The Sacred Flame Weapon Ignites!

Eight days had passed since White Fang Fief fell.

When Otto detonated the Inner Fortress, he had failed to destroy the Grayblood Window beneath White Fang Fief, but had badly damaged part of its Reversal Veins.

The gray-red pillar of light had crouched low amid the ruins for days, slowly repairing itself by devouring broken walls, old armor, bones, and bloody mud underground.

Now its repairs were nearly complete. It had begun sending out vanguard forces, probing toward the surrounding fiefs along old post roads, frozen marshes, and underground rot-mud.

Coldwater Fief was naturally one of its targets. These were not large forces, but each wave was bigger than the last. This was already the sixth Gray Blood vanguard.

The first few waves had only wandered along the edge of the Gray Fog, testing the caltrops and fire trenches.

This wave had begun advancing along waterways, through rot-mud and the blind spots around broken bridges, plainly searching for gaps in the fire network.

Deep in the Gray Fog, more Grayblood Monsters crawled out of the frozen marsh.

Several mutilated ghouls had been stitched together with gray-white blood threads. Their flesh lay hidden beneath a gray-white membrane that contracted and expanded as they moved.

Every few steps, the blood threads snared bone fragments, iron slag, and splintered wood from the ground, drawing them into their bodies as new armor.

The Third Broken Bridge sniper position guarded the entrance to the trench from North Marsh.

It had originally been a stretch of stone bridge cracked by frost, with an abandoned drainage tunnel running beneath it.

Blackpine craftsmen had dug into the frozen earth on both sides of the bridge foundation, opening the natural tunnels and linking them into several concealed channels that funneled attackers inward.

Thin ice covered the channels. Beneath it