They didn’t stop after the Town Keeper fell.

Damon pulled his blade free and kept moving, Ivy falling into step beside him without needing to be told what to do.

The notification had told them everything they needed to know about what this rift contained.

They moved faster now, following the black smoke deeper into the city, past shuttered buildings and gas lamps that now began to flicker as they passed.

More Town Keepers appeared.

Not in groups, just individually, emerging from alleys and doorways with the same unhurried certainty as the first. Each one fell faster than the last as Damon and Ivy found their rhythm.

Ivy’s flames were precise and immediate, cutting off angles while Damon found openings.

The city changed as they moved deeper.

The buildings grew taller and closer together, leaning toward each other overhead until the sky was barely visible between their peaks. The gas lamps grew further apart, the darkness between them longer and heavier.

The black vines thickened here, covering entire building faces completely, their smoke denser and more acrid.

Then Ivy stopped again.

This time, she grabbed his arm and pulled him sideways into a doorway before he’d registered what she’d seen.

The street ahead opened into a wide square dominated by a large fountain that had long since stopped running, its basin filled with black water that reflected nothing.

Five figures stood in the centre of it, the lieutenants.

They were already fighting.

The square was full of Town Keepers. Not one or two but a dozen at least, emerging from every surrounding alley simultaneously. The lieutenants had formed a loose formation, each covering a different angle.

The man with the greataxe was at the front, swinging in wide arcs that cleared multiple creatures with each strike. The axe moved like it weighed nothing, the relic shimmered brighter in motion than at rest.

The twin dagger fighter moved constantly, never stopping, circling the formation’s edge and intercepting anything that tried to flank. His strikes were short and precise, each one targeting the neck specifically.

The tower shield carrier hadn’t moved from his position in the centre rear. Creatures that broke through the others met the shield first and the ground second, the impact of each deflection sending them skidding across the wet cobblestones.

The woman with the staff stood slightly elevated on the fountain’s edge, shooting bursts of lightning into the enemy groups, zapping them with deadly accuracy and speed.

The archer moved between positions constantly, never firing from the same spot twice. His arrows found gaps in the creature’s defences that shouldn’t have been visible from any angle he occupied, which told Damon his ability involved more than simply shooting accurately.

Damon watched them in silence.

He catalogued each fighter against the benchmark of what he already knew. The axe carrier was the strongest physically, comparable to Nyla when wielding her hammer. The dagger user was the fastest, not far below Ning Xiaoyu’s level. The shield carrier was defensive but immovable, the kind of fighter that won through attrition.

The staff user was the problem.

She hadn’t moved from her elevated position the entire fight, hadn’t taken a single hit, and showed no signs of depleting. Whatever her mana pool was, it was considerably larger than it had any right to be.

The archer was the most interesting one of the bunch. He shot his arrows almost without looking at his targets, drawing and shooting and never missing any targets.

But before he could get a gist of how he was hitting them, the last Town Keeper fell.

The square went quiet for a moment, each of the enemy lieutenants catching their breath before turning to one another.

They exchanged brief words that Damon couldn’t hear from a distance. They checked one another for injuries with the particular efficiency of people who fought together regularly.

None of them looked significantly worse for the encounter, coming off mostly unscathed.

Damon looked at Ivy, who was already looking at him with the expression that meant she’d reach the same conclusion as him.

Although they weren’t injured in any significant way, now was the best time to strike. Small strain, no matter how insignificant it might seem, could be a difference between life and death, and Damon wasn’t about to waste an opportunity.

He left the cover of the building and stepped onto the cobblestone.

For a couple of steps, he walked without hindrance until the gaze of the archer suddenly snapped toward him and a faint murmur left his lips, one that brought everyone’s gaze onto Damon.

Ivy fell a step behind Damon, her expression hardened as she watched the five enemies shift into battle positions.

"Who the fuck are you supposed to be?!" the axe wielder asked, his gaze narrowing onto Damon, who didn’t bother replying.

Instead, he simply adjusted the grip on his blade, which made every one of the enemies before him flinch, before suddenly vanishing.

The eyes of every opponent barely had time to widen before Damon appeared behind the man wielding twin daggers.

When observing everyone from afar, he seemed to be the type to let his guard down the most, often striking for the neck even when other openings made themselves presentable, and so Damon purposefully chose his first target.

His blade struck true the moment he came out of the shadows, too fast for the twin dagger wielder to even react.

The man’s daggers dropped onto the cobblestone almost immediately as Damon activated his black ice ability and tore the man’s insides from within.

"Leo!" One of the enemies screamed.

Damon ignored the irritating sound, just as he ignored the notification ringing in his head and turned toward the others.

"So," he finally spoke. "Who’s next?"

He didn’t have to wait for the response as both the lighting ability and a barrage of arrows came his way, just as the tank of the group dashed forward, followed by the axe wielder who was raging with fury.