Chapter 16: No Plan
The wall didn’t hold. Not even barely...
It wasn’t built to hold against this — canvas and sharpened stakes had been enough against wandering beasts... but not this.
**CRASH**
The first wave of Bora hit it like a rockslide given claws, and the barricade folded in three places at once with a groan of splintering wood that made even Lucas flinch.
After that, there was no line. There was no wall. There was only chaos.
A woman near the eastern gap screamed once, short and final, before a Bora’s tail took her legs out from under her and something with too many joints descended to finish what the fall started.
A man Lucas didn’t know threw himself in front of his own child, machete raised, and lasted exactly as long as it took the beast in front of him to decide he wasn’t worth the effort of killing slowly.
Fire — someone’s ability, or maybe a knocked-over cook pit caught along a row of tents and spread fast, throwing everything into orange light that made the carnage worse, painting every scream and every falling body in shades of hellfire.
Lucas stood frozen at the sight of it, watching dozens of people become a chaos of bodies and blood.
For the first time since the sky had cracked open above his college rooftop, his mind gave him absolutely nothing.
No plan. No memory to draw on—less because he hadn’t died yet and more of the fact that he couldn’t think of something against a horde of beasts....
Just noise and death, spreading outward in every direction faster than any person could track.
"Lucas!!"
Iris’ voice cut through the ringing in his ears, and he turned to find her already loosing arrows into the nearest Bora, Bertram’s machete flashing beside her and Callum throwing pale light toward anyone close enough to be saved by it.
She looked at him... and he understood the question in her face before she even shouted it.
"What’s the plan?!"
He had nothing. Nothing at all... not even a flicker of his idea lightbulb...
For the first time since this had all started — since the Makara at the lake, since the Avallion, since two Makara chasing them, since five Bora in a sealed cave Lucas had absolutely nothing to offer.
No foreknowledge. No pattern learned through dying—because he hadn’t died...
Yet...
Just an open field of chaos too large and too fast for any single mind to map, dozens of beasts moving with no order he could find, no weak point he could isolate, no sequence he could learn because there was no controlled sequence left to learn from.
"I don’t know!!" The words tore out of him raw, more honest than he wanted them to be. "I don’t have one... there’s too many... I c— I can’t!"
A Bora rolled past them close enough that Iris had to throw herself sideways to avoid its tail, and the moment of panic in her eyes was the first crack Lucas had ever seen in her composure since the night they’d met.
"Then we improvise!!" she shouted back, already rolling to her feet, bow coming back up. "Move, Lucas! Do something! Anything!"
He forced his body to move, because standing still in the middle of this was its own kind of death, and the system chimed against the chaos like it had any right to be so calm.
[Objective: Survive.]
[Survival probability: 21%]
And that was all he saw...
’Survive. Not win. Not clear the horde. Just live long enough for something... anything to change.’ he thought desperately...
Fine. Lucas resolved, [Ignition] roaring to life around both fists as he threw himself into the fray without a plan for the first time in his entire life.
If he couldn’t out-think this, he’d just have to out-last it, long enough to actually think of something...
He caught the first Bora that came for him mid-lunge, burning fist driving hard into its exposed underside on pure reflex, muscle memory built from smaller fights doing what conscious strategy couldn’t.
It shrieked and reeled, and he didn’t wait to finish it, just shoved past toward a man who’d gone down under a second creature’s weight, hauling the stranger free by the collar and driving flame into the beast’s flank until it recoiled enough to let go.
There was no elegance to any of it. No careful sequence, no predicted weak points. Just fire, desperation and the raw animal need to keep moving, keep hitting, keep dragging bodies out of the reach of claws one moment before it mattered.
An Avallion crashed down a few feet away, wings folding as it landed atop a supply tent hard enough to collapse it entirely, and the screams from underneath cutting off far too quickly....
Lucas watched it happen and couldn’t reach it in time, couldn’t do anything but file the horror away and keep fighting the beast directly in front of him, because that was the only choice the moment actually offered.
’This is what it’s like without foreknowledge,’ he thought... the thought was distant and cold even through the panic, driving his fist into another Bora’s joint until it cracked.
’This is what everyone else has been surviving on this whole time. No answers. No warnings. Just this.’ Lucas thought in realization...
For a moment he had forgotten what it actually felt like to live through this hell. One surprise after the other, knowing that if you died, there was no second chance...
Somewhere to his left, Bertram’s roar cut through the noise... it wasn’t pain, it was something closer to fury —as he waded into a cluster of Bora with his machete carving wide desperate arcs, buying ground inch by bloody inch.
Callum’s light flared bright and sustained near the collapsed supply tent, dragging at least one survivor free from the wreckage before a Bora forced him back with a snapped strike he barely dodged.
It wasn’t enough. Lucas could feel that in his bones even as he fought... this wasn’t a battle they were winning, it was a slow bleed they were barely surviving.
"Enough!"
Colt’s voice came through the chaos, cutting through the it with a weight that made every nearby head turn despite the carnage, and Lucas caught sight of him at the camp’s center, no longer the calm, ledger-keeping administrator from a day ago, but something else entirely, something that made the air around him feel suddenly dense.
[Skill Activated: Warlord’s Grip.]
Light gathered in Colt’s outstretched hand, condensing fast into the shape of a massive war-hammer, its head wreathed in the same dense, humming energy that seemed to be bleeding off Colt’s own skin now, crackling faintly along his forearms.
"To me!" Colt bellowed, swinging the hammer once, experimentally, and the ground itself shook at the motion. "Every fighter still standing, to me, Now! The more of us who fight together, the stronger this gets!"
Fighters began converging on his position out of pure desperate instinct. Bertram breaking off from his cluster of Bora, dragging two wounded survivors with him, Iris falling back toward the growing knot of defenders with arrows still flying, Callum half-carrying a limping stranger toward the same gathering point.
Lucas didn’t move yet, still locked in his own fight, watching Colt’s hammer catch a charging Bora mid-leap and send it crashing backward in a spray of shattered armor plating with a single, furious swing.
’The more of us who fight together, the stronger this gets.’
For the first time since the wall fell, something like a plan started to take shape behind Lucas’ mind — not a memory, not foreknowledge just a simple, desperate strategy...
’G
et everyone to him. Whatever he’s about to do, it’s the only chance any of us actually have....’
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