"Why are you closing the gate!" a woman shrieked. She clutched an infant to her chest while a toddler clung to her back, her knuckles white as she gripped the leash of a pack-horse.
"You can't keep us in here!" another man roared, his shoulder slamming into the person in front of him as the crowd surged forward. "The war is out there! Let us out!"
"Let us out!" The chant took hold, a hundred voices becoming a thousand, echoing off the stone archway of the Southern Gate.
"We are not animals! You cannot cage us inside a war we did not ask for!" an old man screamed, his voice breaking as the massive wooden doors began to groan shut.
"We are not animals! You cannot cage us inside a war we did not ask for!" shouted an old man, his fist shaking at the soldiers standing atop the battlements.
But the soldiers above did not look down. They kept their eyes fixed on the horizon, where the dust of the Eastern Camp sat like a waiting storm. Behind the barred wood, the sound of heavy chains being locked into place rang out—a cold, metallic finality that told the people of Ntsua-Ntu that they were no longer citizens.
They were shields.
Batzorig stood atop the battlements, his hands gripping the cold stone of the ramparts until his knuckles ached. He looked down at the chaos below, at the sea of desperate faces screaming for a way out.
But it wasn't the numbers that made his heart falter. It was the color.
Through the rising dust, he saw it: thin, white straps of cloth tied tightly across the foreheads of the men, women, and even the children. It was a silent, uniform defiance. He had heard descriptions of this in the reports from Nue-Li, but seeing it here, in the heart of the capital, was different. It looked like a city of ghosts already mourning their own deaths—or a city of believers waiting for a savior.
Standing there in his heavy ceremonial armor, Batzorig felt the weight of every medal on his chest. He looked at the white headbands, then at the locked iron bars of the gate, and finally at the palace behind him where Dzhambul sat on a stolen throne.
The question he had been outrunning finally caught up to him, cold and sharp: Was he standing on the right side of history?
Meanwhile, at the West Gate of Ntsua-Ntu, General Yisü and his men were losing their grip on the city. They had spent the entire morning attempting to reason with the crowd, but logic had no place here. The rumors of Chinua's approaching deadline had become a living, breathing creature, growing louder and more terrifying with every passing hour.
Every time a soldier spoke of "safety" or "loyalty to the prince," the people only grew angrier. They weren't looking at the soldiers as heroes anymore; they were looking at them as the jailers of their children.
As the sun climbed higher, the patience of the people finally snapped. The polite pleading turned into a roar of defiance. The front lines of the crowd began to surge, shoulders slamming into shields and hands grabbing at spear-shafts. They weren't just shouting anymore—they were pushing, a desperate human tide trying to break through the line of steel to reach the heavy iron bolts of the gate. Yisü watched as his men, his own brothers-in-arms, were forced to brace their weight against the very people they were supposed to defend.
Down below the West Gate, the air was thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and the metallic tang of unsheathed steel. The morning sun beat down on the soldiers' helmets, turning them into ovens, but the heat from the crowd was even more oppressive.
Yisü felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck. He watched as the "reasoning" he had practiced in the Palace crumbled. Every time his lieutenants shouted for order, the crowd roared back with a singular, terrifying frequency. The sound was no longer human; it was the low, vibrating growl of a trapped animal.
The physical contact started small—a shove here, a grabbed tunic there—but then the rhythm changed. The people began to move as one massive, heavy wave.
Thud. The sound of a heavy wooden shield slamming into a civilian's ribs echoed under the stone archway.
Clang. A farmer's pitchfork struck a soldier's breastplate, the vibration ringing through the line.
Yisü's heart hammered against his ribs. He looked at his men and saw the terror in their eyes. They were trained to face arrows and cavalry, not the weeping eyes of their own aunts or the furious faces of the men they drank with in the taverns.
"Hold the line!" Yisü screamed, but his voice was swallowed by the chaos. He gripped his sword hilt so hard his hand shook. He wasn't just losing the gate; he was losing the city's soul. He realized then that if he didn't draw blood soon, the crowd would pull his men apart by their bare hands—but if he did draw blood, there would be no turning back.
"Soldiers! Mark a line!" Yisü roared, his voice cracking under the strain. "If anyone dares to cross and defies Prince Dzhambul's order, kill them on the spot!"
The steel of a hundred swords rasped as they were drawn, the blades shimmering coldly in the morning light. The civilians hesitated for a heartbeat, staring at the line scratched into the dirt—the boundary between life and a state-ordered death.
"General! General!"
The shouting didn't come from the crowd, but from the men atop the battlements. Yisü spun around, his heart hammering, and scrambled up the stone stairs to the ramparts. He looked out, and his breath left him.
Five hundred yards away, the horizon had changed. The banners of the Eastern Military Camp were snapping violently in the wind, a sea of crimson and gold. Standing at the front was a line of cavalry so still they looked like statues carved from iron.
Chinua hadn't been bluffing. The storm had arrived.
"Who is leading them?" a soldier whispered, his voice trembling.
Yisü's lips moved, but it took a moment for the sound to come out. "Suo Zhi," he whispered, his voice broken. He stood paralyzed, staring at the vibrant blue tassel of a spear dancing in the distance. Even from here, the color seemed to burn through the air, a cold promise of the violence to come.
"Suo Zhi—" The name rippled across the ramparts like wildfire. "The Spear God."
The soldiers' faces turned a sickly pale. They weren't just looking at an army; they were looking at an inevitable end. Below, the name reached the ears of the civilians. It didn't scare them back; it drove them into a frenzy. If the Spear God was at the gates, the city was already a tomb.
"Suo Zhi is here!" a man cried out, his voice a mix of terror and strange hope. "We are doomed! Let us out before the walls fall!"
The crowd surged. They didn't care about the marked line anymore. They threw themselves forward, and the soldiers—terrified and desperate—raised their swords to strike.
As the wind swept across the city, carrying the scent of dust from the West Gate toward the East, General Khartsaga stood like a statue on the ramparts. His eyes were fixed on the fields three hundred yards away, but he didn't see a marching army.
He saw the Salran Hill bandits.
They were a jagged, savage stain on the horizon. Instead of standing in formation, they were sprawled across the grass. Smoke from their campfires curled lazily into the sky as they roasted meat, tipped back skins of wine, and let out raucous, booming laughter that carried on the wind.
They ignored the frantic movement of the soldiers on the walls. They ignored the archers aiming at them. To the bandits, the high walls of Ntsua-Ntu weren't a fortress—they were a joke.
Khartsaga's grip tightened on the stone. He knew these men. They weren't soldiers bound by honor; they were wolves bound by blood. Their indifference was more terrifying than a charge. It told the soldiers one thing: We aren't in a hurry to kill you, because we know you have nowhere to go.
"General, look!" a soldier shouted, his finger trembling as he pointed into the distance.
Khartsaga squinted against the wind. Two scouts, their horses lathered in sweat and galloping at a breakneck pace, were heading straight for the city. Between them and the safety of the East Gate sat the Salran Hill bandits.
Khartsaga braced himself, expecting to see the bandits swarm the two riders and tear them apart. But to his absolute shock, the bandits didn't even stand up. One of them simply lifted a wine skin in a mocking toast as the scouts thundered past their campfires. They let the soldiers through without a single arrow fired.
A cold realization washed over Khartsaga. It was an invitation.
He hesitated, his mind racing. If he opened the gate to save his men, the bandits—who looked so relaxed just moments ago—would likely spring into action and storm the entrance before the heavy wood could be barred again. But if he kept the gate shut and watched his own scouts be slaughtered or captured while begging for entry, the morale of the men on the walls would shatter instantly. Who would want to fight for a General who locks his own men out to die?
"The Fourth Princess surely knows how to fight a war and siege a city," Khartsaga muttered to himself, his voice thick with a mix of respect and dread.
"Should we open the gate or not, General?" his captain asked, his eyes darting between the galloping scouts and the "sleeping" wolves of Salran Hill.
As the sound of the hooves grew closer and louder, the pressure in Khartsaga's chest became unbearable. Each heavy stomp of the horses into the dry earth felt like a hammer strike against his own heart.
Thump-thump. One hundred yards.
Thump-thump. Fifty yards.
Each hoofbeat was a ticking second, counting down to a decision that would either brand him a coward or a fool. He looked at the Salran Hill bandits. They remained lazily sprawled by their fires, but Khartsaga could see the tension in their legs now—they were like coiled snakes, waiting for the first groan of the gate's hinges to strike.
"General! They're almost here!" the captain urged, his hand hovering over the signal bell.
Khartsaga looked at his archers. Their bows were drawn, but their hands were shaking. If he didn't open that gate, he would lose the respect of every soldier on that wall. If he did open it, he might lose the city. The "People's Princess" had placed a noose around his neck, and the scouts were the ones pulling the rope.
As the sound of the scouts' hooves faded into a haunting silence at the East, a new sound began to rise from the North—a deep, rhythmic thrumming that shook the very foundations of the city walls. It wasn't the frantic gallop of two scouts; it was the synchronized march of thousands.
A massive wall of dust rose from the horizon, thick and suffocating, rolling toward the North Gate of Ntsua-Ntu. But as the wind cleared the haze for a split second, the soldiers on the battlements didn't see a nameless enemy—they saw a legend they knew all too well. They recognized the razor-sharp formation, the heavy black-and-gold banners, and the terrifying discipline of the soldiers they called enemies.
"General Baterdene!"
"Ginmiao Soldiers!" The shout erupted from the ramparts, a mix of awe and pure, unfiltered terror. "We are under attack! The Ginmiao are here!"
The name "Ginmiao" rippled through the ranks like a physical blow. These weren't just soldiers; they were the elite iron of Nue-Li City.
The war drums of the North Gate thundered, their heavy beats echoing the panicked pulses of the men inside. The arrival of these two meant the siege was no longer a threat—it was a reality. The "Three-Day" clock had begun to tick, and their long-time enemy was now standing at the very door.