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Chapter 1037: Massacre on the Snow-Covered Plains

At Roland’s request, each official spoke their oath aloud.

It was the first time any of them had been asked to do such a thing on a formal occasion. They had said the words before — loyal to the King, dedicated to your duty — but saying them privately, as convention, was different from standing before a crowd and speaking them into the air. The words gained weight as they left the room’s mouths. They rang against the ceiling and came back changed.

Roland watched it happen and understood: they were becoming something. A body. A single, unified thing.

“Now that you have passed the ceremony,” he said, rising from the throne and turning to the map behind him, “let us get started. We must eliminate the demon threat in the Fertile Plains and secure the northwestern approaches to Neverwinter — so that humanity can begin returning to the plains, and we can lay the groundwork for what comes next.”

The previous two defeats had left humanity with its back to the sea. Moving west was not a strategic option but a necessity — for resources, for position, for the long game against the demons. The Taquila ruins had to come under First Army control. Without access to their God’s stones, the demons could not build new obelisks. Graycastle’s borders could expand. The choice between continuing development and preparing a counteroffensive could wait for better information.

Humans were not constrained by the red mist.

And with every advancement in technology, the First Army’s effective range grew.

“Yes, Your Majesty!” The room answered in one voice.

After the meeting, Roland returned to his office.

Nightingale was already there, red tea steaming on the desk, a piece of dried fish dangling from one corner of her mouth. She was leaning against the wall with the particular relaxation of someone who had nothing to prove.

“Good work,” Roland said, picking up the tea.

“Ah — thank you.” She sounded surprised, which meant she was pleased.

He sipped the tea and found himself thinking about what Anna had said last night. An agreement. He had held the question at arm’s length through the ceremony and the banquet and the wedding and whatever the night had been — he’d held it all day. Nightingale had been present for both the inauguration and the evening celebration. There had been no visible moment when any agreement could have been fulfilled.

It still made no sense. And asking directly was not going to produce an answer.

“What’s wrong?” He heard her voice at his ear — she had moved without sound, the way she always did. “Do you think I look good today?”

“No — I mean, not—” He took a quick sip to cover his expression. “I mean, you look fine.”

“So do I look good, or not?” She leaned down, bringing her face level with his, close enough that he caught the faint sweetness of her hair. “Your heart is in turmoil,” she observed.

Before he could form a response, she had already straightened and returned to the wall, chewing her dried fish with the air of someone who had extracted exactly what she came for.

Roland shook his head.

But the thing that settled in him, under the mild exasperation, was simpler than exasperation. She was still herself. Exactly herself.

That was enough.

Above the snow-covered Barbarian Lands, Western Region.

“What’s our current speed?”

No answer.

Lightning could barely open her mouth. The headwind at this velocity would have shredded her tongue if she’d tried to speak normally. She synchronized with her magic power instead — the cold dropped away in an instant, the wind’s roar softened to something bearable.

“Maggie.” She tried again. “Speed?”

The pigeon extracted her head from Lightning’s shirt with visible reluctance. “Around twice a gray eagle’s dive speed, coo.”

A gray eagle in a full hunting stoop reached roughly a hundred fifty kilometers per hour. Nothing it targeted could dodge it. Lightning was at three hundred — twice that — and the number did not fill her with the satisfaction it should have.

Three hundred kilometers per hour. The ceiling, without synchronization.

Since her ability had evolved, she had spent months learning to manage it — learning which discomforts she could push through and which ones meant she was about to lose consciousness. Roland had helped: new equipment, wind goggles, double-layer thermal clothing, a pack stripped down to minimum weight. Every adjustment had pushed her record higher.

And still three hundred remained the barrier her body would not cross.

The other problem was magic expenditure. Synchronized flight drained her reserves faster than anything else she did. She had learned to be exact about it — a thing that did not come naturally.

Lightning found herself, not for the first time, envying Ashes’s body. The Extraordinary was simply built differently. Every witch’s ability was fixed at birth; the only variable was discipline. When they returned to Neverwinter, perhaps she could ask Lorgar about training regimens for physical conditioning.

“Heads up, coo!” Maggie’s head popped up again. “We’re a hundred kilometers from the Taquila ruins!”

Lightning closed her eyes briefly, felt the level of magic in her chest, and smiled.

“Then let’s give the demons a surprise.”

After months of adaptation and training, His Majesty had finally agreed to let her do actual reconnaissance — let her satisfy what she called her explorer’s cravings and what he called her scout request. Even at her slowest, she would leave any pursuit behind. She had enough magic left to split evenly: half for the run, half for an emergency exit. Two minutes of effective time over the target. She had to be deliberate.

She remembered the ice sculpture. Three years ago in the Barbarian Lands — her first real encounter with what lived under Taquila. She had been frozen solid by it, and not by the cold. Fear that ran deeper than thought.

But fear comes from the unknown, and demons were no longer unknown.

“Lightning — full throttle!”

Maggie’s head disappeared under fabric.

Lightning opened up and the world changed. The headwind climbed from a scream to a bass rumble, then past hearing entirely. The plains below blurred into something molten, flowing white as the ground of a dream. Speed pressed on her from every direction at once.

Then: a boom. Silence. The gap between her and the sound behind her — that moment she had learned to recognize and never grow tired of.

She was the one who left sound trailing.

After a few minutes, Taquila rose on the horizon.

What she saw stopped her.

The land around the ruins had changed color. Brown and red where it should have been white — no, not earth, not meltwater. Flesh. Thousands of demonic beasts, packed so densely they looked from altitude like a single moving thing, like a black tide rolling across the snow. They crashed against something at the ruins in waves.

They were crashing against the demons.

Before their bodies broke apart.

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