Morning came. The sky was choked with grey and black soot.
Bilal stood at the edge of the firebreak, his face smeared with ash, his hands blistered. The armory was a smoking crater.
Runa stood beside him. She looked at the crater, then looked down at her hands. "I let him in, Father," she whispered, her voice trembling with a guilt so profound it looked like it might crush her. "You were nursing Mother, and I stamped his Yellow Paper. I burned our arsenal. I failed you."
Bilal turned to her. He didn't yell. He reached out and pulled her into a tight, soot-stained embrace.
"You did not light the fuse, Runa. The world did," Bilal said softly. "The Kings of the Earth sent a rat into our house because they are too cowardly to face us like men. We were betrayed by our own mercy. That is not a failure of your heart; it is a flaw in our enemies' souls."
He pulled back and looked at the smoldering ruins of his greatest weapons.
"But they made a fatal miscalculation," Bilal said, his eyes narrowing into a cold, terrifying glare.
"What?" Runa asked, wiping the soot from her cheek.
"The spy shouted that destroying our weapons was God's revenge," Bilal said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "They think the magic was in the powder. They think they burned our strength."
Bilal tapped his own temple.
"They forgot where the fire came from. The powder is gone, Runa. But the recipe is up here. And now... now I am going to show them what happens when the Giant stops playing defense."
THE GIANT OF AXIOMRA
A Saga of Steel, Science, and Survival