Tidal Night

Xilian spotted the flare bursting in the distance.

The last time a flare had burst above White Cliff Town was years ago.

Nuen had held the breach all night without giving an inch. The guards who rushed to his aid fired their guns and swung their swords, killing one Demon after another.

It remained White Cliff Town's bloodiest night in recent years.

When day came, ash rose from the ground in countless flakes, falling like grey-black snow.

Now a night like it had returned.

As a blood-red glow enveloped White Cliff Town, shrill alarms sounded one after another. Lights came on in every home, and figures hurried about.

Tim's eyes widened. "Is this...?"

Xilian answered calmly.

"Tidal Night."

Every so often, White Cliff Town faced a night like this. The Grey Fog's power surged and overwhelmed the light of the Soul Marrow. Like water spilling over the rim of a cup, it poured into town in a vast, smothering tide.

Until recently, Xilian had not understood what caused this strange phenomenon. Now he knew.

"Tim, get off the wall and gather the townspeople at Town Hall!" Xilian ordered.

Tim started down the long ladder. Xilian called after him.

"Make sure everyone stays in the light. No one sets foot in the shadows!"

No one knew whether the shadows held only darkness or deadly Grey Fog.

"Got it!"

Tim reached the ground, looked up, and shouted, "I'll leave the rest to you!"

"All right!"

Xilian raced along the wall.

He moved like a sprinting cheetah. At full speed, each stride carried him a great distance, yet he felt no fatigue.

Within minutes, the distant gate came into view.

White Cliff Town stood against a cliff, making it easy to defend. Its gate was the way into the Wilderness—and the most dangerous place in town at night.

Under their original night-patrol plan, Xilian was to meet Nuen there. Even from afar, he could see groups of armored guards standing ready.

Longswords hung at their waists and guns rested in their hands. Helmets hid their faces, but Xilian could smell their fear from a distance.

These townspeople had formed the Guard themselves. Nuen's training had given them some ability to fight.

The Guard members were not full-time soldiers. They served voluntarily alongside their usual work as carpenters, bakers, cooks, and the like.

Impoverished White Cliff Town could not support a standing Guard, even one made up entirely of ordinary people.

Xilian had once wondered where Nuen had found so many sets of armor and weapons. Now it was clear: the Sunflower Clan had left them behind.

The tide surged. The Grey Fog churned.

In the dark beyond, Demons crowded behind the gate in a heaving mass. Their shapes twisted in the faint light like dancers at a wild revel.

Claws scraped against the gate with a harsh creaking sound.

Through its narrow gaps, the guards saw the Demons straining to squeeze through the town's only entrance.

"Stay calm!"

Someone called out from the ranks, though unease showed plainly in his voice.

They could hear blood trickling. Blood and minced flesh seeped through the cracks in the gate, as though a door to hell had opened, filling the air with a suffocating stench of blood and rot.

Xilian hurried onto the wall above the gate and called out.

"Where's my teacher?"

The guards exchanged glances, then all pointed beyond the gate.

Xilian peered through the dense black fog outside. Amid the murk, he caught sight of a faint fire flickering in the distance.

The moment Nuen sensed the Source-Energy Tide, he had stepped out of White Cliff Town to meet the converging hordes of Demons.

Torch in one hand and longsword in the other, Nuen stood like a reef that could not be broken, hacking countless roaring, shrieking Demons into mangled flesh and severed limbs.

Blood mist billowed around him.

He split the tide of death before him in two!

Even so, too many Demons survived his whirling sword. Some dragged their broken bodies across the ground; others appeared suddenly from the surrounding shadows.

They hurled themselves against the gate again and again, heedless of torn flesh and shattered teeth.

The gate shuddered, but it held.

At the same time, a streak of bright yellow crossed the sky above White Cliff Town.

The instant the alarm rang, Mick woke with a start.

Mick hated that piercing sound. Whenever it rang, White Cliff Town ended up with more corpses.

Years ago, when the ascension ritual had failed, the alarm had rung all day. His parents had gone out that day and never returned.

Mick had been too young to truly grasp their deaths. Only as he grew older did the pain catch up with him, dragging him through nightmare after nightmare.

Without even changing out of his nightclothes, Mick snatched up a pair of daggers and rushed from his house.

A flare was drifting down from the night sky, bathing the ground in blood-red light.

Mick reached the Torchlight Lighthouse and, after a long climb, arrived at its summit.

It was the highest point in White Cliff Town. From here, he could see everything.

He looked out, and one glance told him what was happening.

The Grey Fog had risen.

"Damn it!"

Mick increased the Torchlight Lighthouse's output, making it shine brighter.

Then, to replenish the rapidly dwindling Soul Marrow, he clumsily heaved bag after bag of it into the open furnace.

By the time he finished, sweat covered his forehead. He did not stop. He picked up a telescope and inspected the walls.

After scanning their length, he found that several torches on the eastern wall had gone out, leaving that section in shadow.

Mick was certain the Demons had already climbed up through those shadows.

"The rest is up to you."

He took a flare and fired it toward the eastern wall.

Brilliant yellow light streaked across the sky like a meteor. Beneath it, Xilian raced along the wall.

Where the flare descended, Demons scrambled over the wall in wave after wave, with the surging Grey Fog close behind.

The torches atop the wall had been swallowed, but the ground below was still lit by the Torchlight Lighthouse. With no buildings to cast sheltering shadows, the Demons were trapped there for now.

Xilian did not dare imagine what would happen to White Cliff Town if no one had spotted this in time and the Demons had found shadows through which to spread.

Suddenly, a searing pain flared.

Again.

The Ouroboros Mark had sensed the power of Chaos once more. It urged Xilian to exact bloody vengeance.

"Blessing: Nurture Myriad Forms..."

Xilian murmured the words that rose from instinct.

The Blessing was still taking shape. The nourishment it needed was the slaughter of Chaos.

Before the first Demon had fully emerged from the Grey Fog, Xilian's longsword split its skull.

Hard armor cracked beneath the edge. By the time the blade tore into its chest, the wet sound of cutting flesh mingled with the pop of burning fat.

Without slowing, he drove the blade deeper into the darkness.

In the space of a breath, three Demons were torn apart.

Holding them back was not enough. Xilian slammed his torch against the ground. Bursting sparks lit the darkness for an instant and drove the Grey Fog back a little.

"Hahaha!"

In the middle of the slaughter, a strange joy seized Xilian, and he laughed aloud.

He gripped the blade and cut open his palm. Blood ran down the sword's spine and into the flames at his feet.

Bang! The flames leaped higher, their cores shining pure white.

Fire followed the blood up the blade. With every swing, it traced a burning arc through the air.

The Demons were not frightened off. Screaming, they charged again.

Xilian's muscles reacted before his mind did.

His third diagonal slash cut a Demon in half at the waist. Its upper body convulsed in midair while its lower half landed before Xilian and was ripped to pieces by a mass of reaching claws.

He spun with the motion. The spike at the base of his sword's hilt drove straight into the eye socket of a Demon behind him, shattering its skull. Brain matter oozed through the cracks.

Severed limbs trailing strips of tissue piled up around Xilian's feet, forming a spreading mire of corpses.

Xilian drew a deep breath.

His nose and throat filled with the reek of blood. It felt as though he were breathing blood instead of air.

"Do you ever run out?"

His blade tore through fresh flesh. Spattered blood vaporized before it hit the ground, forming a swirling vortex of red mist around him.

At one point, four misshapen bodies lunged at him together. The longsword abruptly reversed in Xilian's hand, and a sharp shortsword flashed in his other.

Cold blades crossed in an instant, leaving several more butchered corpses on the ground.

Even after the Demons were cut in half, their lower bodies kept hurtling forward, dragging charred entrails several yards before coming to a stop.

When his blade finally split the nineteenth Demon's skull, Xilian stepped onto a massive, still-twitching corpse and slowly lowered his weapons.

Murky blood dripped from the groove at the sword's tip, burning tiny holes in the gelatinous flesh strewn across the ground.

In the rising, foul-smelling steam, the Demons' shattered remains still scraped at the ground in nervous spasms. Broken bone and half-melted fangs gleamed like pearls in the firelight.

"Looks like you do run out."

Xilian panted, his voice mocking the darkness.