# Chapter 646: The Siege Begins
The word "MINE!" echoed, a physical blow that sent Nyra stumbling backward. The sand beneath her feet began to churn, not from an earthquake, but as if it were a living thing, a grey sea trying to pull her down. The shimmering sword in her hand grew hot, almost unbearably so, a single point of defiant light in the encroaching darkness. High above on the stone tiers, the carved gargoyles, silent sentinels for centuries, began to groan. Cracks spiderwebbed across their stone forms, and their eyes, once empty sockets, glowed with a baleful, sickly green light. The Withering King wasn't just in the arena; the arena *was* the Withering King. It was a cage, and they had just walked into the tiger's den. The sand erupted around them, forming grasping claws and snarling faces. The battle for Soren's soul was over. The battle for their lives had just begun.
***
Miles away, the world was ending in fire and shadow. The Bloomblight Colossus, a mountain of corrupted flesh and petrified wood, had finally reached the capital's outer wall. Its sheer scale was a violation of natural law, a walking wound upon the earth. It stood taller than the highest spire, its body a shifting mass of grey, fibrous tissue and jagged, blackened bone. Its head, a featureless dome of hardened ash, swiveled slowly, scanning the defenses with an intelligence that was ancient and utterly malevolent. A low, guttural hum emanated from it, a sound that vibrated through the stone of the battlements and settled deep in the bones of every soldier staring up in horror.
The city's defenses, a marvel of Crownlands engineering, were a joke. The massive iron-reinforced gate, designed to withstand battering rams and siege towers, looked like a flimsy wooden door before this titan. The ballistae mounted on the walls, their heavy bolts capable of piercing the thickest armor, would be nothing more than splinters against its hide. The archers, with their fire arrows, might as well have been throwing lit matches at a glacier. The corrosive magic that wreathed the Colossus, a shimmering, greenish aura that smelled of rot and ozone, was already eating away at the mortar between the stones, leaving behind black, crumbling dust.
Panic was a contagion spreading through the ranks. Younger soldiers, boys who had never seen a real battle, were dropping their weapons, their faces pale with terror. Even the veterans, men who had fought in the border skirmishes against the Sable League, stared with wide, disbelieving eyes. This was not war. This was an extinction event.
In the command center overlooking the main gate, chaos reigned. Officers shouted conflicting orders into speaking tubes, messengers ran in with frantic, contradictory reports, and the air was thick with the stench of sweat and fear. The commander in charge, a portly nobleman appointed for his loyalty rather than his skill, was babbling about forming a sortie, a suicidal charge that would be crushed underfoot in seconds.
"Enough!"
The voice was not loud, but it cut through the din with the sharp authority of a snapping flagpole. Every head turned. Captain Bren stood in the doorway, his frame lean and hard, his one good eye a shard of flint. His prosthetic arm, a marvel of dwarven engineering, was a dull, inert metal at his side. He ignored the sputtering commander, shoving him aside with a contemptuous shove of his shoulder. He strode to the command table, his gaze sweeping over the tactical map, the terrified faces, and the view of the monstrous creature outside the window.
He had seen this kind of despair before, in the eyes of men trapped in a hopeless canyon ambush, in the faces of a village about to be overrun by Bloom-touched beasts. Despair was a weapon, and the Colossus was wielding it as effectively as its colossal fists.
"Listen to me," Bren said, his voice low and steady, forcing the officers to quiet down to hear him. "Panic is our only true enemy right now. That thing out there wants us to break. It wants us to run, to fight each other, to die stupidly. We will not give it the satisfaction."
He pointed a finger at a young lieutenant whose hands were shaking so badly he couldn't grip his sword. "You. Take your company and get the civilians back from the wall. Use force if you have to. Get them into the lower city and seal the passages. Now." The lieutenant, shocked by the direct order, nodded and scrambled away.
Bren's gaze fell upon the city's primary defensive weapon, a massive, multi-toned cannon called the Gatebreaker. It was a relic from an older war, capable of firing a massive stone shot that could shatter a castle wall. "Get that cannon loaded," he commanded, his voice leaving no room for argument. "I don't care if it takes you an hour. Load it with the biggest shot you have. And get me every alchemist with a flash-powder bomb. Every last one."
A grizzled sergeant, a man with a face like a worn map, spoke up. "Captain, with all due respect, what's the point? A cannonball will just annoy it."
"I'm not trying to kill it," Bren said, his eyes fixed on the Colossus as it raised a massive, club-like arm. "I'm trying to blind it. I'm trying to make it angry. I'm trying to make it focus on the gate, on *me*, and not on the rest of the city."
He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that this was a holding action. Nothing they had could bring the beast down. His mission was not victory. His mission was to buy time. Time for Nyra. Time for Soren. The thought of them, alone in the heart of the city with the true source of this horror, was a cold knot in his gut. Every second he could give them was a second closer to a miracle.
Outside, the Colossus struck. The club-like arm, a fused mass of bone and wood, slammed into the main gate. The sound was not a crack or a splinter, but a deafening, world-ending *CRUNCH* that shook the entire fortress. The iron bands buckled, the massive oak timbers groaned, and a spiderweb of fractures erupted across its surface. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling of the command center.
"Steady!" Bren roared, his voice a rock in the storm. "Archers! Full volley on its face! Now! Make it look up!"
A storm of arrows, their tips ablaze, arced into the sky. They were like a swarm of angry fireflies against the vast, grey canvas of the Colossus's body. Most clattered off its hide uselessly, but a few struck its head, sputtering uselessly. But it worked. The creature's head tilted back, its featureless face seeming to stare at the insignificant annoyance.
"Cannon! On my mark!" Bren yelled, his hand gripping the edge of the command table. He watched the Colossus, waiting for the perfect moment. It was pulling its arm back for another, more devastating blow. That was when it would be most exposed.
"Fire!"
The Gatebreaker erupted with a roar that dwarfed the Colossus's impact. The entire wall shuddered as the massive stone shot, propelled by a ton of black powder, screamed through the air. It flew true, striking the Colossus squarely in the center of its chest. The impact was tremendous, a shower of rock and dust, a visible shockwave rippling through the creature's body. For a moment, it staggered back. A collective gasp of hope went through the defenders.
But the Colossus did not fall. It simply straightened up, the crater in its chest already beginning to bubble and reform with fibrous grey tissue. Its head lowered, and the baleful green light of its aura intensified. The hum grew louder, angrier. It was done playing.
The second blow came. It was slower, more deliberate, and infinitely more powerful. The main gate, already weakened, exploded inwards. A torrent of shattered wood and twisted iron filled the archway, leaving a gaping wound into the city. The Colossus took a shuffling step forward, its massive foot crushing the gatehouse and a section of the wall, sending soldiers tumbling into the chasm below. It was inside.
The line of soldiers at the breach broke. Men screamed and fled, trampling their comrades in their desperation to escape the advancing monstrosity. The stench of its corrupt magic washed over them, a physical wave of nausea and despair. It was over. The city was lost.
"No," Bren whispered, his face grim. He turned from the window and looked at the terrified soldiers around him. He saw the same fear he'd seen a hundred times before, but this time, there was no clever maneuver, no hidden path to victory. There was only the charge.
He walked to the armory rack, his movements deliberate. He took a heavy, steel-reinforced shield, its surface emblazoned with the crest of House Marr, a house he no longer served but a symbol he still understood. He hefted it onto his left arm, the weight a familiar comfort. Then, he looked at his prosthetic right arm. It was a simple, functional piece of metal, a tool to replace what he had lost. But Grak, the dwarven blacksmith, had installed one last feature, a failsafe Bren had hoped he would never have to use.
He placed his left hand on a series of runes etched into the prosthetic's shoulder. He closed his eyes, thinking of the boy he had trained, the stubborn, fierce fighter who had become a son to him. He thought of the debt he owed, not of coin, but of purpose. Soren was fighting a battle no one could see. Bren would fight the one everyone could.
He looked up at the monster, now forcing its way through the breach, its shadow falling over the plaza beyond. He activated the prosthetic.
A low hum filled the air, and the runes on his arm blazed to life, not with a simple light, but with a pure, incandescent energy. The metal plates of the arm shifted and realigned, glowing with the heat of a forge. The fingers elongated, sharpening into wicked claws. The entire prosthetic was now a conduit, channeling the last of the power cells Grak had installed, a weapon designed for one last, glorious stand.
"For Soren," he whispered, the words a prayer and a battle cry.
Then, Captain Bren charged. He was a single man against a god of ruin, a flickering candle against an encroaching darkness. He ran not toward victory, but toward duty. He ran to buy time, to hold the line, to remind the monster that even in the face of certain death, there were those who would not break. His roar, a sound of pure defiance, echoed in the monster's shadow as he plunged into the fray.