Harvey awoke to the deafening groan of a fire alarm. White light strobed from a corner, forcing him awake.

  “Harvey!” Elena panicked.

  “I’m right here, don’t worry,” he responded. Tearing the warm comforter from his body, he rushed to the curtained window and threw them open. Rain pattered against the glass, but the night was still dark. Turning to the alarm clock on the nightstand, he saw it was just after 5:30.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “Help me get my armor on, then gather your stuff and head downstairs. We don’t want to be up this high when the dragon shows up.”

  “We reinforced the basement so the people who can’t fight have a place to hide,” she explained, leaping from her own bed and scrambling to get dressed.

  “Good, go there and try to keep everyone calm. I’ll find Julian and Hannah.”

  They both fumbled with the various clasps and straps on his mottled steel armor, their hands trembling as the alarm's constant beeping pounded into their heads. He’d repaired and polished the armor as best he could the night before, but he couldn’t do anything too major without accidentally damaging the inscriptions.

  EHH… EHH… EHH…

  “Come on,” he cursed, turning away from the flashing light while tugging on a belt that wouldn’t latch.

  “Let me,” Elena said, moving to his front to do it for him.

  “Thanks, I get shaky when I’m nervous,” he winced.

  “Don’t tell me that. I’m counting on you to get me out of here,” she replied.

  His heart rate spiked. “Awesome. No pressure at all.”

  Tying the cosmos sacks to his belt, he put on his helmet and gauntlets before charging into the hallway. All around him, bleary-eyed Veilstriders were rushing towards the stairs. Clattering metal and the stomp of heavy boots echoed off the plaster walls, shaking them so badly the framed artworks fell from their nails, covering the carpet in broken glass.

  He’d been trying to mentally prepare himself for this moment, but he’d never seen chaos like this in his life. They hadn’t even laid eyes on a single bone, but just the anticipation of what was to come was enough to drive the entire Outpost mad. Stepping into the sea of bodies, he felt himself being carried by the crowd. Like blood cells in a vein, everyone was rushing toward the clogged artery the tiny staircase had become.

  “Are they here?” a scared woman shrieked.

  “They have to be!” a man shouted.

  He could almost see the panic radiating through everyone’s aura like a purple haze. Harvey had always found himself swept up in the energy of the people around him, carried away by raw emotion even when it only made things worse. Especially when it made things worse. That was part of the reason he’d built his life around logic. He needed rules, certainty, to keep himself from flying off the rails.

  “Hey!” He shouted, blasting out his aura to silence the crowd. Nobody around matched his level, and his imprint easily subdued the formless panic as he pressed down on the others' souls. “I need everyone to shut up, take a deep breath, and move in an orderly fashion! We all knew this day would come, and shoving each other down the stairs won’t solve anything.”

  Retracting his aura, the hallway remained frozen in place. A sea of eyes turned to look at him, and he felt his blood pressure rising once more.

  “Go!” he shouted. Everyone’s eyes snapped back to the doorway, and two lines quickly formed to let people rush down the stairs shoulder to shoulder. At the same time, the fire alarm stopped blaring, letting everyone take a moment to screw their heads on straight.

  “Wow,” Elena muttered.

  “Sorry,” Harvey said.

  “No, somebody needed to say it. I just didn’t expect it to be you,” she replied.

  Descending 14 flights of stairs still took longer than he liked, but they finally reached the lobby, where Julian was blasting out his own aura to subdue the crowd.

  “Scouts spotted the Ossari 30 minutes ago, and we expect the army will arrive within the hour. For those of you unwilling to fight, there is a small room in the basement where you can hide. For everyone else, meet John in the clearing by the outer wall,” Julian instructed. “We won’t force anyone to fight this war, but let me remind you that if our army falls, the undead will find you. They will torture you, take your body, and turn it into another weapon against all the people you love back on Earth.”

  It was a harrowing thought, and Harvey could see many around him fighting their own internal war. He never expected to hear words like this leave Julian’s mouth, but understood that they couldn’t afford to let everyone hide while they prayed someone else would save them from the nightmares heading towards them.

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  People were constantly filtering in and out of the lobby, most already knowing that they would stand and fight. It took a special kind of crazy to survive this long, and even if they were all afraid, most weren’t willing to hide.

  Harvey was the same. He knew he was going to fight. He’d made a promise that he would never let someone else control his life again, and backing down now would be like staining his legacy all over again. Elena, on the other hand, froze as she listened to Julian’s words.

  “Those people. The people who love you more than anything and would give their lives to see you again. They’re waiting for you. I’ve got a wife and two beautiful baby girls back home, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some skeletons get in the way of me seeing them again. I’ll snap each and every one of them if it means I get to hug my family again, but I can’t do it alone. I need your help if I’m gonna raise my daughters. Get to walk them down the aisle when they marry some dirtbag who I eventually learn to love,” Julian said, tearing up as he spoke. “I promise to help you do the same. To keep you safe so you can see your own parents and children again. Just stand with me, and fight to protect our home.”

  The panic he felt radiating from the frozen Veilstriders turned to sadness as tears began streaming down their faces. He watched Elena begin to sob, her body shuddering as she placed a hand over her mouth.

  “You don’t have to fight,” Harvey said, wrapping her in a bear hug. “It’s ok.”

  “No, it’s not,” she blurted.

  “Listen to me. Nobody expects you to kill Ossari with the wand you started with and a painting skill.”

  “I can’t just do nothing!”

  “Yes, you can!”

  “So, what? I’m useless?” she asked.

  “Not at all! We’re all relying on a wall that YOU inscribed! People are fighting with weapons inscribed by the students you taught! That doesn’t sound useless to me!” Harvey argued.

  “So what? You’re allowed to risk your life, and I’m not?” she cursed.

  “Yes! I have the tools to fight! You don’t!” he shot back.

  “Harvey!” Julian shouted.

  “What?” he yelled back.

  “Not everyone has to be on the front lines. We need people to help run supplies and help the injured,” Julian argued.

  “Have someone else worry about that! She’s done enough!” he said.

  “No!” Elena said.

  “Yes!” Harvey shouted, grabbing her arm.

  “Harvey!” Julian yelled, his imprint pressing hard on Harvey’s aura. “You don’t get to decide who’s allowed to fight for their family.”

  Harvey was speechless, completely consumed by the brown and teal eyes staring daggers at him. He felt like a child being scolded by his father, and every instinct in his body demanded that he listen.

  The rest of the hesitant Veilstriders made their choice, with most sprinting out into the parking lot while a scant few scurried toward the basement. Harvey followed, with Elena sticking close behind him as they escaped Julian’s watchful gaze. Behind, Harvey heard him resume his instructions, directing the still descending people where to go next.

  That aura…

  All thoughts of the war and Elena’s participation were erased as he walked toward the open gate leading to the second layer of reinforced walls. For the first time, he had felt the sword of the Unbroken Sentinel leveled at his own throat. Julian’s aura had been a sanctuary for him ever since that first night in the forest where his Guardian’s Breath skill imbued it with Julian’s unshakeable confidence. It had been the rock he anchored himself to when his own Stain made everything seem impossible. The shield that protected him from his own legacy.

  Over time, Harvey had come to see Julian as the older brother he never had. Someone he could rely on. Someone who’d protect him. But older brothers weren’t only there to play catch. Sometimes, they had to set you straight.

  “Thank you,” Elena whispered.

  “No,” Harvey sighed. “Julian’s right. I don’t have any right to decide for you.”

  “I know it’s not much, but I’ll use Living Portrait to give you a boost while you fight and then help where I can.”

  “Not much? Elena, I wasn’t trying to put you down,” he stressed.

  “I know. You’re not wrong, though,” she chuckled.

  “Yes, I am. Now let’s find Hannah and get ready.”

  The sun was slowly rising, and it wasn’t hard to find the slender woman sitting atop the massive deer. Buttercup was stomping his feet and huffing anxiously, but seemed to calm down as Hannah fed him lettuce drenched in health potion.

  “This is your last potion for today, handsome. I need to save the rest for us humans,” she cooed.

  “We’re not humans anymore,” Harvey laughed.

  “We will be soon. At least I hope we don’t still look like this when we get back,” she replied. “Just gotta deal with a pesky little army first.”

  There were watchtowers spaced evenly along the wall with archers and arcanists ready to rain hell from above, but nowhere near enough to give everyone a clear shot over the high wall. They had neither the time nor the expertise to build one with battlements for the soldiers, so they had to make do with ladders that had been buried in the dirt and leaned against the inside.

  Surveying the wall, he guessed there were close to 1,500 Veilstriders preparing for war. He recognized quite a few people from Veils End standing close to the front, doing their best to inspire the weaker warriors who’d enjoyed a much safer environment at the start of the integration.

  Emily, the archer who shot strangling vines, stood atop a watchtower to the right, an arrow the size of a tree branch held loosely across her bow. Hyrum, the Texas boy with all the boosting skills, stood on a ladder, surveying the forest while absentmindedly tossing a small boulder in the air. Master Seung-Ho, the taekwondo instructor who had lost a foot to Gary’s sword, sat on the ground with his eyes closed, a new metal foot replacing the one he lost.

  There were a lot of people, and Harvey didn’t know whether to feel emboldened or despair, since he had no idea how many Ossari they had to face. What he did know was that very few could match the skeleton’s level, so it was up to elites like Hannah, Julian, and himself to lighten the load.

  An easel and canvas appeared from Elena’s slipsack, and she got to work painting a picture of Harvey crushing a skeleton with his hammer. They explained the robes and equipment the Ossari used as best as they could to make the Living Portrait more accurate, but it was hasty work. Elena would usually take her time with paintings like this, but an ominous rumble in the ground urged her to move faster as light rain continued falling above them. Without the heavy clouds of their last encounter, Harvey saw clear signs of thanum rising into the sky, adding flecks of teal to the grey. Once more, he saw the distant shadow of a dragon, wings slowly flapping as Marcus made his approach.

  “It doesn’t have to be perfect, just infuse your essence and get ready to move,” Harvey said. “They’re coming.”