Location: Surrounding Hills Outside Lars – Human Siege Encampments
Morning broke through clouds of soot.
The sky, once red with artillery fire, now hung still and dead, choked by gray fog and dust. For the first time in 72 hours, the thunder of human artillery had stopped. Not a shell had been fired since dawn. The men—many deafened, burned, or shaking—stood beside their guns, loading no more, only waiting.
General Elisabeth stood on a high ridge near the southern battery, coat stiff with ash, binoculars pressed to her eyes.
Below, the city of Lars lay in ruin.
Nothing moved.
Sprawling stone blocks—once homes, once lives—now piled high in crooked towers of debris. Here and there, a broken spire jutted from the skyline, cracked and blackened. Smoke rose lazily from a dozen places. The wind carried no sound but groans and falling rubble.
"Begin the next phase," she whispered.
A young officer behind her saluted. "Yes, ma'am."
Location: Human Rear Artillery Line – Southern Slope
Ten minutes later, fresh wagons arrived from the reinforced storage crates near the central command tent. They didn't carry standard shells.
The metal casings were dull, marked with thick red stripes, their tips painted black.
Soldiers stepped back as Otto's engineers handled the shells with gloves and cloth wrappings. Small plumes hissed from tiny vents at the tops of the canisters.
"Load them carefully," one sergeant warned. "Do not drop. Do not breathe."
Barrel by barrel, the artillery guns hissed and cracked to life once more—not with thunder, but a slow, deliberate thump, as the first wave of chemical shells screamed into the city like whispered death.
Location: Western District – Crumbled Bakery Cellar
Beneath a collapsed bakery, a beastkin woman huddled with her two sons. One had a broken leg wrapped in bloody rags. The other wheezed shallow breaths from a cracked lung, his face bruised and blue.
"Shh," she whispered. "It's over. The sounds stopped. We'll wait for help—someone will come. Maybe the priests…"
Then came a hiss.
A faint one—like the sound of wet sand or a dying snake.
She turned.
From the shattered window of the basement, greenish mist slithered inward like a living thing, curling against the broken glass, spreading across the floor like fingers. The boy with the bruised lung began to choke violently.
"Hold your breath!" she screamed.
But it was too late.
The gas took them all within minutes.
Location: Inner Temple Corridor – Underneath the Great Temple of Larrak
General Jvermy heard the silence first.
He sat at the edge of a broken stairway, his sword resting on his knees. The priests were gone—either fled or dead—and the runes on the temple walls had begun to flicker weakly, as if confused.
But now… a new sound.
A hiss. A gurgle. A low metallic whistle.
He stood, stepping back. The hallway ahead filled with mist—not smoke, not ash. It glowed faintly. It clung to the ground, rising inch by inch.
"Poison," he muttered, eyes wide.
A beastman scout came limping down the corridor. "General! There's gas—it's entering from the upper holes in the temple walls!"
Jvermy grabbed him by the shoulder.
"Seal every tunnel. Burn wet cloths and block the airways!"
But it was futile.
The gas seeped in like water. Every breath made men twitch. Some clawed at their throats. Others went still, pink froth bubbling from their mouths.
Jvermy covered his face with a cloth and ran deeper.
Down toward the crypts.
Down toward the final shrine of the goddess.
Location: Elisabeth's Observation Ridge
The valley was nearly silent. But the screams had begun again.
Different this time.
Not cries of terror under falling stone, but gurgling howls… from throats that wouldn't close, from lungs that wouldn't breathe.
Elisabeth stood still, watching through her binoculars. She said nothing. Officer Durango beside her shifted nervously.
"What is it like?" he asked.
"To die like that?"
She didn't respond for a while.
Then: "Slow."
Another officer, pale-faced, whispered from behind them.
"…and the chorus sings."
No one asked what he meant.
Location: Last Room Beneath the Great Temple
Jvermy collapsed at the foot of the final chamber.
Statues loomed over him—warrior gods, forgotten ancestors, carved into obsidian stone. His cape was soaked in sweat and bile. The torch he held flickered as gas seeped in under the door.
He could barely breathe.
No more messages. No more soldiers.
Only silence.
He knelt before the altar, muttering words in a forgotten tongue, trying to call down salvation from a god who had long since stopped listening.
The gas entered like fog from a dream.
He exhaled one last breath… and joined the city's dead.