By Her Grace – a progressive Isekai Light Novel

For The Gate

"HOLD THE LINE!"

The voice cut through the clash and screams and set something straight inside Elen. She didn't know whose voice it was anymore, but it was deep enough to steady hands.

Her fingers trembled on the hilt anyway.

She stood shoulder to shoulder with Faren, boots sunk in churned mud, breath burning like she'd swallowed ice. The air stank of wet leather and smoke. A few paces in front of them, Jarl lay face-down in the dirt, one arm crooked at a stupid angle. He hadn't made a sound when he fell. Elen told herself she would go to him when it was over. She told herself a lot of things.

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

She ducked with the line. Somewhere to their right a mage slammed his staff to the ground and a translucent wall snapped into being—shimmering blue-white, thin as breath, hard as glass. Fire struck it a heartbeat later. The world went white and roaring. Heat pressed against Elen's cheeks and teeth. The shield groaned like a ship but held.

The roar died. The shield spidered, then steadied.

"CHARGE!"

There was no room for retreat. The ground behind them was a slope too slick to run, and behind that, more bodies than road. Forward, then. Always forward.

Their line broke into a run. Mud slapped calves; shields bumped; someone half-sobbed a prayer. Elen ran. She didn't remember deciding to. Faren kept pace a half-step to her left, breath gritted, eyes already past the first rank of the enemy. Faces filled her vision as the gap closed, young soldiers bracing for impact, boys and girls from Ashford, from her own lands.

My people, Elen thought—then she remembered Jarl, and let the hate burn hot enough to burn that thought away.

While charging Elen opened her core. Heat bloomed in her chest, then raced to her limbs; mana braided into muscle and tendon until the world slowed a fraction. Tears stung in her eyes. She hit the front rank like a thrown hammer, breath tearing, sound stretched thin—steel, shouts, her own heartbeat.

…

The day had started as a good day.

They marched toward the Gate of the North at an easy, steady pace. A runner had gone at dawn to find the other survivor band. Word came back at midmorning: more groups were on the roads in Stormvale, drifting in from the hills like leaves after rain. Around the fire they had talked through the risk at the Gate, but the talk felt almost like a formality. Stormvale held the fortress. The Crown Duchy held it. Velmire held it. Three neighbors on the same wall. Ashford could posture, but taking control? No one truly believed it.

Jarl and Faren kept the mood light. Jarl called her "lil' sis" in his rough accent and promised she'd see the real kingdom soon; market streets where bread didn't come gray, a river you could sit beside and not think of corpses, spring fairs with terrible music. Faren shoved a canteen into her hands whenever she forgot to drink and teased that she chewed like a squirrel. Ser Quen rode with the captains, quiet as stone, watching everything.

By midday the Gate filled the world. It wasn't a door like she had imagined, but a fortress wedged between mountains, iron mouths opening to four sides. Flags whipped above the battlements. Seeing them made her chest loosen: The flag of the Kingdom itself; Stormvale's flag, the Crown Duchy's and Velmire's flags side by side.

Through the King's gate, a short road, and home, someone said, and for once no one corrected them.

The field in front of the walls was crowded. Men from the shattered Second Army were already there, wearing the same dirt and the same thousand-yard stare. Faren found shoulders to clap and faces to name. Captains met, voices brisk over the grind of carts. By the time Elen swallowed her last mouthful of hardtack, almost a thousand survivors stood in some kind of order.

They talked about waiting. If more stragglers reached the Gate by nightfall, the column could go south together. "The Marshal," Jarl whispered in her ear, nodding toward a rough looking tall man, who gave orders and orders. Elen had learned just enough drill in Ashford to know what should happen now, and then she watched it happen properly: little knots becoming files, files becoming ranks, menders and smiths and sutlers pushed to the safe belly of the shape. For the first time in days, they weren't a loose collection of losses. They were an army.

The officers were in touch with the Gate. Passage was "a formality." The word soothed the camp like a warm drink.

They stopped just close enough to smell the walls. Faren and Jarl crouched over their fire, arguing about onions like it mattered, and Elen kept looking up. The mountains crowded in like giant shoulders. The fortress looked older than the sky.

That was when she noticed it.

Four flags. Four colors. Then the Velmire standard twitched and slid down the pole.

She blinked. Maybe a crew change. A knot of movement scurried along the parapet. The portcullis on the Stormvale side rattled and fell.

A string inside her pulled tight.

Shouts rose on the wind. Smoke fingered up like someone testing the air.

"The Gate is under attack!" The Marshal's voice hit like a thrown spear. "Form and move—help the bastion!"

Elen's heart hammered so hard her vision shook. It was her first battle. But Jarl's hand landed on her shoulder before the panic finished climbing her throat.

"You wait," he said, already reaching for his shield. "Faren will bring you behind the line. You're too young for this."

She wanted to tell him she wasn't. She wanted to say I can help. Faren's hand was already on her elbow, turning her.

The first sonic boom rolled over the pass. It was not sound exactly. It was a pressure that pushed through her bones. Elen looked up on reflex.

The other flags vanished. For one held breath the wall seemed empty. Then the flag of Velmire climbed back into the sky. Cheers started and tripped over themselves.

Beside it, the flag of Ashford rose.

A third banner followed; black and red, a sign she didn't know. It looked wrong there, like blood spilled on the wrong table.

"Retreat—now!" the Marshal roared.

Too late.

A second boom slammed the earth. Someone shouted "Tactical spell—brace—" and then white washed everything away. No fire touched her. But the outer ring of their formation simply ceased to exist. Where men had stood a heartbeat before, there were dark shapes like dropped cloaks.

Elen's mind did something strange then. It stripped itself to a wire. This is also war, it told her in her mother's voice, calm as if naming weather. This is also war.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

She would have been in that outer ring if Faren hadn't tugged her back when Jarl told him to. She did not allow the next thought to form.

Around the Marshal, mages gathered, throwing flicker shields were buzzing around them, not to save, but to buy seconds if needed. Lines of light stitched the ground in a wide circle under their boots, runes burning hot enough to hurt to look at. Elen had never seen a tactical array, only heard a drillmaster talk about them.

Mana drew in. Elen could see it, it was like the air itself was being pulled tight. It pinched into a single green point that hung above them, humming.

"Down!" Faren barked, and put her face in the dirt.

The green point screamed. It streaked for the Gate. Defensive sigils flared along the arch, desperate and beautiful. The green ball didn't care. It bored through, stuttered once, then slammed into iron and stone. The Gate exploded. Not into splinters—into pieces big enough to kill a man if one found him, into a rain of dust and needles of metal that hissed into the field.

"Through!" the Marshal's voice tore at her ears. "It's our only chance! If we run, they'll butcher us—close combat!"

Elen pushed up. Her knees wobbled and then remembered what to do. She looked at the torn mouth of the fortress and saw enemy soldiers forming on the inner stair. She saw the bodies blackened by the first strike like spilled ink. She saw, at her feet, Jarl.

He lay as if he'd just tripped and fallen asleep face-down in bad mud. The angle of his arm said different. Her heart cracked open at the sight.

Faren's hand clamped her shoulder. "With me. We do this together. Sorry lass, ya need to be tough now."

The formation built itself around her—shields locking, boots setting, breath syncing. The few mages they had slid into the gaps, hands already up, murmuring thread-thin wards along the line. Elen set her shoulder to Faren's, blade low, knees bent. First battle. Grown men to either side, scars and calm, and her in the middle trying to make her hands stop shaking. As the battle began.

…

Her mana core answered like a clenched fist. She didn't know spells, she was only at the First Circle, but she knew how to pour mana into muscle and bones.

Her sword hit a shield man square and drove him back into his own line. The shock rang up her arms. Wood buckled. The soldier stumbled three steps, crashed into the man behind him, and they both went down in a tangle.

The fighter on Elen's right didn't waste the opening. He slid into the gap she'd punched, blade low, and cut the throat of the Ashford soldier now exposed, a red line opening under the helm strap. The man folded without a word.

Elen stepped with him, not back—her mother's lesson—short cuts, quick ends. Another spear darted. She knocked it aside and shoved her shoulder into the shaft, feeling the bite through leather. The point skittered wide. Faren's shield slammed over hers a heartbeat later, sealing the space.

They were only about nine hundred. Tired. Hollow from the weeks in the woods and the Beastkin passes, hollow from Ashford. But the hollow was full of heat now. Righteous anger burned clean. The Second Army had bled away to a handful, but even five percent of a blade still cuts. These weren't levy farmers. They were the Crown's trained, and they intended to remind the world.

The battle turned into a meat-grind.

"Press!" Quen's voice rode the line. "Two steps, hold—two steps!"

They did, boots sucking in mud. The few mages mixed through their ranks murmured thin wards, flickers that blunted arrows, a breath of wind that turned a throw.

"Forward!" Faren grunted, voice like gravel. He was limping now, a slice along his thigh leaking through a tied cloth. He saw Elen glance and shook his head. "Later."

They pushed. For every step they gained, they paid a bruise, a cut, a friend. A boy from Caerwyn went down clutching his belly; the priest slid in on his knees, hands already red.

Elen's arms shook. She fed more mana into her legs, into the deep muscles across her back, into her fingers where the numbness crept. The world slowed just enough to place steel where it needed to be.

"For the Gate!" someone shouted behind them. The chant caught like a rope. "For the Gate!"

"For the Gate," Elen heard herself say, softer, like a promise to her own bones.

--::--

Dareth held his rage inside. It wasn't the time for emotion.

The day had started with a thin line of hope. After the betrayal in Ashford. After fighting a path with a handful of survivors through Beastkin country. After reaching Stormvale and hammering a camp out of scattered remnants before the Gate of the North. After everything.

And then it happened again. Velmire turned. The Kingdom was betrayed again from his own people.

When he saw the tactical spell, the cadence in the air, runes tugging at the sky. He snapped orders before anyone finished shouting. "Mages, anyone with mana left, on me. Countermeasure circle." As they formed up, he realized the pressure wasn't as heavy as it should be. The enemy casters were few. Good. They hadn't planned for what stood outside the walls.

A thousand survivors weren't an army, but they weren't nothing. If they moved, they could still save the bastion—or at least keep the Gate from closing on the kingdom's throat. He rallied his people, voice flat and certain. "We're not done. The men of Stormvale may be lost, but Velmire and Ashford are bleeding too, or we wouldn't be standing here."

To the mages: "Drain it. Circle Two at minimum. Spend yourselves."

They didn't disappoint. The reply flared. The Gate shuddered; the breach opened.

When the breach came, he didn't hesitate. The order went down the line—blacksmiths, cooks, wounded veterans still able to hold a sword—everyone charged. This wasn't just survival anymore. Every man and woman here carried the same fury, the same righteous need to strike back at those who had slaughtered their own.

They charged as one. Dareth ran at the front, sword low, face calm. The reckoning would come later. For now, the Gate. And the enemy behind it.

Dareth fought at the tip of the wedge, a greatsword in his hands like an oath made iron. He kept the blade low as he closed, then brought it up in a short, brutal arc that split a shield and the man behind it in one stroke. Step. Half-turn. The backswing took a spearman at the hip and hurled him into his own line. He didn't waste motion—no flourishes, no roars—only cuts that ended problems.

A mace came down; Dareth caught the haft on his crossguard, shoved, and drove his pommel into the man's teeth. The next swing started from his hips, diagonal, shoulder to opposite hip—armor parted; the body folded. He used the weight of the sword like a hammer, letting momentum do most of the work, boots set, breath steady.

"Left!" he snapped, and the file shifted with him. He hooked a shield's rim with the quillons, yanked it wide, and the trooper behind him slipped a blade through the opening. Forward. Two steps. Another fell. The Gate would be theirs or he would die on its threshold.

Runes crawled along Dareth's greatsword, faint and ugly, waking fully only when the blade bit. Each kill fed it. Blood slicked the fuller, vanished a heartbeat later, and the metal drank like a starving thing.

The effect hit him in waves. Fatigue slid off his shoulders; the ache in his forearms eased; breath came cleaner. For a few heartbeats after every cut he felt new—legs light, wrists sure, the sword quicker than it had any right to be.

That was the Bloodthirster.

He wasn't born with a mage core. No circles, and no spellwork. But with this blade he could meet a Second Circle knight head-on and not lose. A hawk-marked veteran came at him with a longsword and a half-shield, footwork neat. Dareth let him press once, took the hit on the flat, then stepped inside and ripped a diagonal through pauldron and chest. The sword drank; strength flooded back.

Another spear line bristled. Dareth used the weight, hewed through a shaft, then a man. The runes flared, dimmed, flared again. He moved like a machine built for two tasks: break and advance. Behind him the wedge kept time to his blade—two steps, cut, two steps, cut—while the Bloodthirster whispered its simple truth into his bones: feed me, and I'll carry you through.

Dareth cut another man down and saw it, an odd swell in the enemy line, shields edging inward like a bubble forming around… what? A pinned knight? One of his mages?

He didn't stop to guess. He drove straight for it, Bloodthirster low.

He burst through, and blinked. Not a trapped officer. A child.

A little girl, fire in her eyes, screaming herself hoarse as she fought three soldiers at once. She kept her body between them and a fallen man in their colors, dragging her blade short and mean the way drilled fighters did.

Three things hit Dareth in a heartbeat. She had a core, her steps were mana-steady, muscles braced. She was on his side, guarding one of his fallen men. And she was losing. Ten more seconds and the spear on her left would open her like a sack.

Dareth reacted.

Bloodthirster rose and fell. The runes flared as the first soldier's chest split; the blade drank and strength surged back into Dareth's arms. He pivoted, boot smashing the second man's knee sideways with a crack. The third stumbled, eyes wide—too slow. The backswing took his head clean; it tumbled into the muck.

The girl didn't stop. She tried to lunge past Dareth for the fallen man.

He caught her, one arm around her middle, lifting her off her feet like she weighed nothing. She thrashed, wild, still trying to reach the body.

"He's already dead," Dareth growled in her ear. "Stop."

She froze a fraction, breath hitching, then hit his vambrace with a small, furious fist. He held fast, turned, and ran her out of the pocket, back toward their line.

Behind them, the push broke for good. The enemy's center folded; the last of Ashford and Velmire in the yard were falling back toward the inner stair, shields up, eyes flat. The Gate mouth was theirs.

Pure luck favored them, Dareth knew, Velmire and Ashford had expected only Stormvale's garrison. They hadn't sent more. If they had, this would have ended different.

He set the girl down behind the shields. "Breathe," he said, already looking back to the fight. "And stay here." The Bloodthirster's runes dimmed, hungry again.