A Sudden Turn of Events

A deathly silence blanketed the battlefield.

The extreme tension and exhaustion after the outburst left most people frozen in place, scarcely daring to believe what they saw. The wind and snow still howled, yet some invisible force seemed to have muffled them, leaving only the faint patter of snow grains against armor and shattered shields—like countless icy needles piercing everyone's hearts.

Savannah released her grip on the chess box and swayed. A thread of blood slowly trickled from the corner of her lips, down her chin, and onto the snow, where it instantly froze into dark-red beads of ice.

Using Evil Spirit Battle Chess had never been a costless forbidden art—it not only carried the fatal risk of backlash against its master (once the pieces killed their target, they would turn and kill the player), but also required fresh corpses as sacrificial catalysts, with the bodies having to be dead for no more than three days.

To ensure the plan's success, before arriving on the battlefield, she had spent three full days and nights personally leading her Inferi into the nearby burned-out towns and villages, gathering the corpses of Muggles and wizards killed beneath Giant feet or consumed by flames. Among them were even Aurors, Sami, Dwarves, and several Silver Spear warriors who had fallen not long ago.

She had needed to be exceedingly careful—she could not alert anyone, could not leave behind a single trace. She could only use Inferi buried beneath the snow to drag, hide, and arrange the bodies one by one, until Natalie tracked down Surtur and she could sacrifice all the collected corpses in one go, activating all thirty-two pieces of the Evil Spirit Battle Chess.

Moreover, Natalie's timing had been subject to strict requirements. She could only strike after every Evil Spirit Battle Chess