Chapter 638

From North, a massive pulse, Torvares’ side of the assault, heavy ranks and disciplined movement. East, lighter but fast, like an adventurer-heavy swarm surging and collapsing in bursts. South, a steady grind, probably a counterpart pushing methodically into the teeth of the nest.

Four jaws closing. Rokram was being bitten from every side at once, and the city

shuddered

in response. For a moment, Ludger’s thoughts flicked outward, an unwanted habit, like checking a wound with your tongue.

How’s Dad doing? How’s the northern camp holding?

And then, sharper:

Viola. She joined them, didn’t she?

He pictured her grin, the one that made nobles nervous and soldiers feel like they’d already won. He pictured her stubbornness, the way she treated danger like a personal toy. He wondered if she was on the northern line right now, laughing in the face of arrows, daring the ants to shoot straighter.

Then the tunnel’s end arrived. The thought snapped off. Ludger stopped for half a heartbeat, palm hovering near the wall.

Then he moved again, faster. He reached out and pressed his hand to the tunnel’s side. To the others, it looked… unreal. Not like careful sculpting. Not like a miner carving stone with patient skill.

It looked like Ludger was touching dirt and

deciding it should become something else.

The wall rippled under his palm. Earth compacted, folded, and broke into clean, rectangular chunks, like invisible hands were cutting blocks out of a loaf of clay. Tens of meters ahead cleared in seconds, the tunnel extending like a throat swallowing distance.

Harold’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not even trying to save mana.”

“No,” Ludger said without looking back. “Saving mana is for people who plan to fight with it.”

Selene barked out a quiet laugh. “That’s my kind of poetry.”

Aleia watched the blocks of earth form with a faint, uneasy admiration. “It’s like watching someone… edit reality.”

Cor’s gaze was heavy, thoughtful. “And you’re doing it fast because you

want

them to notice the wrong thing.”

Ludger didn’t answer, but Cor wasn’t wrong. The battle above was the curtain. The tunnel was the knife. And the faster they reached the center, the less time the nest had to adapt.

Seismic Sense kept feeding him the city’s heartbeat, movements thickening in some sections, thinning in others. Ant patrols crawling through streets. Underground chambers vibrating with activity like a lung inhaling.

He searched for a pocket of emptiness. A blind spot. A place where the ground didn’t twitch with passing legs. Ludger slowed. He pressed his palm to the floor this time, eyes half-lidded as he listened through stone and soil.

Nothing heavy. Nothing clustered. Just the distant, constant churn deeper inside the city, the nest’s true mass.

“This is it,” he said.

Harold leaned in slightly. “Quiet enough?”

“Quiet enough,” Ludger confirmed. “Not safe. Quiet.”

Selene rolled her shoulders. “I can work with quiet.”

Aleia drew an arrow and nocked it without raising her bow. “Up or forward?”

Ludger’s hand shifted, spreading flat against the ground.

“Up.”

He took a breath, felt the vibrations of arrows slamming into shields far above, felt the thunder of spells cracking against the walls, and then he began to open the path upward.

Stone Flow surged. Earth softened, then obeyed. A circular section of packed ground separated cleanly, like a plug being lifted from a bottle. It rose in slow silence and hovered for a moment above Ludger’s hand, suspended by nothing visible.

Then he eased it aside. Cold air bled down into the tunnel. Not fresh air. City air. Dust, rot, and the faint sour tang of insect bodies. Ludger didn’t hesitate.

He widened the shaft another meter, smoothing the walls so they wouldn’t crumble. He carved footholds in a spiral. He listened again, confirming the vibrations stayed thin. Then he looked back at the team, eyes calm and sharp.

“We’re inside Rokram now,” he said.

Selene grinned in the dark. Harold’s expression hardened. Aleia’s gaze went distant and lethal. Cor’s staff steadied like a judge’s gavel.

Above them, the empire screamed and bled. Below it, the Lionsguard climbed into the city’s ribs.

Ludger’s head broke the surface first. Not into daylight, into dust.

He emerged through the hole like a ghost crawling out of a grave, shoulders sliding past crumbling stone and splintered floorboards. The air up here was colder than the tunnel, stale and old, layered with soot and rot and that faint acidic bite that clung to anything the ants had claimed.

He froze for half a second, letting Seismic Sense bloom outward. Stone. Wood. Empty rooms. Collapsed beams. A staircase that had given up days ago. Beyond the walls… movement. Too much movement.

He was inside an abandoned building. The kind that used to hold families and merchants and arguments about taxes. Now it held nothing but silence and dust, because anything living had learned to leave.

Ludger eased himself fully out of the hole and stepped aside, pressing his palm to the floor once more. The vibrations hit him like a wave. Feet. Thousands of them. A constant, crawling tide. He didn’t need eyes for it. The city was

alive

under his skin.

He moved immediately, low and controlled, guiding his team toward a corner where collapsed furniture and a fallen support beam created a narrow pocket of cover. Not perfect. Not safe. But it wasn’t a straight line of sight to the outside, and that mattered when you were sneaking into a nest that could drown you in bodies.

Harold came up next, shoulders scraping stone as he hauled himself out. Selene followed like she’d been born in tunnels, grin gone now, replaced by a predator’s focus. Aleia emerged last, silent as a thought, bow already in her hand. Cor climbed out with calm patience, staff held close to avoid scraping.

Ludger gave them a short signal,

down, stay tight

, and they obeyed without question.

Only then did he edge toward a window.

. Dust filmed the curtain thick enough to write a confession in. Ludger peered through the opening without exposing his full profile, letting his eyes take in narrow slices.

Broken streets. Rubble piles. Shadows shifting where shadows shouldn’t. Even without seeing much, they could hear it. The footsteps. Not individual steps, impossible to separate.

It was a rolling, layered sound, like rain made of claws. Clicks and scrapes and the occasional sharper

tap

when chitin met stone. It came from alleys. From holes. From under collapsed wagons. From drains. From cracks in the road.

Everywhere.

Selene leaned in just enough for her whisper to reach him. “We close enough?”

Ludger didn’t take his eyes off the street. “Yes.”

Harold’s hand tightened around the hilt of his weapon. “Then where’s the problem?”

Ludger’s voice stayed flat. Practical. Almost bored, because if he let emotion into it, it would spread.

“The center is still packed,” he said. “This place is just… less packed.”

Aleia’s gaze sharpened. “How packed?”

Ludger exhaled softly, counting vibrations, density, overlap, the way the city’s ground never truly went still.

“There should be more than one hundred thousand ants in Rokram,” he said. “At least.”

The words didn’t echo. They didn’t need to. Silence slammed down anyway. Not because they were disciplined. Because their brains had to take a moment to accept what he’d just said. A hundred thousand. That wasn’t a swarm. That was a natural disaster with legs.

Harold’s expression went hard and distant, like he was already adjusting his idea of survival. Cor’s eyes narrowed, the weight of old experience suddenly meeting something it had never been built to handle. Aleia’s mouth tightened into a line so thin it could cut. Selene, Selene didn’t grin anymore.

For the first time since they’d stepped into the tunnel, she looked genuinely impressed in the worst possible way. The footsteps outside never stopped. The ants didn’t care that the empire was tearing into them from four directions. They didn’t care that bodies were falling on walls, in streets, in open squares. They just kept moving. Working. Obeying.

And in that heavy, stunned silence, Ludger pulled back from the window and turned to the team, voice dropping even lower.

“That’s why we’re not here to fight them,” he said. “We’re here to make them…

stop

.”

Harold didn’t waste time letting the number rot in their heads.

He looked at each of them once, slow, deliberate, like he was counting tools on a table before a job. Then he spoke in the same tone he used on the training field when someone was about to get hurt if they didn’t listen.

“Positions,” he said.

His finger lifted, pointing with quiet authority.

“I take the lead with Ludger,” Harold continued. “He stays behind my shoulder, close enough to act, far enough that a random bite doesn’t end the mission.”

Ludger didn’t argue. He just shifted his stance, already sliding into the rhythm of it. Harold’s hand moved again, indicating the shadowed corridor that led deeper into the building’s guts.

“Aleia, you cover the back.”

Aleia’s eyes didn’t change, but the air around her did, like the room accepted that anything coming from behind would be met with a clean, surgical end. She gave one small nod, already stepping into position with her bow angled downward, arrow nocked, ears tuned to the city’s endless crawl.

“Cor,” Harold said, “right flank.”

Cor planted his staff lightly, not as a crutch, but as a statement. His gaze flicked to the right-hand doorway, then the broken wall beyond it. “Understood,” he murmured. Calm as stone. Dangerous as a collapsing cliff.

Harold’s finger finished the circle.

“Selene. Left flank.”

Selene rolled her neck once, the motion casual, but her posture tightened into readiness. “Finally,” she whispered, like she’d been waiting to be unleashed. Her grin returned, but smaller now, sharpened by the stakes.

Harold let the formation settle for a heartbeat. Then his voice dropped another notch.

“We advance nonstop,” he said. “No detours. No wasted moments. No chasing stragglers. If it’s in the way, we cut through it and keep moving.”

He looked at Ludger directly.

“Until we find the target,” Harold continued, “and then Ludger fights it.”

No “we.” No shared glory. No illusions. Because if Ludger burned himself out before the real threat, they would all die in this city-shaped nest and the empire would never even understand why. Harold’s gaze swept the group again, hard and honest.

“If one side falters,” he said, “we’re screwed. This doesn’t work if even one lane collapses. We’re a spear tip. Not an army.”

Selene lifted both hands a little, palms up, theatrical in the dim. “No pressure.”

Harold didn’t smile. He didn’t blink.

“Good,” he said. “Treat it like pressure. Pressure keeps you sharp.”

Then he leaned closer to Ludger, voice low enough that it felt private even in the silence.

“And you,” Harold added, “don’t work too hard before we find the target. Don’t go throwing mana around because you feel uncomfortable. Save it for what matters.”

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