Dusk’s light sagged heavy under storm-choked skies. Clouds bloated with unshed rain.

  The air reeked of ash and sweat. A scent born of waiting blades and burning homes.

  A single hush held the valley, one that lurks in the moments before collapse.

  Inside the command tent, Alric stood alone.

  The brazier glowed low, copper-gold light licking the blackened armour lined before him.

  The scent of rain pressed heavy at the seams.

  His fingers moved with practiced stillness, buckling one strap after the other. Layer after layer of armor encased him, black plate over chainmail, broken and mended after three years of conflict.

  No servant dressed him, no aide stood by.

  Each piece bore nicks and memory, every plate spoke of past blood.

  Outside, the engines creaked to life.

  He exhaled once through his nose.

  He stepped out into the dimming day. Just in time to watch the world unravel.

  Tens of thousands of men swayed in rows before him, shields to shields, spears to spears, encircling the ancient jewel of Khal-Drathir.

  No quarter would be brooked today.

  The crown had demanded it.

  His silvery-grey eyes traced the battlefield for any shape that might end this quicker, cleaner, but nothing came into view but ruin.

  The mold was ready to be cast, the alloy of discipline already molten.

  A voice sharp and ragged rang out from below:

  “FIRE!”

  The order cracked from the siege commander’s throat like rolling thunder.

  Engines groaned in unison, steel-reinforced limbs hurled payloads skywards. Ballistae and trebuchets loosed their wrath in arcs of ringing hate.

  Salvos slammed against the city’s outer walls shattering ramparts, breaking stone.

  Masonry fountained upwards, dust and blood mingling. Men were reduced to mangled pulp mid-shriek, bodies torn asunder in sprays of ruin.

  Echoes of agony painted the sky red with screams.

  With every shot, men found new ways to howl, and the city found new ways to die.

  Alric’s jaw tightened, his stormlit eyes reflecting savagery.

  Khal-Drathir. once a prosperous southern mercantile hub, cradled in olive groves and ancient ruins, heaved black smoke from its failing lungs.

  Its splendor buckled beneath the cruel tread of the Valekyrian third and sixth legions.

  He still remembered each city razed. Each broken pact. Each torch thrown into a library or chapel.

  And now, the final chapter of this perverse book would be written and tossed aside.

  All because of a single unproven rumour, that the southern realms were plotting treason. It had been enough to stir the court’s paranoia into motion.

  The South hadn’t risen in arms, not at first. They’d reached outward for treaties, not blades. Trade, not rebellion.

  But the crown would have none of it, instead It wanted a single thing: compliance.

  Genuflection by force or surrender, the decree stated as such.

  Some bowed, many bled.

  Baseless hearsay became reality.

  Blood became currency in this march, he had bathed in it many times over.

  Treachery paved the market stalls, the graves it created were unceasing.

  He saw old patriots revolt, families torn between crown and kin, cities given to martial law and statutory executions.

  And now Khal-Drathir stood as the last verse in this hymn, which nobody would view as nothing more than blasphemous.

  The crown had willed it so, drunk on its own shadow, blind to the toll.

  The Southern Purge they had called it. But there was no purification, only desecration.

  He was tired of pretending victory tasted as anything but smoke and ash.

  Three years of civil war… for what? This?!

  The second volley soared through the sky. It struck the eastern wall.

  Stone crumbled. Men vanished beneath it; throats, gasping, filled with gravel, limbs flattened by imperial weight.

  A breach opened and one of the field captains charged first.

  A warhorn’s bellow thundered across the field.

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  “CHAARGE!!”

  Infantry surged like a tide of iron, boots thundered as they trampled corpses and rubble alike.

  The defenders, still reeling, scrambled to stem the tide.

  Useless.

  Steel clashed, mail bit into flesh. Screams drowned beneath the crush of bodies.

  The breach became a slaughterhouse.

  Beneath the gatehouses, sprawled a scene born of hell: Corpses twitching from crushed skulls, while others were blistered in scalding oil. Some were pinned to the earth by javelins and bolts.

  Blood soaked the stones, severed limbs strewn about like discarded roses.

  The tortoise rumbled forward, its iron-cloaked wheels bloodied and desecrated. Its roof blackened and smoking.

  From the murder holes above, the rebels hurled anything they could: bricks, torches, boiling oil, bodies.

  But nothing slowed it.

  It reached the gates: not mere barricades, but cathedrals of steel and oak.

  Each slab thick as a man’s height, sheathed in blackened ore, bolted thrice over, braced with interlocking beams.

  Even the ram, iron-tipped and fire-hardened, struggled to unseat it.

  Each swing—THUD—storm incarnate.

  Chains rattled—THUD—like drums of war.

  Men chanted—CREAK—rhythms of wrath.

  And the gate—CRACK—died.

  Iron bands shrieked, wood burst like bone. Hinges tore free.

  The city’s mouth was torn open.

  The soldiers protecting the tortoise flooded in through the gap like a blade between shattered ribs.

  All in their path drowned in steel.

  Moments later, the western wall cracked.

  A second breach between the gatehouse and the tower. Mortar split, stone tumbled.

  Men fell, their bodies crushed under their own weight.

  The city broke.

  Panic took its throne.

  Cries poured from every window, every alleyway, every shuddering cellar.

  No ear listened, no hand paused, no boot stopped.

  The Valekyrian army advanced with sanctified precision as if the city were an altar, and its people, the offering.

  Then came the fire.

  Pitch-soaked shafts slammed into roofs.

  Torches and jugs of fat hurled through windows.

  Chimneys stuffed with straw.

  Homes became ovens, and the people within them, meals for war.

  Even stone became coffin.

  Heat cracked the walls.

  Smoke flushed them out.

  Cold water collapsed them.

  Dust buried the rest.

  Mortar sealed the tomb.

  Trebuchets and mangonels shifted fire to the far edges of the city.

  No longer boulders, now fire-pots.

  Flame leapt from building to building.

  Entire districts vanished in plumes of cinder and shriek.

  The inferno crackled; wood to ash, flesh to puddle.

  Alric stood at the edge of the command ridge, the stench of flame and ruin invading his lungs.

  Behind him, the Writ-Keepers scratched records on parchment like crows pecking at carrion.

  Seneschals of War feigned interest, and a crescent of officers studied the butchery like one might with cattle.

  “You needn’t go,” one of the Seneschals began, his voice syruped with caution, already sensing Alric’s intent. “The battle is won. To risk yourself now, at the dying gasp of the rebellion, would be… unwise.”

  Alric didn’t turn. His eyes remained fixed on the breach.

  “I gave my word I’d try.” He said, finality etching his tone.

  “Lord Commander, this is beneath you.” the Seneschal pressed, a frown starting to form behind his silks.

  His gaze cut back, storm given eyes.

  “Only cowardice is beneath a commander.”

  Then he called out, allowing no further rebuttals.

  “Vargo!”

  The shadow came instantly, silent and hooded, ever-present as autumn's morning fog.

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “Ready my horse, signal the standard-bearer and rouse my retinue.”

  “At once.”

  One of the Seneschals gave a brittle laugh, polished as a gold-laced latrine.

  “Of course. Let us record this next legend in the making. The crown will treasure it dearly.”

  “Indeed,” another responded. “We’ll send word, 'Vaelgard rides into fire... or into history.’”

  Their robes swept the stones like funeral cloth as they turned from him. Their words, perfume over decay.

  Alric didn’t respond, he had long stopped answering ghosts of prey.

  Instead, he entered the command tent.

  There, his gear waited: heavy spear, tower shield, short blade, dagger.

  All in their respective place.

  His helm rested on the war table at the centre, suffused by the brazier’s copper-gold light.

  He took it and slid it on.

  The world took on a different form, narrower, sharper. Sounds faded and purpose was made clearer.

  He was accustomed to it.

  He emerged from the tent like man reborn, crafted in slaughter, encased in silence.

  The helm sealed his head in iron and intent, each breath reverberating within, each heartbeat thudding against the bones of his skull.

  He stepped again to the ridge overlooking the dying city, where the land slipped away in fire and devastation.

  Below, Khal-Drathir convulsed with smoke and shrieks of horror. But here, above it all, a moment lingered.

  The air had shifted slightly. Ash and soot still clung to it, but something else had taken root at its edges.

  Something pulled at the corners of his mind. Something…

  No.

  He strangled the thought before it could hatch. Duty alone remained.

  And yet, his fingers tightened around the spear.

  Behind him, Vargo arrived in silence. His horse saddled, the standard raised, and the men ready.

  He mounted without a word, cloak snapping in the scorched wind.

  He met Vargo’s gaze.

  “Remain here. Watch.”

  Then, to the city.

  “Advance!”

  And like a storm unleashed across the fields of fire, they rode into the ash-choked jaws of Khal-Drathir.