Joseph walked point, sword low, eyes scanning the shadows. Behind him came Mercedes and Joe, then Rose and Marigold, who leaned on Dorrin when she thought no one was looking. Garland brought up the rear, limping, hand pressed tight to his ribs.

They heard voices before they saw shapes—orders barked, banter, clipped conversation, boots clattering on concrete. Torchlight flickered down the corridor as two Thorn patrols crossed paths. Nearly two dozen of them emerging from branching side passages. Thorn soldiers, masked and armored in matte black plating, pre-Scouring armor with the red glyph on the upper left breast. Each carried a short blade and a brutal-looking stun baton.

Garland, at point, dropped to a crouch and thrust a fist up. The signal to freeze. His voice didn’t rise, but his whole body tensed. “Shift change. Let ’em pass. We can slip by—”

But the paladins didn’t even slow.

They didn’t look at Garland or the rest of the party. They kept walking, measured and deliberate, like people who had already crossed the point where alternatives mattered.

Dorrin’s shoulders squared. Bryce rolled his neck once, breath fogging in the cool air. Inez pushed off Mercedes’ hand with a hiss, lips parted in a grin too sharp to be called friendly.

The corridor seemed to narrow around them.

This was not heat-of-the-moment fury. The darkness they had come through hadn’t broken them. It had stripped away the last reasons not to act.

This was the moment the Church had been built for: when restraint ended and judgment descended.

Behind them, Garland swallowed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The Thorns noticed them then. Both squads stiffened. Their commander, a grizzled officer with a narrow jaw and the thorn sigil etched into one black pauldron, stepped out. His posture screamed discipline, not bravado.

“Halt,” he barked. “You are trespassing in a restricted zone. Drop your weapons. Kneel. Now.”

None of the paladins so much as blinked. They advanced, measured and deliberate.

The commander’s jaw clenched. He glanced to a subordinate and jerked his chin.

The man slapped a glowing palm to the wall-mounted control panel, and suppressor glyphs flared to life with a crystalline chime. Red and violet lines pulsed from the walls and ceiling.

An invisible command slammed into them, bodies rebelling as muscles and breath were ordered to fail.

Mac stumbled, then shook it off. Everyone else staggered. Marigold dropped to one knee. Mercedes cried out. Joe cursed and nearly dropped his crossbow. Rose, like Mac, fought it longer than the others. But her legs shook, and she went down hard. Within seconds, Mac was the only one still on his feet, staring at the rest in confusion.

Mac turned too late. A stun baton cracked across his shoulder, and a sharp arc of pain lanced down his back. His body locked for a breath, knees buckling.

A second guard stepped in fast and followed up with another sharp strike catching Mac in the ribs. He stumbled, breath knocked out, vision flashing white. The Thorn squad focused on him entirely now, seeing the biggest threat and trying to put him down fast.

But the paladins?

They shook. Not with rage. With strain.

The field drove into them like a physical thing, forcing shoulders down. It bowed their backs, and dragged the breath from their lungs.

Dorrin’s knees bent. His fists clenched until his knuckles went white. His breathing came ragged, every inhale fought for.

“Light,” he rasped, more breath than prayer. “Guide my hands.”

Inez staggered as the pressure surged. Her knees hit stone hard enough to jar her teeth. She stayed there for a heartbeat. Then she called on the Light, planted her hands and pushed. Her snarl wasn’t defiance. It was refusal.

Bryce buckled outright. One knee struck the floor. His arms shook as he braced against his thighs, boots skidding for purchase. Muscles bunched under leather and sweat as he forced himself upright inch by inch, teeth bared. “Not… today.”

The glyphs pressed harder.

Dorrin went down hard to one knee, his mace slamming into the floor and catching his weight just in time. The impact rang through his arms as he leaned on it to keep from collapsing.

Inez’s arms buckled next. She pitched forward, just as Bryce lurched into her path, shoulder dropping as he caught her by reflex. His knee kissed the floor as he did, the two of them sagging together, locked in a clumsy brace that kept neither from falling all the way. Stone scraped Inez’s palms. Bryce’s breath tore out of him through clenched teeth.

But they were paladins. Fury refined into purpose as their own bodies were ordered to fail. Their pain folded inward, contained, then burned in the ignition of their Gifts.

The field demanded surrender. They denied it, their restraint finally set aside.

And so they rose, one after another.

They were paladins. They were His Hands. 

They would fall someday, in battle or from old age.

But not this day.

Dorrin’s spine straightened. Something inside him snapped loose—unleashed, not broken. His eyes caught the low light.

The harvest is ripe, he thought, not without sorrow. And the scythe must fall.

They moved, slowly at first, without hesitation. Inez and Bryce both murmured the same prayer under their breath, words roughened by strain and breathless effort as they advanced.

Mac was faster, though. He was moving with something new now. His reflexes were tuned to an edge he didn’t fully understand, speed honed by months of practice, and power built from years of practice no one had ever seen. The breaker rod snapped into one guard’s thigh with the crack of bone and a howl of pain. Mac spun into the last soldier’s reach, ducked a slash, and drove the rod upward into the man’s gut with a low grunt.

Two more charged. Fast. Trained. But not for this.

At Mac’s heels was his mother, her face set and feral. The cleaver and long knife moved with the practiced economy of someone who knew exactly where a body failed and had no reason to hesitate.

Garland gritted his teeth and reached beneath his tunic, fumbling at the copper glyph card on his lanyard. “Just—just a second—” he whispered, staggering toward a wall glyph.

But before he reached it, the glyphs flickered… then went dark.

The command vanished. Pressure blinked away like fog in a gust. Everyone gasped. Bodies sagged as breath rushed back in.

The elves stirred first. Uscoshi and Kitamar both groaned softly as they came to.

Kitamar moved immediately, flinging a hidden blade into the last guard closest to her. Uscoshi followed with a precise kick to another’s neck. Joe and Mercedes stepped up beside Mac—Joe driving a fist into one guard’s jaw, Mercedes sweeping the legs from another and slamming him down.

A ripple passed down the corridor as just one strip of ceiling lights flickered violet, like a pulse of quiet thought. Rose’s eyes narrowed.

Rose muttered, “That wasn’t Garland.”

Mercedes spat blood. “Our helper. Has to be.”

No one replied. But the hair stood up on Joe’s arms, and even Garland paused a beat before he moved again.

The Thorn soldiers faltered, clearly surprised. That gave the Tharnens and their allies their opening.

Joseph said nothing. His eyes were already narrowing. He was calculating the Thorn formation, identifying chokepoints, blind spots. While the paladins burned with fury, he grew stiller. Like ice thickening on a river.

No time for speeches, he thought. No time for mercy, either.

Joe caught a glimpse of Mercedes taking out her opponent with a sweep and stomp that would’ve made Pa proud. He almost called out—but she was already moving, fierce and fast. Then Mercedes suddenly caught herself on the wall, breath shallow. Joe raised his crossbow and fired point-blank into her attacker’s exposed thigh, pinning him to the wall.

Later, he’d joke about it. Right now, he just wanted to make damn sure she stayed on her feet.

Uscoshi and Kitamar shot past him. The elven sisters moved like wind and shadow, blades and staff flashing. One Thorn staggered, chest opening red. Another collapsed, clawing at his throat. Kitamar adjusted her grip on the staff, and a foot and a half of steel emerged from the end, turning it into a fearsome pike.

Mercedes drove a boot into a soldier’s chest, then reversed her grip and slashed his throat. “Keep moving!” She raised her face and let loose the Ranger’s grito.

The paladins were already past them. They were the butcher’s grinders. Cold and methodical. Fed by implacable will and faith.

Bryce went first. Hefting a fallen Thorn’s blade in one hand and his sword in the other, he moved without restraint. A soldier rushed him; Bryce caught the strike on his forearm, then drove the sword down through the man’s knee. He turned, roared, and kicked him into the wall hard enough to break bone.

Inez dropped to all fours. “I can do all things… He strengthens me!” She lunged low, flipping one soldier, slamming her knee into another’s face. Blood burst as bone shattered. Her hands found a baton, and she rose with it in her offhand. An arc of electricity jumped between the baton and her sword.

Dorrin waded in last. A button pressed on his mace, and spikes emerged from the weapon, changing it to a morningstar. A stun baton struck his shoulder and sparked, but he didn’t flinch. He grabbed the weapon mid-swing, wrenched it free, and slammed the wielder’s face into the floor. “You serve false masters,” he said softly. “They will not save you.”

The Thorn leader barked new orders: tighten the formation, bring them down. But his men hesitated. Some were backing away. One dropped his weapon and ran.

The corridor exploded into chaos. Leather armor met pre-Scouring plating, short blades clashed with cleavers and swords, and the air filled with screams and the metallic stink of blood.

Joseph directed them with clipped gestures and short commands. Joe fired his crossbow from cover, cutting down two Thorns before they closed. Rose stood before him with her cleaver and long knife, each motion clean and deliberate. One Thorn lunged at her. She stepped inside and drove the blade up under the helmet rim with a practiced hand.

Mercedes guarded Mac’s flank, the two of them turning a breakaway squad into a pile of broken limbs.

The Thorns faltered again. They hadn’t expected this. Too late. The paladins burned now, restraint gone, judgment already in motion.

Inez grabbed one by the shoulder, spun him into a wall, and struck his temple with an open palm. The man crumpled. She and Bryce then flanked the last squad as Dorrin turned and came up the middle. It was twelve-on-three. But they weren’t evenly matched. They weren’t fighting under the same rules anymore.

Bryce struck first, attacking a Thorn soldier with a flying tackle and shattering the man’s baton arm with a single punch.

Dorrin deflected one blade with his bracer, slipped past a second strike, and drove the head of his morningstar up under the chin strap with bone-cracking force. His leather bracers deflected glancing blows, but precision was survival.

Mercedes and Joe now fought back-to-back. Joe dodged a soldier’s sword and fired point-blank into his armpit seam, cutting him down. He didn’t remember deciding to move. Mercedes caught another with her blade across the hamstring and finished him with a thrust to the ribs.

Rose flanked a struggling Uscoshi and slammed her cleaver across a Thorn’s exposed neck, dropping him. She gripped the cleaver like she was back in her kitchen, carving meat for Sunday roast. The Thorn didn’t even scream before he dropped. The armor was old. Superior, yes, but it still had weak points. And the Tharnens were finding them.

Joseph pulled his blade out of an attacker, and then grabbed the torso, letting the corpse draw a second attacker’s swing. He flowed inside the mistake and ended it in one cut.

Uscoshi vaulted off the wall, caught a Thorn’s helmet in both hands, and twisted. The sickening crunch echoed.

Kitamar drove her pike straight into another’s side, snarling as she pushed until the man crumpled.

More Thorns stumbled. Their line gave way.

It wasn’t a battle. It was a reckoning.

The Thorn line broke. Their formation crumbled, boots slipping in blood, weapons falling from shaking hands. For a heartbeat, the chamber belonged to the Tharnens.

Then the scream came. Angry and shrill.

From the left tunnel, fresh boots thundered. It was more soldiers, in heavier gear. These squads didn’t hesitate. No confusion. No fear. Reinforcements had arrived.

And they weren’t all human.