Rama reached the northern rampart at a dead sprint, Ardhana close behind him, and the sight waiting past the torchlight stopped him cold for exactly one heartbeat before training took over and pushed him forward again. Dozens of figures moved across the outer fields in a loose, gliding formation, pale skin catching the firelight wrong, gray eyes fixed and pupil-less, closing the distance with the same unnatural evenness Bayu had described from Girah Post's last night.
The wall itself was already a mess of shouted orders and scrambling soldiers, men who had spent their whole careers training against bandits and border raiders now facing something no drill had ever prepared them for. A captain near the gate was trying to organize a shield line and failing, his voice fraying at the edges as more of his men eyed the tree line with the wide, unblinking stares of soldiers deciding, one by one, whether their courage would actually hold when the moment came.
