Smoke still clung to the gorge like a dying breath, thick with blood and ash. Lord Qiu stood motionless atop his command tower, robes stiff in the mountain wind. His face was stone, but his voice rang with the finality of command.
"We build."
Those two words summoned the will of an empire. Engineers were dragged from their tents, some still bloodied from the last assault. Artificers limped on fractured limbs. War-beasts, stitched with fresh bandages, were yoked again. There would be no pause. No mourning.
The Gale Citadel loomed across the chasm, silent and cold, its stone walls shimmering faintly with residual qi. Not a torch burned atop the ramparts. It didn't need fire. The memory of flame still haunted the sky.
Within a day, siege towers began to rise—groaning constructs of timber and steel, shaped like arachnid titans. Their legs were sheathed in alchemical plating, resistant to heat and curse-slick traps. Ballistae were mounted on top decks. Chains were reinforced. Tethers bound war-beasts to their frames as they were hauled, inch by inch, toward the edge of the gorge. Platforms stretched out like crooked fingers, inching closer to the opposite cliffs.
From above, Altan watched their labor as a surgeon might study a tumor. He said nothing.
On the sixth day, the first three towers were complete. Lord Qiu gave the signal at dawn. Drums thundered across the plain. The ground quaked. Arbalests loosed iron bolts that shrieked through the air. Shield walls advanced beneath, dragging thick planks and bulwarks toward the abyss.
Still, the Citadel remained mute.
Halfway across the gorge, the first tower's gangway stretched forward. Then, the cliffs exhaled.
A hiss echoed from the stone, not of breath but of released death. Vents hidden along the canyon walls opened like eyes. Altan's designs revealed themselves—catapults, sleek and compact, built into the mountain's ribs. Some hurled barrels that burst midair with slick alchemical fire. Others flung pitch-laced nets that ensnared entire squads.
Then came the fire. Not torches. Not arrows. Jets of alchemical flame roared from the cliffside vents, force-fed by pressure glyphs and ancient bellows hidden deep in the mountain's bones. It wasn't mere heat—it was a liquid inferno, the old war alchemists' curse reborn. Napalm flame, laced with serpent-oil and sunroot resin, clung to everything it touched. Steel groaned. Flesh blistered. Men didn't just burn—they melted. Screams tore from throats before lungs could catch air. Armor became ovens. The siege towers turned into blazing furnaces, cooking men alive inside their metal-plated shells. The trapped soldiers clawed at walls, their skin sloughing in sheets, howling as the towers became death cages of heat and steel.
Towers were consumed in moments. Wooden beams shrieked as they split. War-beasts thrashed and howled, their bodies engulfed in fire that fed on sinew as hungrily as it fed on oil. Some soldiers tried to leap—anything to escape—but the air itself had turned against them. The fire clung, alive, burrowing into flesh like a starving demon.
Men leapt from burning decks only to fall into spike pits laced with soul-breaking glyphs. Triggers hidden beneath the soil detonated with thunderous bursts. Limbs and blood rained across the ravine. No retreat. No mercy.
The defenders atop the Citadel did not cheer. This was not victory. It was calculus. Brutal, precise, and impersonal.
Lord Qiu stood unmoved. But behind him, his officers whispered. Even his adjutant's voice faltered.
"He knew."
Qiu's gaze stayed on the fire.
"He knew we'd come with towers. So he carved fire into the walls."
That night, smoke veiled the stars. One tower stood half-burned, leaning into ruin. The bridgehead lay broken, its timbers cracked and blackened. Supply carts smoldered. Bodies—Empire and beast alike—littered the slope.
In the command tent, Qiu unfurled new maps. Not of terrain, but of possibility. Altan hadn't just reinforced the Citadel. He had shaped the very land into a weapon.
His adjutant waited, jaw tight. "What now?"
Qiu studied the map, his hand steady.
"We build again."
Inside the Citadel, the war hall glowed with forge-light. The Maze below stirred with life. Altan stood before the central mapstone, its runes pulsing with inner light. Khulan and Burgedai flanked him, both sweat-soaked from labor.
"They sent towers," Chaghan said, her voice dry as dust.
Khulan wiped soot from her face. "And fire. And siege-mages. They threw everything."
Altan's gaze remained fixed on the glowing stone.
"And we endured."
He turned to the others. His voice carried no triumph, only readiness.
"They'll return. Stronger. Smarter. With weapons we haven't seen. We'll have to out-think them again."
Burgedai grunted. "Then we go deeper. We use the heart of the Maze."
Altan gave a single nod.
"Let the Empire build its towers. We'll build what breaks them."
He walked toward the forge steps, where new designs waited, etched in spirit-iron and ink.
And beyond the walls, the mountain held its breath, ready to kill again.