze. His wingbeats faltered as, once again, he covered his face by instinct.
He quickly stilled himself before looking back up at the gaping hole in the dome, his golden eyes wide with the first sense of bewilderment he had felt in a long time, accompanied by the sound of his heart overtaking the ringing in his ears.
“IN HEAVEN'S NAME!” Vlad shouted as the Heavenly Shield was actually broken and a horde of black flying beasts poured through, beginning to disperse over the kingdom.
The day of reckoning had begun.
