Seeing Richard’s body, the first thought that came to my mind sickened me. Our squad had faced that brutal assault because I had been wishing for the perfect bodies to build a meat wall. The battlefield answered that thought in the only way it ever does. As a reminder, not to take it lightly.

  “This is what happens when orders are ignored. I specifically said Tier Twos smash these beasts with boots and shields, not Tier Ones. Drag him off and place him near the wall. Recovery team will bring the body inside the fort,” Sergeant Fenward said, already turning his attention back to the front.

  “Everyone else, stay attentive.”

  Richard’s eyes were still wide open, staring at nothing.

  Rage flared inside me. I turned toward the sergeant, my vision red, ready to shout. In that moment, I no longer cared about hierarchy or the chain of command. I had not been close to Richard, but this was not how someone who died defending his country, his squadmates, should be treated. Even if he had made a mistake, he did not deserve to be dragged away like discarded trash.

  Just as I was about to speak, my gaze caught on Jack. He was on high alert, scanning the ground. He was not the only one. Colin’s grip on his spear never loosened. Walter’s stance had not shifted an inch. Owen’s armor was slick with blood and viscera; his breathing was steady and controlled.

  There was no anger directed at the sergeant. Only professional readiness. As if we had not just lost one of our own, someone we had spent the last three months beside. As if, somewhere along the way, they had learned how to keep moving even when something inside them should have stopped.

  The only ones who looked shaken were the new recruits.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to analyze their reactions. The sergeant’s words had been crude and ruthless, without a shred of sympathy, but they were also instructions. What else could I expect? We were in the middle of a battlefield, having just fought one of the hardest engagements of the day. Breaking formation now could lead to more deaths.

  So I did what I was ordered to do. I closed Richard’s eyes and began moving his body. I would have liked to speak with the sergeant about giving proper respect to the fallen, but I knew this was not the right time.

  Richard was heavier than I expected because he no longer helped carry his own weight. His limbs dragged uselessly, armor scraping against stone with a sound that set my teeth on edge. Blood smeared across my gloves, warm at first, then cooling as I pulled him along. The smell hit me late, copper and waste and something worse beneath it.

  As I dragged him toward the wall, bile rose in my throat. My grip slipped once, slick with blood, and I nearly lost my balance. I had seen a corpse before, my father’s. But time and strange new memories had buried the worst of that loss, leaving behind only the good moments, and I was grateful for that.

  This was different.

  This time, I was dragging a dead teammate while surrounded by danger.

  Suddenly, the fragility of life became impossible to ignore. It did not matter where you died. A commoner, whether scribe or soldier, met the same end. One mistake. One bad moment. One misstep.

  And that was it.

  There was nothing heroic about it for most of us. No songs. No stories to tell in taverns. Just a cold grave, while the battlefield moved on.

  Still, I found a grim kind of solace in one thing. The battlefield was the great equalizer. Until the fighting ended, every dead body was treated the same, lying at the foot of the fort wall. It did not matter if you were a common soldier, a sergeant, or a lieutenant from a noble house.

  If a lieutenant was coordinating between squads, it was safe to assume the captain was observing the battle from somewhere above, coordinating between companies. And he would not sacrifice the safety of the fort for one person, even if that person was a noble lieutenant.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I placed Richard at the foot of the wall. Above me, archers moved with practiced efficiency, nocking arrows, loosing, reloading. One of them glanced down, met my eyes for a heartbeat, then nodded and turned away. He would inform the recovery team, and they would use a ladder to carry him inside. Temporary ladders were positioned along the wall, primarily to send reinforcements up if needed, and if time allowed, to transfer the dead inside to prevent their bodies from being desecrated by beasts. That only happened when the recovery team had enough time, and the number of beasts was low.

  I stood and looked out at the horizon, feeling a deep sense of emptiness. Just then, I felt Lieutenant Fenward’s mana wash over me again.

  “Men, great– ”

  I tuned him out.

  With all my spiritual attributes above twenty-five, unless the lieutenant specifically targeted me, I could resist his emotional manipulation if I chose to. Right now, I was not in the headspace to be manipulated. I did not need artificial courage to fight these beasts.

  After dragging Richard’s body away, I made myself a promise. I would fight until my last drop of mana, until my last drop of blood. The thought of being discarded like trash scared me more than any beast’s maw, and I would give everything I had to avoid that fate.

  I walked back to the platform. The sounds of fighting pressed in from every direction. To my left, shields slammed together in steady rhythm, spears punching forward in practiced unison. Farther down, I heard a roar deep enough to vibrate in my chest, followed by the crack of stone breaking under weight, the impact echoing along the wall like a hammer strike.

  Near the funnel point, the terrain itself had changed. The hardened earth had collapsed inward, gouged and shattered by repeated impacts. Two mammoth-like beasts lay dead there, their sheer bulk having crushed the reinforced ground beneath them before they were brought down. One of them had fallen partially into the funnel itself, its body wedged awkwardly, forcing soldiers to fight around it while struggling to keep the opening clear, boots slipping on churned mud and blood.

  The battle there was still ongoing.

  Soldiers moved in and out of position, dragging the wounded back, stepping over beast corpses without looking down. Commands were shouted, repeated, then swallowed by the noise, lost beneath the constant clash of metal and roaring breath.

  Five or six platforms to our right, I saw another soldier dragging a body toward the wall.

  I could not see the face, only the way he struggled with the weight, the way his steps faltered once before he forced himself to keep moving. An archer above leaned down, nodded, and signaled for recovery, just as they had for me.

  We were not the only ones.

  Loss was scattered along the wall, quiet and methodical, handled between clashes of steel and the roars of beasts. Bodies were moved. Positions were filled. The line held, as if nothing else mattered.

  At our platform, four Stoneback corpses lay at the front, two on the left and two on the right, leaving the center deliberately empty to form a funnel. The ground beyond was carpeted with the bodies of burrowing beasts. The only clear path through the carnage was where the squad’s formation had shifted and rotated.

  There had to be more than a hundred of them.

  At the moment, the formation was engaged with a single Tier Two bear.

  I did not return to my place as a healer. I had a feeling that my role as a full-time healer was over. From here on, I would be fighting alongside the others.

  Standing there, I checked my mana.

  1170 / 1464

  I had fought for less than thirty minutes, so it was not surprising that I had only used seventy units of mana. Still, it did not feel like only thirty minutes had passed.

  Once the bear was dealt with, the sergeant addressed me.

  “Rotate the right flank. Edward, take the right,” he ordered.

  And we continued, facing beast after beast. Tier Two enemies became a common sight. We were still rotating squad members, but now only four or five at a time. We did not face any more burrowing beasts.

  We were tested again by another mixed engagement. Two Tier Two oxen and four Tier One hyenas. It was not a combination that existed naturally. Most likely, they had reached us at the same time by coincidence while fleeing deeper parts of the forest.

  Even so, they caused problems. They were not only attacking us, but each other. One of the oxen flung a hyena over the front line and into the Tier Ones, injuring two of them before we brought it down.

  As the sun began to set, the number of carnivorous beasts increased. Those deeper in the forest took longer to reach us, but they were more dangerous. Only then did the difference in time truly sink in. I had been fighting for four, maybe five hours.

  Time did not move normally on the battlefield. Each breath felt counted, stretched thin, while whole exchanges vanished in a blink. I could remember the weight of my shield and the scrape of my boots, but the moments between blurred together, slipping away as soon as I tried to grasp them.

  Fatigue began to weigh on our bodies. Ironically, I might have been the one with the most mana left and the fewest injuries.