Inside the manor house, time seemed to have condensed into a thick, heavy substance, a molasses of anxiety that stuck to the skin. The air, once imbued with the scent of aged wax and the mildew of noble wood, now carried the sharp odor of cold sweat and the metallic perfume of fear.

  "Master Albuquerque! The quilombolas are moving!" Henrique's voice burst into the room before he did, a hoarse breath of alarm. He appeared in the doorway, panting, his face pale as cream under the crust of grime and gunpowder. His uniform, frayed at the edges, was stained with mud and something darker.

  Albuquerque did not turn immediately. His long, gnarled fingers had already found the familiar curve of the dark wood bow on the bed. His touch recognized every imperfection, every carving, as if reading a braille page of memory and death. Only then did he raise his eyes.

  "Finally. Tell me. What are they doing, Henrique?"

  "About three hundred men, master," the subordinate spoke quickly, the words piling up in his dry mouth. "All with muskets, descending in formation down the east slope, like a green snake. But..." He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty. "In the middle of them, there's a separate group. Twenty, maybe twenty-five. Darker uniforms, almost black. They are led by... by that woman, master. The one who escaped our ambush last month."

  The air in the room seemed to cool by several degrees, sucking out the little warmth that remained. One of the guards stationed in the corner shifted his feet on the creaking floorboards, a rough noise that cut the silence.

  "The Earth Adepts," Albuquerque completed, his voice low, his teeth clenched in a way that made the words come out sibilant. The wood of the bow creaked under his pressure.

  "Yes, master. Adepts. And behind them..." Henrique paused again, his eyes wide with the vision he still retained. "Another hundred men. With those cursed muskets, the ones that don't stop spitting lead."

  The news had the effect of a bucket of ice water. The guard in the corner swallowed hard, a wet, audible gulp. Albuquerque felt his own stomach clench, a cold, heavy knot forming in his throat. The memory was a physical blow: the stream, he could see it all, the infernal cacophony of never-ceasing gunfire, his men falling like wheat scythed before they even saw the enemy. And the vision from that last moment, transmitted by the arrow—the compact formation, the iron discipline, death arriving in regular, relentless waves.

  "They've stopped!" Henrique's voice, now coming from the side window, cut through the grim reverie. He was wielding the special vision spyglass, the one that allowed peering through the wattle-and-daub walls and rocks. "The men with common muskets... they're reloading! Their formation has opened up. It looks like they're going to..."

  A distant scream, sharp and full of agony, cut through the air outside, followed not by one, but by the dry, simultaneous crack of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of shots. A unified roar, then an avalanche of isolated gunfire.

  "What the hell...?" Henrique pressed his face to the spyglass, his voice muffled by the glass. "One of our bounty hunters... attacked alone! Rode straight at them in a fit of fury!" His body tensed. "He was shot by... by a cloud of lead, master. There was no gap. His body... it's like old goat cheese, full of holes. Nothing left standing, not man, not horse."

  The image emerged vivid and grotesque in the minds of everyone in the room. Albuquerque closed his eyes for a second, anger boiling in his chest, but his voice, when it came out, was controlled, raspy only from tension.

  "And our Adepts? Where are they? Why aren't they counter-attacking?"

  "They're trying, master, I swear! But..." Henrique shook his head, confused and frustrated. "It's a back and forth. The enemy Earth Adepts, the ones in dark uniforms... when the shooters stop to reload, they raise their arm with the gem. And the earth in front of them rises, master! Like a low, sudden wall, made of stone and roots. Protects the whole front line for a few seconds. As soon as our men get close, the wall lowers and... boom! Another barrage of shots! The volley swept the front. Killed at least three of our Fire Adepts who were trying to advance with flames."

  He turned from the window, sweat running in clean lines down his dirty temples. His eyes met Albuquerque's, full of bitter disbelief.

  "The few of ours who survived the first volley and got closer... were met by the muskets that don't stop firing! It's as if they're toying with us, master. Like a cat with a mouse. They raise a wall, shoot, lower the wall. Our men are exposed, theirs, never."

  Strategy. Coordination. This isn't a quilombo guerrilla war, the thought echoed, cold and lucid, in Albuquerque's mind. It's pure military tactics!

  "Shit! Useless!" The fury overflowed, finally. Albuquerque slammed his closed fist against the solid wooden wall, making a miniature portrait of an ancestor jump on its nail and fall face down to the floor with a muted thud. "Tell everyone! Everyone, Henrique! Fall back within the property limits, now! Have them raise the defensive barriers! Don't wait for orders, don't wait for anyone! Save yourselves!"

  But the order, shouted in the stuffy room, was already an echo of a reality unfolding outside. Through the open windows, the shouts, the groans, and the desperate stampede were already pouring in, forming a symphony of panic. Bandeirantes and bounty hunters could be seen running in complete disorder towards the manor house, their once-arrogant faces now contorted by a primitive mask of terror. Some stumbled over the exposed roots of the ravaged garden, falling with a grunt. Others, in a silent act of desperation, abandoned heavy magical weapons and even canteens, anything that hindered their run for life. The smell of burnt gunpowder and kicked-up dust was beginning to hang in the air, brought by the wind like a harbinger of defeat itself.

  Albuquerque watched this rout, his hand still gripping the bow with white-knuckled force. The meticulous plan, the trap, the arrogance of thinking themselves the hunters... it was all crumbling to the sound of the quilombolas' muskets. All that remained was the fortress of the manor house. And a siege.

  "It's time for me to fight too!" Albuquerque yelled, placed an arrow on the bow, and fired in the window. Without wasting time, he connected to the arrow.

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  Outside, the ice and earth adepts began their work.

  First, a low whisper, like the rustle of dry leaves. Then, the air began to cool—not the natural chill of the afternoon, but a cutting, damp cold that made teeth chatter. From the damp ground around the manor house, ice crystals sprouted like deadly flowers, intertwining, growing, forming a translucent wall that refracted the sunlight into pale rainbows.

  Simultaneously, the earth began to move. Not a tremor, but a slow, deliberate flow, as if the soil remembered being liquid. The earth rose, compacting, mixing with stones and roots, forming a second barrier behind the ice one—solid, dark, impenetrable to the gaze.

  A few unfortunates who hadn't managed to reach safety in time turned around, their eyes wide with terror a second before being struck by a hail of gunfire. Their bodies fell, spasming, onto the earth now stained red.

  For a long moment, Albuquerque felt a thread of relief. The manor house was enveloped in defenses that had withstood indigenous attacks, quilombo assaults, even powerful magical weapons from the Dutch.

  They'll underestimate the barriers, he thought, his fingers stroking the bow as his arrow flew toward the enemy, flying past the attackers—he aimed for the head of it all. They'll think they're fragile, temporary. But they are mistaken.

  His eyes landed on the gem in the center of the room—pink, the size of a medium dog, pulsing with a soft inner light. Normally kept in the treasury, but he had brought it here.

  This is the Storage gem, he recalled, almost smiling. Decades of mana accumulated from his family's Storage gem adepts. Anyone who touches it recovers their reserves instantly. Normally useless in open battle—any sudden movement would cause it to release energy uncontrollably—but in a static fortification? It was an inexhaustible well.

  And there was more.

  Thanks to the Popess's discoveries about the Grass gem... my overseers can make food grow in the internal garden in days. They say it was these quilombolas who discovered that; normally I'd find it absurd, but now I wish it were true, that they gave us the knowledge for their own defeat! His smile widened. They can besiege us all they want. We'll hold out for months.

  As he thought this, he found a good target running behind everything, near the metal carts Henrique had mentioned, but he noticed something strange—they were placing iron balls into those metal carts. "Doesn't matter, I just need to kill the leader," thought Albuquerque.

  But his secure thought was interrupted by a sound. So was his connection to the arrow.

  Not a boom, but something different—a dry, metallic CRACK, that seemed to come from the air itself. Followed by another. And another.

  In the ice barrier, a hole appeared as if by magic. Not a crack, but a clean, circular opening, with edges dripping rapidly freezing water.

  "Henrique! What was that?!" Albuquerque shouted, instinctively ducking.

  The foreman stood by the window, mouth agape.

  "I don't... I don't know, master. I just heard the sound and..."

  CRACK-CRACK-CRACK

  Three nearly simultaneous impacts. This time, not on the barrier, but on the manor house itself. The west wing—the dining room—simply disintegrated. Noble wood, roof tiles, furniture, everything turned into a cloud of splinters and dust. The screams of those inside were drowned by the roar of destruction.

  "But what kind of powerful gem is that?!" The thought crossed the minds of everyone in the room, shared, terrified.

  The Ice Adepts reacted, raising the damaged barrier again. But not faster than the next attack.

  CRACK

  CRACK

  CRACK

  Each impact was preceded by a brief, sharp howl—the sound of the projectile cutting through the air—followed by the dry report of the weapon that launched it. And the shots were not stopped by the barriers. They passed through the ice as if it were wet paper, pierced the compacted earth as if it were loose sand, and continued until they hit the house. In fact, the barriers worsened the situation, generating shrapnel that hit unfortunate souls near them.

  Albuquerque then saw the Storage gem.

  It was trembling. Not a light tremor, but a violent vibration, as if something inside it was trying to escape. The pink light intensified, becoming almost white, painful to look at.

  "No," he whispered. "No, please..."

  The gem jumped from its pedestal.

  It didn't fall—it was thrown against the opposite wall, where it shattered into a thousand pink fragments. At the same instant, everyone in the room felt a wave of energy course through their bodies. It wasn't revitalizing—it was violent, excessive, like drinking the ocean when you're thirsty. The mana accumulated for decades was released all at once, flooding the room, making the other gems flash uncontrollably, overloading the adepts' senses.

  But that was the least of the problems.

  Chaos reigned. Screams from other rooms, the smell of dust and burning wood, the metallic taste of fear in the mouth.

  And then, in the shadows of the inner courtyard that still stood, a figure moved too quickly to be seen clearly. Whisper, using the dust and confusion as a veil, appeared for an instant. In each hand, she held three grenades.

  She threw them—not in one place, but in a pattern: two at the stables, two at the weapons depot, two next to the water barrels the defenders used to fight fires.

  There was no time to react.

  The explosions weren't huge, but they were precise. The stables, full of dry straw, became an instant furnace. The weapons depot detonated in a fireball that swallowed the north wing. The water barrels exploded, not from combustion, but from the violent expansion of steam, hurling wood splinters in all directions.

  From the hill, Specter watched the fire consume the manor house from the flanks. He lowered his telescope and made a signal with his right hand.

  Behind him, a bugler sounded three short, sharp notes.

  The Republic's infantry, which had been waiting in formation, began to advance. Not in a disorderly rush, but in organized lines, muskets ready, repeating rifles at the front. The march was silent, only the rhythmic sound of boots on the ground and the occasional crack of a remaining projectile finding its target.

  Inside what remained of the room, Albuquerque rose among the debris. His bow was still in his hands, the gems blinking weakly. Through the shattered windows, he saw the green silhouettes advancing, relentless as the tide.

  His eyes met Henrique's, who was silently weeping against the wall.

  "Master..." the foreman tried to speak, but the words died.

  Albuquerque did not reply. He merely noticed, with a strange clarity, how the light of the setting sun reflected in the shards of his Storage gem, scattered on the floor like petals of an impossible flower.

  But all his thought was cut short by a shot to his head, to Henrique's terror. Whisper, who had returned to her initial position, shot Albuquerque. She didn't know if the Defense adepts had raised their shields or not, but it didn't matter—for a weapon of that caliber, a defense like that couldn't stop its bullet.

  Outside, the first Republic rifleman reached the melted ice barrier, placed his boot on the broken crystals, and crossed through.