The sound of music and laughter echoed into every corner of the corridors leading to the most opulent hall in all the Paayasian kingdoms. Inside, the air was heavy and sweet with the scent of floral incense. Dancers swirled in the center of the room, their movements framed by the kingdom's highest-ranking officials. The ministers sat in a strict hierarchy, ranging from the most powerful at the foot of the throne down to the youngest officials near the stairwell.
Amidst the rhythmic clinging of wine cups, the jingling bells on the dancers' waists, and the low hum of muttering voices, King Es Ke sat upon his throne, basking in the celebration of his thirtieth birthday. His eyes drifted across the bright, smiling faces of the performers, a look of serene satisfaction on his face.
History might suggest that his reign had accomplished little, and many whispered that he lacked the capabilities of a great ruler. But those critics failed to see the ruthless, decisive nature of the man, or the immense wealth he continued to pour into the kingdom's coffers. Es Ke knew his decisions were often harsh, yet he lived by the ancient wisdom: "If you dare not walk into the tiger's den, how can you hope to capture the cubs?"
When the Hmagol had sent an Alhu to demand he refrain from attacking Pojin, Es Ke had deliberately stepped onto the wolf's tail. To him, it was the only way to know for certain just how hard a wolf would bite. With a slow, confident smile, he raised his golden cup and sipped. The taste of the deep rice wine slightly burned the tip of his tongue—a sharp, fleeting heat—completely unaware that the wolf had already torn through his gates and was at his throat.
The dancers had just begun to retreat toward the musicians, and the ministers were rising to offer their birthday congratulations, when a soldier burst into the room. He was panting, his face pale, clutching a piece of white cloth smeared with dark, drying blood.
A collective gasp rippled through the hall. In Payapsa, the combination was an omen of the grave: white was the color of the shroud offered for ritual suicide, and red was the color of a violent end. To see both in the royal court on the King's birthday was a curse made manifest.
The soldier fell to his knees, trembling as he held the fabric aloft with both hands. "Your Majesty... General Phia sends this for your decision."
Es Ke scoffed, his gaze cold. "Does Phia not know that sending red and white to a King on his birthday is a request for his own execution?"
The soldier kept his head bowed. "This is not from General Phia, Your Majesty. It is from the Hmagol Eastern General."
The room went deathly silent.
"The fabric arrived with twenty rafts filled with our dead," the soldier whispered. "Captain Nhia and Captain Daiji are among them."
"Oh?" Es Ke raised his golden cup, taking a slow, deliberate sip. "And what does this 'female general' want?"
"The message says: Kark City is lost. The Hmagol Eastern General comes to claim the one hundredth step promised. Release the captured captain, or face the rubble."
Es Ke looked at the bloody cloth, then at his silent subjects. "Yia, send a scout to confirm if Kark is truly lost. You will take twenty thousand men to Ngabo in ten days." He set his cup onto a maid's golden tray with a sharp clack. "If she truly killed my best captains, why should I return her prisoner? Tell Phia: if she refuses to retreat to Pojin, kill the captured Magoli captain in front of her eyes."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the soldier stammered, backing away.
"Now," Es Ke commanded, his voice smooth as silk, "let the dancers continue."
The music resumed, traveling through the corridors and hallways, but the sweetness was gone. To the ministers sitting in the shadows, the lively tune felt like a dirge. They knew that if Kark had fallen, Ngabo was next—and their own homes would be the next to burn.
Miles away, the music of the court was incomparable to the thunder of the South Gate. The Magoli battering ram finally burst through the wood and iron, the soldiers moving aside as archers poured a storm of arrows into the barbican. The air was a crossfire of steel; unlucky civilians were cut down alongside the soldiers, their screams lost in the roar of the breach.
"Cut that rope!" Nib bellowed, his sword a blur as he knocked four arrows from the air.
On the city wall, the Paayasian lead unit rushed toward the ropes holding the heavy portcullis. Siqi and his seventeen men were surrounded, a wall of spears keeping them from stopping the drop.
"Take him out!" Siqi screamed, his voice raw.
One Magoli soldier, seeing no other way, grabbed the blade of an incoming Paayasian sword with his bare hands. He threw his weight forward, creating a momentary gap even as spears pierced his chest and abdomen. That sacrifice gave Siqi the space he needed.
Siqi hurled his sword, the blade burying itself in the lead unit's shoulder. The man stumbled but began to rise. Siqi grabbed a fallen spear and threw it with everything he had. The point caught the man in the neck, pinning him to the stone.
Siqi turned to rejoin the fight, but a stray arrow hissed through the air, slamming into his upper left shoulder. The force was like a hammer blow, spinning him around and throwing him to the ground.
"Siqi!"
Below the ramparts, Nachin and his team surged toward the stairwell, but their path was suddenly choked. They were caught in a chaotic tide of fleeing families and a newly arrived militia of civilian hunters. These men, armed with crude hunting bows, skinning knives, and old swords, rushed toward the gate to reinforce Captain Nib's dwindling numbers.
"Die, Magoli!" the hunters screamed, loosing a ragged volley of arrows toward the soldiers lining the city wall.
"Nachin!" a soldier shouted, ducking as a flint-tipped arrow hissed past his ear. The militia was closing in, their desperation making them a lethal threat.
Nachin's face hardened. The time for mercy had passed. "Kill them," he commanded, his voice cold and final. "Anyone who refuses to surrender and comes armed—shoot them down."
He raised his own bow, his movement a blur of practiced precision. The string hummed, and his arrow found its mark, punching through the skull of the lead hunter and killing him instantly.
High above on the stone walkway, Siqi lay grunting in pain. Through a haze of red, he saw the dying Payapasian lead unit crawling forward. The man's fingers white-knuckled his sword, swinging the blade in a desperate arc toward the rope holding the portcullis. The steel grazed the fibers, but the man was inches too short to deliver the final cut.
Driven by a surge of pure adrenaline and agony, Siqi forced himself upright. With no sword or spear within reach, he gripped the shaft of the arrow buried in his own shoulder. With a guttural scream that echoed over the roar of the fire, he ripped the arrow from his flesh.
He lunged forward, his left hand pinning the lead unit's sword arm to the stone. With his right, he drove the blood-slicked arrow into the man's skull. He stabbed again and again, a frantic, rhythmic violence until the enemy was still.
Only then did the strength leave Siqi's legs. He slumped against the foot of the dead soldier, his breathing shallow and ragged, his hand still clutching the broken arrow as the world began to dim around the edges.
"Arrow Machine!"
Jeet's voice boomed, echoing through the blood-slicked stone of the barbican.
On his signal, the Magoli infantry snapped into formation. They surged forward, locking their long, rectangular shields together to create an unbreakable wall of iron. Through the gaps in the shield-wall, the heavy, dark muzzles of the automatic arrow machines were pushed forward. These were the mechanical nightmares of the Hmagol military, capable of loosing one hundred shafts in a mere thirty seconds.
The machines began to thrum. A relentless, mechanical click-clack drowned out the screams of the dying as a storm of black-feathered arrows tore into the street. The volley did not discriminate; it ripped through Paayasian soldiers and civilian hunters alike, turning the crowded gateway into a slaughterhouse.
Nachin and his men pressed themselves flat against the city walls. They had been drilled for months to stay clear of the machine's "kill zone," knowing that anything caught in its path would be shredded.
Seeing the wall of flesh ahead of him disintegrating under the iron rain, Captain Nib realized the gate was no longer a battlefield—it was a tomb.
"Fall back!" he bellowed, his voice straining against the roar of the fire and the mechanical rhythm of the arrows. "Fall back across the bridge toward the Northern barracks!"
Amidst the chaos, Nib's eyes caught a small, trembling form on the ground. He lunged forward, scooping a wounded child into his arms. With the child tucked against his chest, he and the remnants of his unit turned and sprinted toward the inner city, leaving the South Gate to the machines.
Beyond the bridge, a short distance from the Kark military barracks, the line between soldier and civilian vanished in the face of annihilation. The Paayasian citizens surged into the inner city—a restricted military zone—but the guards were too overwhelmed to stop the tide. They followed Nib and his battered unit, who dragged wounded men and weeping women through the dust.
"Quickly, get inside!" Nib's voice was a ragged command. He glanced left, his heart sinking as he saw the Magoli cavalry crest the rise, their pace steady and terrifying. "Hurry! Hurry!" He grabbed the soldiers nearest to him. "Close the gate! Drop the portcullis!"
Nib threw himself through the threshold as the soldiers shoved the last few civilians inside. The heavy iron portcullis groaned and slammed shut, its spikes biting into the stone.
Outside, the street belonged to the Hmagol. Zhi led the charge, his long, heavy blue-tasseled spear held with effortless grace. He was flanked by Khawn and the elite cavalry, their warhorses' hooves sounding like a drumbeat of doom against the cobbles. They rode toward the gate, where a small group of civilians—trapped outside the inner city—banged fruitlessly against the iron bars.
One man, realizing he could not outrun a warhorse, snatched a discarded sword from the dirt. He let out a desperate cry and sprinted toward Zhi, but before he could even reach the shadow of the General's horse, an arrow hissed through the air and took him down.
The air was filled with the cries of women and children. The men stood in a ragged circle around them, a final, futile act of protection. They had heard of the "Princess of the People," but they had also heard the dark legends of how the Hmagol Northern Soldiers had treated the Ginmiao of Nue-Li.
Zhi reined in his horse. His cold eyes scanned the crowd, looking for hidden blades or clenched fists. He found only trembling hands and hollow eyes.
"Do you want to live or die?" Zhi's voice sent a chill through the street.
His gaze settled on two small children—a brother and sister—clutching each other's hands behind an elderly man's back. In that moment, the battlefield faded. Zhi saw his own children, Siqi and Yingzi, as they had been years ago when he was framed and dragged away by Xin Zhiyuan's men. They had been just as small, just as terrified, hidden behind their grandfather's back. If it had not been for Chinua, he would have died at Lao-Da Pass, and his family would be ghosts.
He pointed his spear directly at the two children. "You two. Step forward."
The grandfather lunged in front of them, his hands seizing the shaft of the spear as he collapsed to his knees. "My lord, please!" he begged, tears carving paths through the soot on his face. "They are only children!"
Fearing for their grandfather, the two children crept forward, their small bodies shaking.
Zhi dismounted in one fluid motion. The grandfather pulled the children into a protective embrace. "My lord, please... if you must have revenge, let me pay the price on their behalf."
Zhi did not strike. Instead, he reached into his inner robe and pulled out a piece of white cloth. He tore it into three strips and knelt in the dust. With surprising gentleness, he placed a strip in the hands of the grandfather and each of the children.
"If you do not wish to die, and you do not wish to be prisoners of war, tie this around your wrists and your doors," Zhi said, his voice low but firm as he stood. "Stay inside until the war is over."
Zhi remounted his warhorse, his spear blue tassel swaying in the wind as he looked down at the sea of terrified faces. "Tie the cloth," he commanded, his voice carrying over the crackle of distant fires. "And pray that my general's mercy reaches the inner gate before her steel does."