While Bilal fought the Reaper in the master bedroom, the city of Axiomra was left without its primary architect.
Runa and Leif took absolute control of the Council. Runa was a brilliant military commander, but the daily, grinding bureaucracy of the "Yellow Paper" immigration system was overwhelming. Winter was approaching, the Water Mill needed repairs, and the trade caravans were backing up at the gates.
This was the fatal flaw of Bilal's utopian design: It relied too heavily on his own paranoia.
For twenty years, Bilal had personally looked into the eyes of almost every man who entered the inner citadel. His "Hunter Eyes" could spot a liar, a thief, or a spy with terrifying accuracy. But Bilal was locked away, washing his dying wife.
In the chaos, Runa authorized the expedited entry of a group of "refugee scholars" from the south. The city desperately needed a new master mason to repair the underground heating flues, and one of the refugees carried the tools and the mathematical knowledge of the Romans.
The man's name was Cassius. He was quiet, brilliant, and impeccably clean. Runa, stressed and overworked, approved his Yellow Paper. He was given a house in the inner ring and access to the citadel's blueprints.
But Cassius was not a refugee.
He was an Italian Sicarius—a highly educated, fanatically loyal deep-cover operative funded by the Tusculani noble family of Rome. The very family Bilal had humiliated and rejected years ago.
Cassius had spent two years learning Norse, studying masonry, and waiting for the perfect moment. He knew he couldn't beat the Giant's border security. So he waited until the Giant was distracted by grief.
In the dead of night, while the city slept and Bilal prayed over Astrid's feverish body, Cassius walked the stone walls. He was not there to assassinate Bilal—he knew the 70 elite guards would kill him instantly.
He was there for something far more dangerous. He was mapping the blind spots of the trebuchets. He was counting the rotation of the guards. He was finding the exact location of the gunpowder storage.
Axiomra's walls were impenetrable from the outside. But because a husband loved his wife too much to leave her side, the door had been left unlocked, and a rat had slipped into the granary.
The countdown to the greatest crisis in Axiomra's history had begun.