The choke point was a bridge. Twenty feet of stone spanning a chasm where the river ran black and foul. Beyond it, the refugee column—three hundred souls, maybe more. Children. Elderly. The ones who couldn’t fight.

Behind Cassian, the corrupted soldiers came like a tide.

He stood at the center of the bridge, his radiant focus crystal pulsing against his chest, and tried to calculate how many seconds he could buy.

Not enough. Never enough.

The first wave hit him at a run—six men in rusted armor, eyes gone milky-white with corruption, mouths open in soundless screams. They moved wrong, joints bending at angles that shouldn’t work, but they moved fast.

Cassian thrust his palm forward. “Radiant Burst!”

Light erupted from his hand. Searing, white-hot, the kind of brightness that carved after-images into your vision. Three of the corrupted soldiers caught the blast full in the chest. They fell, twitching. His mana reserves—depleted by a quarter just from that one spell.

He drew his mace—blessed silver, inscribed with glyphs that gleamed in the half-light—and met the closest soldier’s charge. The corrupted thing grabbed Cassian’s arm with fingers that had too many joints, started pulling him close.

“Light’s Rebuke!” Point-blank range. His mace flared brilliant gold. The radiant energy burned through the soldier’s grip, left charred stumps where fingers had been.

Cassian’s throat felt like he’d swallowed broken glass. Every spell scorched him from the inside. That was the price—radiance purified, but it burned. The human body wasn’t meant to channel that much holy fire.

---

“Radiant Ward!” Cassian planted his mace on the stone, and light spilled out in a semi-circle across the bridge. The first corrupted soldier hit it at full speed. Flesh sloughed from bone. Bone turned to ash.

The next three hit it together. The ward held. Barely. Cassian felt it through the mace—the strain, the pressure of corrupted force pushing against blessed light. His hands burned. He looked down and saw smoke rising from his palms. The silver was white-hot.

He couldn’t let go. If he let go, the ward collapsed. Behind him, beyond the bridge, he heard children crying. Hold. Just hold.

His mana was at half. Then a quarter. Blood ran from both nostrils. His head felt like it was splitting open. And then—movement to his left. A corrupted soldier climbing over the bridge’s edge. It had gone into the chasm, used the bridge’s supports to flank him.

Smart. Too smart. Corruption wasn’t supposed to be tactical.

Cassian released the mace. The ward collapsed. He spun, drove his fist into the flanker’s face. The soldier’s head exploded. Then the wave hit the bridge. His mana—empty. The crystal against his chest was dark, inert.

The corrupted soldiers rushed him. Cassian swung his mace on empty reserves. One grabbed the weapon, yanked it from his blistered hands. Another tackled him. Cold fingers wrapped around his throat.

---

Then someone shouted—a woman’s voice, rough and furious—and an axe blade split the corrupted soldier’s skull.

Mirelle Thornheart. Mercenary, twice his age, and the closest thing this refugee column had to a real warrior. She hauled him up with one hand, her axe dripping in the other.

“You look like shit, priest,” she said.

“Can’t… can’t channel…”

“Then don’t channel. Fight.” She shoved a dagger into his hand. “Pointy end goes in the other guy.”

No radiance. No holy fire. Just steel and blood and the ugly work of survival. When they finally broke the corrupted line, Cassian collapsed against the bridge’s railing, hands shaking.

“How many made it across?” he asked.

“Most of them. Thanks to you.”

The burns were already blistering. He’d need weeks to recover. Might never channel as strongly again. Radiance left scars—inside and out. But the children had made it across. That had to be enough.

It had to be.