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It caught the murderous red glow of the Mouth and turned a molten, angelic, radiant gold.

An Aurean going full tilt was a spectacle, and Kat could never tear her eyes away.

Around her neck, Mira’s ten tokens gleamed—some for speed and power, some for the radiance that blazed from her sword, and one in particular that lightened her mass, letting her move like a firework when the occasion arose.

Since her time in the chapel this morning, she’d clearly maintained perfect attunement, chaining the power of all ten together to multiply the effect of each tenfold.

If that focus slipped, even for a minute, it would take the centurion at least a half an hour to put it back together again.

She was a miracle to watch in battle, and as the ranks re-formed, Kat could barely keep her eyes on the point of her spear as the decade braced to catch any thrall who slipped past the brawl playing out ahead of their line.

Mira came down hard on the demon, her sword searing deep into the meat of its ashen red shoulder.

It howled, tossing its head, and its horns caught the side of her torso, crunching against the gleaming, battered plate armor she wore.

The hit sent her rolling right to the feet of the century, her golden blond battle braids spilling from her helmet as she spat dirt and sprang to her feet.

The shock knight was a smart one. It knew not to give her a second to breathe.

Mira tried to brace, to catch the oncoming blow and counter it with every ounce of strength she’d cultivated into her tokens.

To her credit, she managed to snag the horns aimed at her throat and root her feet before they closed the distance.

But the demon’s momentum was relentless, and though she dug deep ruts into the already-churned earth, it shunted her back.

Back into the fore.

The ranks split for Mira again, but not on purpose.

The fore dissolved into a messy tangle of limbs struggling to get out of the way, that famous Telrusian war discipline blown back like a bough in a storm.

Somewhere in the jumble, Mira’s glowing sword flashed again, plunging into demon flesh.

All thoughts of food left Kat’s mind entirely at the stench.

The demon twisted, and no amount of host-granted lightness could deaden the wrecking ball Mira made in her heavy armor as her foe smashed her through the ranks of her soldiers. Kat lost her footing. Lost her spear. Nearly lost her wits as something cracked her hard across her helm.

“Re-form,” Mira snapped. “Get back in line, you fucking—”

Kat hauled to her knees. The chaos in her periphery felt far too distant. The line. Where was the line?

There. Two full yards from where she’d landed.

Which was another two yards from where her spear had endedup.

Which was barely any distance at all from the feet of the nearest thralls.

Kat’s fist closed around the Light of Angels token swinging from her neck, the sun sigil grinding into the roughened calluses on her palm.

She was an Aurean in name only. She’d never learned to channel angelic power through the token she wore, and even if she had, its light alone was never going to save her.

She held it anyway. She was about to die, and she wanted her mom, and this was the closest she was going to get.

“Kat!”

The shout split through her haze, as Emory’s voice always tended to. Her head snapped up to find a thrall bearing down on her. Her other fist sealed around nothing but air. Fists would have to do, then. She held them up, squaring to the lunging thrall.

Kat was expecting it to knock the wind out of her, but instead the thing that took her breath away was the soldier who threw himself between her and the mindless, slavering husk.

Emory hit the thrall in a full-body tackle, his shield knocking it back a yard as he brought his shortsword up to catch the next one approaching in the gut.

Kat’s brain found its foothold in the sight.

He’d broken the line. He’d come for her. The absolute fool.

She couldn’t let it be for nothing.

Kat dove for her spear, coming up in a roll as she swept it in a wide arc that snapped the first ankle it found and sent the attached thrall toppling into its fellows.

Behind her, the decade was shouting their heads off, a wall of tumultuous noise that totaled to Get your ass back in line.

They needed their hinge. She wasn’t equipped to take on a horde solo.

But she wasn’t solo. Kat’s back found Emory’s, and her muscle memory locked in.

They’d drilled this before a thousand times.

Telrusian tactics on the smallest scale imaginable.

A century of two. Shield and spear in perfect harmony.

And yet, it wasn’t that perfect harmony, that dream of battle, that Kat was thinking of as she flew into motion, desperately plunging her spear into whatever flesh would take it.

It was the messy tangle of last night, the imperfect joy of it, the way she’d thought, If this is the end of everything I fought for, at least we had this.

“The devil-loving fuck do you two think you’re doing?” Mira’s ragged voice howled from somewhere above them. Kat didn’t dare look up. Any spare glance now was just asking for a thrall to spring into her lapse in focus.

She probably should have. It would have helped her notice the shock knight had set its sights on easier prey than an Aurean.

The demon plowed into them, turning them from toy soldiers to rag dolls in the blink of an eye.

Kat’s brain lagged again, the pain and terror struggling to catch up to her until the moment she tried to draw her next breath and found she couldn’t—not with the shock knight’s weight bearing down on her.

Something twitched beneath her back. It was probably Emory.

This, then, was how it must end. The shock knight rearing back off them, its horrifically huge fist cocked back for the blow that would finish it.

The thralls crowding in at the edge of her periphery, hungry glints in their eyes.

Her centurion closing at Aurean-fast speed and still too slow.

Her decade watching in terror. Her battle partner stirring feebly, unable to do anything but accept the death he’d volunteered for when he enlisted.

Kat hadn’t signed up for this, hadn’t chosen this death, but she could choose how she met it. She fought to keep her eyes open.

So she didn’t miss a single second of the meteor streaking overhead.

The light scored across her vision so blindingly that for a moment she was certain this was it, this was death, this was the hosts welcoming her with open arms and golden radiance. But her body was still in an unconscionable amount of pain, and no blow was coming down to put her out of her misery.

The shock knight’s face was tipped skyward, its mouth hanging open. The thralls cowered, covering their eyes.

The demon came unstuck. Kat braced for the blow, but instead it shoved off them, doing her shattered ribs no favors, and broke into a sprint like a startled deer bolting, tearing through thralls as it cut a line clean across the battlefield in the direction of the citadel.

Whatever the shock knight thought it could accomplish, it was already too late.

The meteor struck the citadel with little fanfare.

From this distance, it was difficult to tell, but it seemed to have vanished into one of the looming arches that crowned the highest tower—the ones from which the High King of Hell was sometimes spotted watching over his minions’ foul work.

The noise of battle fell away. Every living soul held its breath.

The next burst of light put the meteor to shame. In a blink, it had washed the battlefield in golden glory and vanished just as quickly, spilling from every crevice of the citadel and intensified by every obsidian facet of it. In its wake, Kat swore she could hear the toll of angelic bells.

Then every thrall on the field slumped like a puppet with its strings cut.

The noise came back all at once, a confused warble working its way toward a roar from the ranks as some wondered what had just happened, some voiced a justified suspicion, and others skipped right ahead to screaming in triumph.

Kat rolled sideways, regretting it instantly, and found Mira toeing one of the thralls, then prodding her sword deep into its flesh in a way Kat found distasteful.

But live thralls never passed up an opportunity to scream over every little injury.

This one was grave-silent.

Beneath the jumble of the Telrusian confusion, a shudder built like the rumble of a stampede.

Even though it felt like a knife was twisting in her side, Kat shoved herself upright, her pain-glazed vision snaring on the distant lip of the Mouth.

Either she was hallucinating—not impossible—or it was moving.

Her eyes latched onto the pinprick of the shock knight that had just beat the ever-loving shit out of her.

Every demon on the field sprinted for the Mouth.

A tidal wave of bodies flowed out of the citadel proper, demons pouring from every opening like ants whose colony had just been flooded.

They flung themselves into the Mouth, plunging down its interplanar throat without a second of hesitation.

And the Mouth was getting smaller. As its shoreline receded, the citadel foundation that sat atop it began to crumble away.

The whole structure lurched like a drunk, then bent like a drunk trying to tie his boots, then gave a final inebriated heave and lost its constitution entirely as it toppled into the Mouth.

Just before it crossed the rim, five sparks of light rocketed from the part that had formerly been its precipice, arcing high over the chaos beneath them.

One rose above the rest with a showy little flourish of a starburst, timed impeccably with the moment the Mouth sealed, its murderous, molten glow fading to a cool, stony basalt.

Kat was in an outrageous amount of pain.

Reality bled fuzzy at the edges. But she could have sworn—though distance made it somewhat difficult to tell, and the legions’ confused noise wasn’t helping—that the rising star, blazing over the battlefield, shouted something that sounded suspiciously close to “You’re welcome! ”