The first wave was over, and the floor did not take the bodies back.

James heard the lock before anyone spoke.

Heavy iron, sliding back inside the wall to his left. He turned. A second lock answered from across the avenue, then three more from different buildings, each a half-beat apart, and the sound spread outward until it covered the whole ruined city and was still spreading.

His sword came up before the first door finished opening.

"Hold formation," Marcus said.

The twenty held. Around James the frontliners stayed angled toward the cathedral road — the direction the first wave had come from, not the only direction that mattered anymore. He caught one support near the back starting to turn toward the sound on the left and stop herself, but a half-step too late, her shoulder already turned the wrong way.

The floor had spent the whole first wave learning where everyone faced.

Now it was opening from everywhere else.

Side chapels along the avenue swung their doors wide and dark. Balcony gates above the street unlocked and folded outward on rusted hinges.

A rusted grate near the support line lifted and settled flat on the marble.

James watched it. Broken fingers hooked over the edge from below, one hand and then both, and a face dragged itself up into the gap — skin split and rotten, lips pulled back around black teeth, eyes fixed on the healer standing two steps behind the line.

The thing pulled itself fully onto the street and crawled forward on its hands and knees.

[Consumed Pilgrim — Level 31]

James stepped in front of the healer and put his sword through the back of its skull. He looked at the open grate. More fingers were already hooking over the lip.

"Behind the line," he said to the healer, and did not look back to see if she moved.

The second wave came out of the opened courts.

Consumed Pilgrims hauled themselves through the grates and poured from the chapels, and they did not come upright. They came low, crawling, and they went for the feet.

[Consumed Pilgrim — Level 29–32]

A Pilgrim clamped both hands around an Ironwall fighter’s ankle and the fighter kicked it hard across the face and got the leg half-free, and before he could reset a second Pilgrim grabbed the same calf from the other side and held on with broken fingers locked into the armor’s lower strap. The fighter had to look down to deal with his feet, and while he was looking down, a Rotten Devotee got inside his shield arm with a rusted hook on a chain.

[Rotten Devotee — Level 33–35]

That was the point of the Pilgrims. Not to kill. To make someone look down.

The Devotees used their hooks to grab shield rims and drag them sideways, pulling guard open one centimeter at a time. Behind them, Hollow Knights advanced through the crowd in rotten formation, armor hanging wrong on bodies that should not have been walking.

[Hollow Knight — Level 36–39]

Then the real weight arrived behind all of that.

[Outer Court Knight — Level 42] [Choir Wraith — Level 43] [Lust-Touched Knight — Level 45] [Cathedral Beast — Level 52]

The Outer Court Knights shoved through the weak bodies to reach the line. The Choir Wraiths took upper windows on both sides of the avenue. The Lust-Touched Knights did not rush. They moved wide and slow and waited at the edges of the crowd, watching for anyone pushed a step out of shape.

The Cathedral Beast lowered its head and drove itself at the left.

The impact came up through the marble into James’s boots before he heard it.

BOOM.

He turned. The left side of the formation had bent inward, Declan Roe buried against the Beast’s shoulder with his shield across his chest and his boots grinding backward through cracked stone, blood running from his nose and over his lip.

"Hold," Declan said.

Not a request. An order at his own line.

CRACK.

A second Ironwall shield hit the Beast’s flank from the side, and a third locked in behind it, and the line stopped moving and stayed stopped. The Beast shoved once more and could not shift them, and Declan drove his shield forward a half-step, taking back the marble he’d given.

James turned back to his side.

The Choir Wraith in the window above the avenue opened its mouth, and the sound it made caught in James’s skull like a finger pushed through his temple.

His next step came down a half-beat late. He felt it in his legs before he could stop it — a half-second of wrong timing, his body moving after his intention.

The Wraith inhaled to continue.

Saoirse was already at the balcony rail.

She crossed from the street to the rail in two running steps, her blade already extended, and drove it through the Wraith’s throat before the next note reached anyone. She pulled the blade free and dropped back to the street below and landed without looking up, and she was moving toward her next position before the body fell past the broken window above her.

The song stopped mid-note.

Saoirse did not check whether anyone had noticed.

In the backline, the first note had already done its work.

A healer beside Maeve had her casting hand raised, light gathering in her palm too wide and too fast — the Wraith’s bad timing still living in her hands, her spell half a beat ahead of where it needed to be.

Maeve caught her wrist before the spell released.

"On my count." Two fingers on the back of the healer’s hand, pressing down softly. "One. Two." The light pulled back in and reshaped, tighter, and on three it came out clean and hit the fighter it was meant for at exactly the moment he needed it.

[MAEVE CALLAHAN — RADIANT FIELD — PULSE]

Maeve let the wrist go and moved three steps down the line, already looking at the next pair of hands.

A Rotten Devotee hooked its chain around a support fighter’s boot and started pulling, and the angle it was working toward led directly to the healer behind the line.

James put his sword through its spine from behind.

[CHALLENGER KILL]

He looked at the Ironwall fighter two steps away, his back half-turned, close enough that a Corpse Explosion here would catch him. He waited. The fighter moved to deal with a Pilgrim on his right. James measured the distance — clear on both sides — and triggered it.

[CORPSE EXPLOSION]

BOOM.

The blast tore through the knot of Consumed Pilgrims that had bunched around the corpse and scattered them across the marble, and none of it reached the line.

[GRAVE COMMAND]

The Dark Knight pushed into a gap near the support side, her great sword sweeping low to keep Pilgrims from crawling through. The Python moved wide along the margin and cut off the angle the Devotee chain-hooks had been working toward. The wolf held the mouth of a side alley where two more Outer Court Knights were about to enter.

James looked at the whole avenue.

Crawlers at the feet. Hooks on the shields. Wraiths at the windows. And the Lust-Touched Knights still standing outside the crowd, still waiting, still not coming in, watching for the first person to step half a meter out of shape.

They were not trying to kill the raid where it stood. They were trying to move it somewhere worse.

He found Maeve’s eyes across the line.

"They’re moving us," he said.

She had already seen it. "Yes."

Marcus was three meters off and heard both words.

"Close the gaps," he said, loud enough to carry the whole line. "Stop covering ground you don’t own. Hold tight and let the doors breathe."

The nearest shield section pulled in half a step. A Rotten Devotee that had been finding the gap hit solid plate instead and fell back. The Lust-Touched Knights on the left shifted slightly, recalculating.

The formation was one shape again for a moment.