The capital city of Aethelgard was drowning in the consequences of its own holy terror.
Commander Seraphen's warhorse collapsed from pure exhaustion the moment it struck the marble paving stones of the High Cathedral's courtyard. The beast's heart burst, foam flying from its mouth. Seraphen did not pause to mourn it. He threw himself from the saddle, his golden armor clanking harshly as he sprinted up the massive white steps.
He bypassed the Royal Guardsmen stationed at the heavy oak doors, shoving past a group of startled junior priests. He burst into the High Priest's private sanctum.
Malakor was kneeling before a massive, sun-forged altar, his hands steepled in prayer.
"Your Eminence," Seraphen gasped, his lungs burning, his golden breastplate streaked with dirt and horse sweat.
Malakor did not turn around. "You lack decorum, Commander. A knight of the Light does not run like a frightened peasant."
"The scorched earth failed," Seraphen wheezed, forcing himself to stand upright. "They are not starving. They are not dying of thirst. The Vanguard is marching at a relentless pace, and they are bringing a mobile fortress with them."
Malakor finally stood, his white robes whispering against the polished marble floor. His elderly eyes narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits.
"Explain," Malakor demanded.
"They have floating supply trains," Seraphen reported, the words tasting like madness on his tongue. "Dozens of heavy wagons, hovering above the dirt, carrying infinite rations. They are projecting a localized gravity field that rips our arrows out of the air. And the poisoned wells... the scouts watched Duke Arthur drive his sword into the dry dirt and summon a geyser of pure, deep-earth water."
Malakor's face drained of color. The pristine, dogmatic certainty that usually anchored his features violently fractured.
"Water from the deep earth?" Malakor whispered, his mind racing through arcane theory. "That requires a permanent, subterranean infrastructure. He would have had to build a pipeline across five hundred miles of bedrock..."
"The Duke isn't building it, Malakor!" Seraphen shouted, his frustration finally breaking through his military discipline. "The earth is just yielding to them! The mud petrifies into granite where they walk! They are not fighting the terrain; the terrain is escorting them!"
The High Priest turned away, pacing toward the massive arched window that looked out over the refugee-choked city. His hands trembled slightly, hidden within his wide silk sleeves.
"They will reach the Weeping Chasm by tomorrow," Malakor calculated, his voice dropping into a tight, desperate register.
The Weeping Chasm was a massive, naturally occurring canyon that effectively severed the northern plains from the heartlands of the Kingdom. It was five hundred feet across and a thousand feet deep. The only way across was the Grand Arch—a massive, ancient stone bridge built centuries ago by the first human kings.
"I ordered the Grand Arch destroyed three days ago," Malakor stated, a cruel, pragmatic light returning to his eyes. "The Inquisition filled the keystones with volatile fire-powder. The bridge is gone. The canyon is entirely impassable."
Seraphen frowned. "If they have floating wagons..."
"The wagons float, but they are pulled by men," Malakor snapped. "Heavy infantry cannot fly, Commander. If they attempt to climb down a thousand-foot sheer cliff in heavy armor, they will fall to their deaths. The chasm will halt their momentum. It will force them to camp on the edge of the cliff."
Malakor turned back to Seraphen, his Aura flaring with sickly-sweet, condensed Light mana.
"Deploy the Sun-Forged Artillery to the southern ridge of the chasm," the High Priest commanded. "When the Vanguard realizes they are trapped at the edge of the cliff, rain holy fire down on them until the iron melts to their bones. We break the Anvil at the edge of the world."
Five hundred miles north of the panicked Cathedral, the Vanguard column approached the edge of the world.
Duke Arthur Warborn stood in his ironwood chariot, feeling the localized gravity field of his army humming through the air. Ahead of them, the flat, ash-covered plains abruptly ended.
The Weeping Chasm was a terrifying scar in the earth. The sheer cliff faces dropped a thousand feet straight down into a raging, white-water river that was completely invisible from the surface, heard only as a deep, distant roar.
And as the High Priest had promised, the Grand Arch was gone.
Only jagged, blackened stumps of masonry remained on either side of the massive gap, the remnants of the Church's explosive sabotage.
"Halt!" Arthur commanded.
The five hundred hyper-dense infantrymen slammed their boots into the petrified dirt, locking their formation instantly. The hovering wagons hummed smoothly behind them.
Arthur stepped down from his chariot and walked to the edge of the cliff. He looked down into the dizzying abyss. Small pebbles, dislodged by his heavy boots, fell for a long, silent time before disappearing into the mist below.
Sir Kaelen tapped his way to the edge, his cane finding the sheer drop flawlessly.
"Five hundred feet across," Kaelen estimated, feeling the air currents rising from the canyon. "No bridge. And I smell the ozone of charged Light mana on the wind. The Inquisition is waiting on the other side."
Arthur squinted, peering through the heavy, ash-filled air.
Two miles away, on the elevated southern ridge across the chasm, the sun caught the gleaming gold of heavy artillery. A line of massive, runic trebuchets, manned by Paladins in white cloaks, was locked and loaded, aiming directly at the northern cliff edge.
"They intend to pin us against the drop and shell us from a distance," Arthur analyzed grimly. He looked at his True-Cold Steel broadsword. "The men are too heavy to climb. Even if we enchanted the wagons to carry the soldiers across, they would be sitting targets for the artillery while suspended over the gap."
Princess Lucy stepped down from her command wagon and walked toward the Duke. Her silver veil blew softly in the updraft of the canyon.
"If we can cross the gap in under three minutes, Your Grace, the Paladin artillery will not have time to calibrate their targeting runes," Lucy stated, her analytical mind instantly processing the battlefield geometry.
"A brilliant assessment, Princess," Arthur said, offering her a respectful nod. "But short of growing wings, we do not have a three-minute crossing method. The High Priest has found a physical boundary we cannot walk through."
Lucy looked down into the massive, terrifying chasm.
She felt the ambient warmth of the localized gravity field generated by the Vanguard's swords. She remembered the perfectly smooth, petrified stone highway they had marched on for a week.
"Do you truly believe that, Duke Warborn?" Lucy asked softly, turning her glacial eyes toward him. "Do you believe the entity holding the leylines would build a five-hundred-mile road and simply forget to build a bridge?"
Arthur paused. He looked down at the ground beneath his boots.
A hundred feet beneath the isolated Warborn estate, miles away from the chasm, the Sightless Sovereign felt his father halt at the edge of the cliff.
Two hundred and sixty-two million, one hundred and fifty-five thousand beats.
Kaiser Warborn sat perfectly still in the pitch-black Nexus.
He 'saw' the destroyed Grand Arch. He 'saw' the Inquisition artillery lining the southern ridge, waiting to rain holy fire on his family.
Malakor believes he can sever the continent with a trench, Kaiser thought, his liquid-void blood pulsing with cold, absolute dominion. He thinks in terms of architecture. I think in terms of tectonics.
Kaiser reached out with his sensory web, locking onto the exact coordinates of the Weeping Chasm.
He didn't intend to build a delicate, soaring archway to replace the one the Church destroyed. Delicacy was for Elven forests and royal palaces. The Vanguard required a foundation that could hold a mountain.
Kaiser drove his will straight down into the Earth Leyline running beneath the chasm's raging river.
Rise, Kaiser commanded.
At the edge of the Weeping Chasm, the Vanguard infantry suddenly shifted their stances.
A deep, bone-rattling vibration echoed up from the abyss. It wasn't the roar of the river. It was the sound of the planet groaning in agony.
"Stand firm!" Arthur bellowed, drawing his black sword and anchoring himself to the localized gravity field.
The vibration escalated into a deafening, localized earthquake. The sheer cliffs on either side of the chasm began to violently shudder, raining massive boulders down into the mist.
Across the canyon, the Inquisition Paladins manning the artillery panicked. Several of their heavy trebuchets violently tipped over as the southern ridge bucked like a wild horse.
"Look!" Captain Vance roared, pointing down into the canyon.
Through the mist and the spraying white water, something was rising from the bottom of the world.
It was not a bridge. It was a massive, brutal, five-hundred-foot-wide slab of raw, hyper-dense subterranean granite. Kaiser was forcing a tectonic plate to literally push itself upward, shearing through the bedrock of the canyon walls.
The sound was apocalyptic. The grinding of millions of tons of stone forcing its way to the surface deafened the Vanguard, but they did not retreat a single inch.
The colossal slab of granite crested the edge of the cliff. It violently slammed into the northern and southern ridges simultaneously, locking into place with a concussive BOOM that sent a shockwave of displaced air tearing across the plains.
The dust settled.
The Weeping Chasm was no longer a chasm. It was a dam. A solid, five-hundred-foot-thick wall of unbreakable stone now perfectly bridged the gap, its surface flawlessly smoothed and seamlessly connected to the petrified King's Highway on either side.
Arthur Warborn stared at the massive tectonic bridge. The sheer, godlike scale of the magic made the warlord's breath catch in his throat.
He looked at Princess Lucy.
The Elven Princess stood perfectly still, her hands clasped before her. She was not shocked. Her glacial eyes held a profound, quiet reverence, acknowledging the silent partner who had just rewritten geography simply to ensure her wagons did not have to stop.
"The road is clear, Your Grace," Lucy noted softly over the ringing in their ears.
Arthur let out a booming, terrifying laugh. He raised his True-Cold Steel broadsword high into the air, the black metal absorbing the pale sunlight.
"Vanguard!" Arthur roared, his voice echoing across the newly formed tectonic dam. "The Sovereign provides the path! We provide the slaughter! Advance!"
The five hundred hyper-dense giants roared in unison.
The mobile gravity domain surged forward. The Vanguard didn't inch across the new bridge; they marched with terrifying, crushing momentum. The heavy, synchronized thud of their boots hitting the solid granite echoed across the canyon like the beating of a titan's heart.
Across the chasm, the Inquisition forces scrambled in absolute terror.
The canyon was supposed to be their impenetrable moat. Now, an army of walking siege engines was crossing it in under two minutes, completely unfazed by the drop.
"Fire the artillery!" the Inquisition Commander shrieked, desperately trying to right the tipped trebuchets. "Rain the Light upon them!"
Three of the massive siege weapons fired.
Massive, glowing boulders of condensed, explosive Light mana arced high into the sky, descending toward the center of the Vanguard column as they crossed the tectonic bridge.
Arthur didn't order the men to scatter. He didn't order a defensive shield wall.
"Hold formation!" Arthur commanded, his eyes locked on the southern ridge.
The glowing holy boulders entered the thirty-foot, overlapping gravity fields generated by the True-Cold swords.
The result was a brutal lesson in physics. The extreme, localized gravity violently seized the heavy artillery projectiles mid-air. Instead of crashing into the Vanguard ranks, the glowing boulders were yanked straight down with catastrophic force, slamming into the indestructible granite bridge twenty feet in front of the marching infantry.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The Light mana detonated against the stone, sending harmless waves of heat washing over the Vanguard's thick iron armor. The tectonic bridge, forged by Kaiser in the dark, didn't even chip.
The Vanguard marched straight through the dissipating smoke of the holy artillery, their pace completely unbroken.
"Ancestors preserve us," an Inquisition Paladin wept, dropping his heavy crossbow as the towering, black-steel-wielding giants breached the southern ridge.
Arthur Warborn stepped off the tectonic bridge and onto the southern plains. He swung his True-Cold broadsword, not using the Elven acceleration runes, but simply letting the hyper-dense mass of the black blade fall with the gravity.
He cleaved the nearest Sun-Forged trebuchet completely in half, shattering its thick oak frame and its runic core with a single, effortless blow.