Rewrite That Witch
CH1242 · Rewrite

Chapter 1242: Departure from the Northernmost Port

“Don’t push — stand in line!”

“Abandon your luggage! The King of Graycastle will feed and clothe you. If you want to live, throw it in the water!”

“Ladies and children first! Move!”

The Northernmost Port in the Kingdom of Everwinter had become a single throat trying to swallow too many things at once. Without the First Army and the lord’s guards maintaining the lanes, the refugees pressing toward the ships would have trampled each other into the planking.

The chief guard pulled his eyes away from the already-departing vessels, packed so thick with bodies that the freeboard barely cleared the water. “Captain,” he said quietly, “we can’t take them all.”

“It’s very brave of them,” Uncle Sang said, still facing forward. He was watching the horizon. Within three or four days the Red Mist had unrolled from the crest of the Impassable Mountain Range and stained the sky above them the color of dried blood. Every face in the crowd wore that color as a mask. “Coming here at this time of year. Very brave.”

Someone nearby muttered, “Captain… save a spot for me.”

Uncle Sang smiled without turning. “If Nail asked me, I’d get off the ship myself to make room for him.”

Over a month ago — fifteen days, perhaps more — the orders had come through: leave the Hermes Plateau, proceed to the city at the far north of Everwinter, conduct the immigration campaign. Nail had visibly exhaled at the assignment. Anything was better than another rotation defending the Holy City; he had grown quieter after Taquila, then communicative again once they’d shipped north. He’d thrown himself into the work the moment the Northernmost Port came into view.

The Graycastle contingent here was not the first — advance teams had already moved through the kingdom, emptying cities in advance of the migration wave. None of it had gone smoothly until the Bloody Moon rose. Rumors spread through every settlement simultaneously: the Moon meant the end of everything. When local residents looked up and saw that swollen red mass and believed the rumors, they stopped asking questions. They simply needed out.

Then things deteriorated further.

Four or five days back: the Red Mist confirmed. The same day: the First Army encountered demons. The outcome of that battle never reached them, but the advance teams had begun retreating south, and Nail’s unit received identical orders — fall back to the next port. The refugee numbers had exploded overnight. Hundreds of thousands arrived daily, pushing toward the dock with nothing left but themselves.

Nail could not abandon them. He had his men build a defensive line and sent a carrier pigeon to the rear, requesting more ships. The retreat plan slipped by days.

Uncle Sang knew the calculus: once Red Mist reports circulated widely, fewer ships would come north. The merchants the king had retained wouldn’t risk their hulls in these waters. They might promise to sail, but they would turn back before landfall. These were almost certainly the last vessels.

Nail had understood this. Which was why he’d had the men prepare explosives — both as a last measure against demon incursion, and to deny the enemy any equipment too cumbersome to carry off.

“Captain — smoke ahead!”

“Again?” Uncle Sang straightened. “Everyone, man your post!”

No witch scouts. No reliable signal network. Every warning arrived the old way — fire and shouting. It was not the first time demons had tested the Northernmost Port; their bodies already lay in stiffening knots outside the town perimeter. According to the training manual these were Mad Demons, scattered and individually unremarkable. Less formidable than the Church’s God’s Punishment Warriors, provided you caught them in the open beyond two hundred meters.

But Uncle Sang was less worried about the demons than about Nail’s next decision. Two ships could not carry these people. What the captain would do with those left behind — abandon them or try to take them south regardless — was the question that sat under every other concern like a cold stone.

Then he spotted the Mad Demon.

It stood outside the barbed wire strung across the street, watching.

The Northernmost Port had no city wall. They’d built their defensive line at the dock, and the scouts — who should have pulled back at the beacon signal and beaten the demons to the perimeter — were nowhere in sight. He frowned. The scouts were gone.

More demons appeared. Then more. The tide of them ran toward the dock in silence.

“Fire!”

Both machine gun squads opened simultaneously. Shells cratered the street. The demons, faster than they looked, scattered into the buildings. When the smoke thinned, two bodies hung in the wire. Then the snipers started on the rooflines.

This was the tactic: obstacles blocking every alley, forcing the demons into direct contact with the machine guns. The Mad Demons could not clear the debris without exposing themselves, and Uncle Sang had counted on them cutting their losses and retreating.

But today they didn’t. Today they worked the cover patiently, grinding through ammunition, pressing without urgency — as if they had been taught to wait.

They had more experience than the ones from a week ago. Someone had instructed them.

Uncle Sang had four Mark I Machine Guns, one hundred soldiers, and enough rounds for a full day of fighting. In that sense, he could afford to be patient. What he could not afford was a second front.

The north end of the dock exploded.

A wall of stone blew through the residential block — not collapsed so much as pushed through it, the stones shearing off a corner of the building as though the thing behind them simply declined to go around. It reared up on its rear limbs from the rubble.

“Spider Demon?” someone asked.

“Load the anti-demon grenade!”

Uncle Sang’s stomach fell. The manual described Spider Demons. He had studied the drawings carefully. But this was not quite what the drawing depicted. Its limbs were sheathed in thicker black stones than any Spider Demon should have carried — armor that took up nearly half its body.

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