The sound of the city alarm was no longer a wail. It had become a single, sustained, metallic shriek—the sound of a world tearing apart. It was a note of pure, societal terror that was, impossibly, already being drowned out by a deeper, more terrible sound: the sound of war.
WHUMP. CRACK. SCREAM.
The main gate of Azurefall, a marvel of dwarven-forged steel and arcane wards that had stood for five hundred years, was gone. It didn't just break; it vaporized. Pulverized into a cloud of splinters, shrapnel, and superheated dust by the synchronized, relentless, thunderous assault of the obsidian-skinned Brutes.
For a single, stunned heartbeat, the city held its breath. Then the tide rolled in.
