Chương 33: Chapter 34: The Weight of Water

The rain started before dawn and never properly stopped. By midday the eastern trenches had become long wounds of churned mud and black water stretching beneath the walls of Dunmere. Men stood knee-deep in freezing sludge hauling broken barricades upright while engineers hammered support stakes into collapsing drainage channels with the desperation of people trying to repair a sinking ship during the storm itself.

Every section of the eastern defence smelled of wet timber, blood, smoke, and exhausted bodies pushed beyond sensible limits. I had stopped feeling clean three days earlier. Mud coated my boots permanently now. My cloak carried the greasy scent of trench fires and scavenger blood no matter how often rain soaked through it. Even sleep no longer separated one day from the next properly. The defenders rotated in shifts because Bren forced them to, but everyone understood the truth beneath the system.

Dunmere lacked enough men to maintain proper rotations anymore. Rest had become something stolen rather than assigned. A horn sounded somewhere beyond the eastern palisade. Not alarm yet. Warning. I looked up from the drainage ditch where Wade and I hauled reinforcement planks through waist-deep mud while Halden shouted instructions at labour crews farther uphill near the spillway braces.

"Left side's sinking again," one militia runner yelled through the rain.

"Everything's sinking," Wade muttered.

"That's what mud does." Halden ignored him completely. The half-dwarf stood halfway down the trench slope with water streaming from his beard while he pointed furiously toward the lower floodgate supports. Even soaked through, he somehow managed to look more irritated than exhausted.

"Brace the channel, not the wall!" he shouted.

"If the runoff backs up we lose the entire eastern line!"

"We're already losing the line!" someone shouted back.

"No," Halden snapped.

"You're losing height. That's different." I dragged another timber beam through the mud while Bren approached along the trench line carrying a spear darkened almost black from repeated use. The older guard's face looked drawn beneath the rain, exhaustion hollowing the skin beneath his eyes.

"Movement beyond the reeds," Bren said.

"Large numbers."

"How large?" Wade asked.

"Enough." That was all anyone needed. The eastern trenches had originally been designed as flood barriers decades earlier, long before beast waves became common enough to shape the town's survival around them. Halden had spent most of the previous week modifying those old channels into defensive spillways capable of slowing charges from the marshlands. In dry weather the design might even have worked properly. But the Greywash never respected plans.

Water poured steadily down the trench walls now, weakening the supports faster than repair crews could reinforce them. Mud slid constantly beneath boots and barricades alike. Every strike against the outer wall loosened another section somewhere farther along the line. And still the beasts came. The first scavengers emerged through the rain just after midday, low shapes racing through reeds slick with floodwater. They moved faster than earlier attacks. More coordinated. Less frantic.

Instead of charging directly toward the walls, several packs veered toward weaker drainage sections immediately upon sighting the trenches. Halden saw it first.

"They know the runoff points," he said. Wade looked up sharply.

"Beasts don't know engineering."

"No," Halden replied quietly while watching the movement patterns beyond the reeds.

"But something does." The horn sounded again. This time the alarm followed. The eastern trench line erupted into motion. Militia scrambled through the mud hauling spears, shields, hooks, and oilcloth bundles while rain hammered the wooden barricades hard enough to drown smaller sounds beneath it. I climbed onto the forward trench lip beside Bren just as the second wave hit the outer channels. Scavengers first. Always scavengers first.

They threw themselves forward in dense low packs, not aiming for defenders now but for the trenches themselves. Bodies piled rapidly against sharpened stakes and drainage barriers while others clawed through the gaps beneath them. Then I understood.

"They're filling the trench." Bren's expression darkened instantly. The dead scavengers clogged runoff channels almost immediately beneath the pressure of rainwater and mud. Water stopped draining cleanly through the eastern line. Sections of trench floor began flooding within minutes as corpses jammed against support gates and narrow spillways.

"Clear the channels!" Bren roared. Too late. The second wave arrived before the first bodies stopped twitching. Barkbacks slammed into the weakened barricades with enough force to shake entire sections of the trench wall. Timber supports cracked sharply somewhere farther down the line while militia screamed warnings through the rain. I swung Ember Blade downward into the neck of the first creature reaching the trench lip beside me. The evolved axe responded instantly.

Heat surged through the weapon with violent intensity as the strike split through flesh and spine alike. Steam burst outward where rain struck the heated edge while the impact itself carried enough force to hurl the dying beast backward into the flooded trench below. Another lunged immediately after it. Then another. The battle dissolved into mud and motion. Hunter's Eye kept me alive more than skill alone.

The trench restricted movement too heavily for broad swings, forcing me into shorter brutal strikes that relied on positioning rather than momentum. Every time a beast shifted weight before lunging, Hunter's Eye caught the intention half a breath early. Knees. Throats. Balance shifts. Openings between attacks. Ember Blade punished every mistake brutally. The axe no longer felt like simple steel in my hands.

Heat moved through the haft and edge continuously now, spreading up my forearms with every strike until even the rain steaming against my skin no longer surprised me. A barkback crashed through the barricade three sections farther down. Militia scattered backward through waist-deep mud while the creature tore one defender nearly in half before turning toward the trench interior. I moved before Bren shouted.

I crossed the flooded trench line in three heavy strides, boots sinking deep enough that black water exploded around my legs with every step. The barkback turned toward me midway through another charge. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Hunter's Eye caught the weakness immediately. The creature's left shoulder had already taken damage from the barricade impact, and its rear footing slipped fractionally deeper into the mud beneath the floodwater.

Too much weight shifted forward. Too much momentum committed before balance recovered. I stepped aside at the last possible moment and drove Ember Blade downward behind the creature's foreleg with both hands. The impact detonated heat through the weapon. The barkback screamed. Steam burst violently from the wound as the heated edge punched deep through muscle and rib. I twisted instinctively, dragging the axe sideways hard enough to tear open the creature's chest before wrenching the blade free again.

Something surged hot beneath my skin. The black veins returned. Not everywhere. Not fully. Just faint dark lines spreading briefly across the backs of my hands and wrists beneath the rainwater as Ember Blade pulsed with increasing heat. Halden saw them immediately. The engineer dropped into the trench beside me while labour crews hammered emergency support stakes behind us.

"Steel strain," Halden said loudly over the battle noise before anyone else could speak.

"High conductive blends do that sometimes." Wade blinked at him.

"Black veins?"

"Heat saturation through the nervous system." Halden pointed toward Ember Blade.

"That thing's engineered strangely. Probably rare alloy work somewhere in the merge." I almost corrected him before realising Halden was giving the others an explanation on purpose. The half-dwarf looked directly at me while another barkback slammed into the trench wall nearby.

"You're lucky you've got that endurance passive," Halden continued.

"Most Iron fighters would collapse from this kind of sustained stress." Labour-Hardened. The explanation settled easily because everyone already believed it. Or wanted to. I wanted to believe it too, but the memory of the woman in the ravine returned with the heat still crawling beneath my skin. She had looked at the hidden heartwood as though it was not treasure but evidence, and warned me that some materials did not wait to be owned. At the time, I had thought she meant the core in my pack.

Now, with black veins fading slowly beneath the rain and Halden building explanations around them faster than anyone could ask proper questions, I was less certain the warning had stopped there. Bren drove his spear through a scavenger's throat nearby before glancing toward my hands briefly.

"Can you still fight?"

"Yes."

"Then keep fighting." The trench collapsed twenty minutes later. Not fully. Partially. Enough. The eastern runoff barrier gave way beneath accumulated flood pressure just as another scavenger wave struck the clogged channels. Mud walls burst sideways in a roaring wave of black water and bodies that swept defenders off their footing across nearly thirty yards of trench line. I hit the mud hard enough to lose grip on Ember Blade briefly. Cold water swallowed me instantly. Then claws hit my shoulder.

Hunter's Eye reacted before panic properly formed. I twisted beneath the water and caught the scavenger's throat one-handed while searching blindly for the axe buried somewhere nearby beneath corpses and collapsing timber. Mud filled my mouth. Rain hammered the floodwater surface overhead. Another body struck me from behind. Then my fingers closed around the axe haft. Heat exploded outward the moment I pulled Ember Blade free. The weapon responded almost hungrily now.

I surged upright through the floodwater and began killing. Later I would barely remember individual strikes clearly. The battle reduced itself into fragments beneath the rain. Steam erupting where the axe carved through flesh. Mud spraying beneath boots. Barkbacks collapsing into the trench channels while scavengers clawed over their corpses toward the defenders behind them. The heat kept building. Every swing fed it. Every kill sharpened it. Hunter's Eye no longer showed me individual movements alone.

It showed flow. Weak points. Pressure lines. Where the trench would break next. Which defenders were about to lose footing before they themselves realised it.

"Left collapse!" I shouted once before an entire barricade section failed seconds later.

"Duck!" Bren lowered himself instinctively half a heartbeat before a scavenger leapt through the rain where his head had been. The battle became survival through prediction. And still the beasts kept coming. Not frenzied. Directed. That was what unsettled Halden most. Even during the worst pressure points, the attacks focused repeatedly on structural weaknesses rather than exposed militia. Scavengers clogged runoff channels. Barkbacks targeted support stakes.

Smaller marsh predators slipped beneath barricades to sever reinforcement ropes before retreating again into the floodwater.

"Something's guiding them!" Wade shouted while hauling another wounded defender clear of the collapsing trench.

"Maybe," Bren answered. Halden's face remained grim beneath the rain.

"No. Definitely." I killed another scavenger beside the flooded spillway and felt Ember Blade shift violently in my hands. Not physically. Internally. The evolved skill strained against its own limits now after nearly an hour of uninterrupted combat. Heat rolled through my arms hard enough that steam rose continuously from the soaked leather wraps around the axe haft. The pressure built sharply. Then broke. ABILITY ADVANCED Ember Blade has advanced from Iron (mid) to Iron (late).

You now better understand condensed heat, efficient killing force, pressure-line movement, restrained bursts, and how to carry destructive momentum through narrower, cleaner strikes. This evolved ability grows through sustained close combat, controlled heat, defensive aggression, and battles where violence must be channelled rather than merely released. The advancement slammed through me like molten metal poured directly into my veins. I staggered.

Heat surged violently across my entire body before settling downward into the weapon itself. For one terrifying moment the black veins spread farther than before, branching visibly across both forearms beneath the rainwater while Ember Blade radiated enough heat that nearby mud hissed faintly around my boots. Then the surge stabilised. The axe changed immediately afterward. Not shape. Presence. The heat no longer burst outward wildly with each strike. It condensed. Focused.

Every movement suddenly felt cleaner, sharper, more efficient, as though wasted force itself had been burned away inside the evolution. A barkback lunged through the trench breach directly toward Halden. I intercepted it instinctively. One swing. That was all. Ember Blade passed through the creature's neck with terrifying smoothness before the heat burst afterward instead of during the strike. Steam erupted from the severed wound while the body collapsed sideways into the trench water still twitching.

Silence hit briefly around the immediate section of wall. Not true silence. Battle still raged farther down the line. But the defenders nearest me stopped moving for half a breath after witnessing the strike. Jory stared openly.

"Saints…" Wade looked equally unsettled.

"That's not normal." Halden studied the axe instead of me.

"Late-stage merge refinement," the engineer muttered.

"Heat retention stabilised."

"You say that like it explains anything," Wade snapped.

"It explains enough." Bren watched me carefully beneath the rain.

"You still standing?" I realised only then how exhausted I actually felt. Every muscle in my body burned. My heartbeat hammered painfully against my ribs while heat continued radiating from Ember Blade into my arms strongly enough that even the freezing rain failed to cool me properly. But I remained standing. Labour-Hardened absorbed the exhaustion like a wall absorbing floodwater. Barely. The battle lasted another hour before the remaining beasts finally withdrew back into the marshlands. Not routed. Not broken.

Withdrawn. That distinction settled heavily over the eastern line once the last scavengers vanished into the reeds beyond the flooded trenches. The defenders had technically held. The trenches had not. Three sections of eastern drainage remained collapsed entirely by dusk while half the lower barricades lay buried beneath mud, corpses, and broken support beams. Medics moved constantly through the rain beside rows of wounded militia wrapped in soaked blankets near the wall fires.

Halden stood ankle-deep in mud beside the destroyed spillway for a very long time after the fighting ended. Wade approached eventually carrying a cracked shovel across one shoulder.

"Told you mud can't be braced." Halden did not look up from the collapsed trench.

"No," he said quietly.

"But this wasn't collapse." Wade frowned.

"What do you mean?" The half-dwarf gestured toward the flooded channels where scavenger bodies still clogged the runoff points beneath the rainwater.

"That attack targeted infrastructure first." His jaw tightened slightly.

"Someone understood exactly how much pressure this line could take." Neither man spoke after that. I sat alone farther along the trench ridge with Ember Blade resting across my knees while rain hissed softly against the heated edge. Steam still drifted faintly upward from the axe despite the cold evening air. My hands hurt. The black veins had faded again beneath the skin, though the memory of them lingered unpleasantly. Halden's explanation remained plausible enough on the surface. Conductive alloy strain.

Heat saturation. Merge instability. The others clearly wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe it too. Far beyond the marshlands, faint lights flickered briefly through the mist. Signal fires. Too controlled for beasts. Too distant for militia. Bren saw them moments later beside the ruined trench line. Neither of us spoke while the lights vanished again into the Greywash dark.