The muscles in Ismael's back burned with a dull, familiar protest, a contained fire spreading from his hips to his shoulders. His hands, gloved and marked by recent calluses, repeated the same meticulous movements hammered into his mind and body over the last months of exhaustive training: grabbing the twelve-pound cannonball from the ammunition cart, feeling its cold, oppressive weight, turning with a balanced step, loading it into the still-smoking muzzle. Metal grated against metal, a raw, final sound.

  His mind, trying to break free from the bodily repetition, wandered. The actions had become so automatic, so ingrained in muscle memory, that his thoughts could fly away from the smoke and sweat.

  It can't be that only now, in the middle of all this racket, the news finally reached me properly... they liberated Paraíso mill, the thought arose, laden with a stunned emotion. He wiped the sweat dripping into his eyes with his elbow, further staining the green uniform. During the intensive training, my head only had room for the commands, for the artillery numbers... after all, I had barely managed to escape my own hell, crawling through the forest for nights on end.

  An invasive image surfaced: The smell of burnt cane and sweet sweat. The tired face of his woman, Luíza, lit by the weak light of the hut. The wet laugh of little Jonas, still a baby. The tightness in his chest was as physical as the burn in his muscles.

  I just wonder... where are they now? Did they adapt to life in the Republic?

  "Ismael! Focus, man!" Corporal Ant?nio's shout cut through the reverie like a gunshot. The voice was rough but not without a note of comradely urgency. The corporal appeared beside him, his face marked by soot, his eyes scanning the gun crew. "We've sweated for months on the training field, eating dust and listening to theory! This here is the moment that shows what all that effort was for! Let's show these people from Ouro Branco what the Republic came to do!"

  Ant?nio's tone was electric, contagious. Ismael nodded quickly, a sharp movement of his head, and felt the wave of shame and determination wash away the bitter nostalgia. He's right. This is the now. This is where we change things.

  He turned his gaze to the crew. They functioned as a single organism, a living machine of sweat and precision. Jorge, the master gunner, whispered calculations for the angle adjustment, his fingers lightly touching the elevation wheels. Miguel, the assistant loader, was already preparing the next powder charge in his linen bag, his movements quick and economical. Clara, the youngest, kept her eyes fixed on the sight line, ready to signal any movement from the fort.

  Ismael took a deep breath, the sulfur-laden air burning his nostrils, and executed the next cycle. He grabbed the heavy iron ball, felt its deadly center of gravity, turned with the rehearsed swing, and shoved it into the dark, hot barrel. A dull thud.

  "Ready!" he announced, stepping back in the same synchronized pace.

  Miguel advanced with the ramming rod, packing the charge with firm strokes. Jorge gave a final adjustment, aiming not at the thick walls, but at a specific section of the parapet where activity was intense. Clara raised her hand, indicating target confirmed.

  "Fire!" ordered Ant?nio, his voice lost in the deafening roar that followed.

  The cannon recoiled violently on its wooden rails, vomiting a tongue of orange fire and a cloud of dense white smoke that enveloped the crew instantly with its acrid, suffocating smell. The ball, invisible in its flight, crossed the hundreds of meters in a silent, deadly arc.

  "Impact!" Clara shouted, pointing.

  In the distance, a section of the fort's stone parapet simply disintegrated in an explosion of shrapnel and dust. High-pitched screams, distant like bird screeches, reached them. At that range, the fort's defense weapons could do little against the artillery positioned with such care.

  "Cease bombardment!" Corporal Ant?nio yelled, raising his arm with a red cloth.

  The order echoed along the cannon line. The sudden silence following the last boom was almost more shocking, filled only by the ringing in their ears and the muffled groans from the field.

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  Ismael, automatically, used the pause to scan with his eyes. His vision swept the terrain until he found an almost imperceptible figure on a higher point further ahead: Whisper. She was prone, blending into the terrain, the long barrel of her sniper rifle hovering motionless like a dry branch. For a long second, nothing happened. Then, a tiny flash and a dry crack, much sharper than the roar of the cannons, cut across the distance. Almost simultaneously, Whisper's figure seemed to dissolve, fading into the deep shadow of the rock where she lay.

  There she goes, thought Ismael, with a mix of admiration and dread.

  ***

  Inside the fort, amidst the chaos generated by the bombardment, Whisper materialized in the elongated shadow of a pile of rubble that had once been part of a guardhouse. The air here was oppressive, smelling of burnt gunpowder, stone dust, and the metallic scent of blood already seeping through cracks. Shouts of confused orders and groans came from all sides.

  Without losing a millisecond, her left hand went to the compact backpack on her back. Her fingers found, by pure touch, the familiar object: a cast-iron grenade, heavy and rough, with an orange Fire gem embedded in the top like a sinister eye. The grenade had already been activated by the Fire adepts; it was counting down. She threw the grenade in a low arc over the remains of a wall, straight into an inner courtyard where concentrated voices were shouting for reinforcements.

  She didn't wait for the explosion. She was already in motion, sliding like a ghost to the next shadow—that of a partially destroyed warehouse. She repeated the process: grenade from the backpack, precise throw through a high window from where musket shots came.

  It was in the third shadow, that of a large wooden water tank, that a needle-sharp chill ran down her neck. Instinct spoke louder. She turned abruptly, not to look, but to act. A few meters away, atop a staircase, a man with thick-lensed glasses stared at her, his mouth open in an "O" of surprise. A Vision Adept. His finger was pointing at her, and his mouth was beginning to shout the alert.

  Whisper's revolver was already in her hand, seeming to have appeared from nowhere. There was no time to aim carefully, only to point and trust in practice. The shot was a sharp, loud report in the confined space. The adept clutched his face and fell backward, silent.

  Since she was discovered, she threw the remaining grenades in all directions and, without transition, she knelt, bracing her elbow on the water tank. The sniper rifle, which had never left her full control, was brought to her shoulder. Her vision found the scope. She didn't aim at a man, but at a specific shadow, long and distorted, cast by a solitary tree outside the fort walls, hundreds of meters away. She exhaled. Pulled the trigger.

  The recoil was smooth, familiar. She was already withdrawing, blending into the darkness between the tank and the wall, when the world behind her exploded.

  All the grenades exploded simultaneously, causing a loud bang and scattering shrapnel everywhere, followed by the furious roar of flames encountering something flammable. A wave of heat and pressure swept over the spot where she had been seconds before.

  ***

  Specter watched everything from his command position on a higher plateau, through a high-quality field telescope. The scene unfolded like a silent, brutal play: the artillery impacts, the ghostly disappearance and reappearance of Whisper, the small internal explosions that now sent columns of black smoke and orange flames into the sky.

  And so, his thought flowed, logical and cold as spring water, from a position of absolute advantage, hundreds of meters away, we eliminate a stronghold of resistance, demoralize the garrison, and open a breach. All with minimal risk to our regular troops. He lowered the telescope, turning to the young Sound Adept beside him, whose hands rested on a megaphone with the Sound gem. "The question is: what could they do? We can hit them from a distance beyond the range of their weapons. Even if they have adepts capable of long-range attacks, like Fire lancers or Wind shooters, the effective range and precision are limited by fatigue and line of sight. Our artillery does not have that limitation."

  His voice, when he spoke next, was not a shout, but a clear command that the megaphone captured thanks to the Sound adept's power.

  "To all units: infantry, advance and secure the fort's perimeter! Earth Adepts, provide mobile support—raise low cover for the advance!"

  ***

  Not long after, under an earthen cover that rose from the ground like solidified waves in front of them, the Republic's troops advanced. They found sparse, disorganized resistance. The fort, its morale already broken by the bombardment and internal explosions, fell.

  Specter watched the Republic's green and yellow flag being raised on what remained of the main flagpole, replacing the governor's standard. A fresh wind began to disperse the smoke.

  Now, the path to Ouro Branco was open. The city, which had always relied on the distant fort as its primary shield, had no significant walls. Its greatest defense, its trained garrison, lay defeated or fled in disorder across the fields. The capture, he calculated coldly, was not a certainty, but it would be infinitely less difficult than the battle that had just ended. The true challenge, he knew, would begin after the city gates opened.