Zephyr’s arrows whispered past them, maintaining suppression fire that kept defenders pinned while our climbers closed the distance.
Daemon reached the top first. His blade flew in a horizontal slash that opened an archer’s throat before the man could cry a warning. Kael arrived a heartbeat later, twin daggers flashing as he drove into the clustered defenders with focused brutality. He struck vitals with ruthless precision, throwing knives that seemed to appear from nowhere at those who approached.
Steel rang against steel. Men screamed and died. Blood painted stone as two assassins transformed the defense into a crimson canvas.
“Ladder!” Kane’s voice boomed across the battlefield.
Daemon kicked the nearest siege ladder over the wall’s edge. It struck the ground with a heavy thud, and Kane grabbed it before the thing finished settling.
He climbed one-handed, war hammer gripped in the other, ascending through sheer physical strength that made the ladder groan under his weight. Each rung bent but held. Each pull brought two hundred fifty pounds of armored warrior closer to the top.
Reinforcements rushed to retake the position Daemon and Kael had seized. Twenty soldiers in royal colors charged toward them with weapons ready, clearly understanding what it meant if those gates opened.
They wouldn’t reach them in time.
Kane crested the wall like a natural disaster given human form. His first hammer swing caught an advancing soldier's center mass and launched the man backward with enough force to take down two others. His second strike shattered a spear mid-thrust and continued through to pulverize the wielder’s ribs.
He didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. Just waded into the clustered reinforcements like a boulder rolling downhill, hammer rising and falling with methodical violence that scattered bodies and broke formations.
Bone cracked. Steel bent. Men died screaming under Kane’s blows.
Kane carved a path through flesh and fear, and nothing stopped him.
Kael broke from the main fight, sprinting along the wall toward the gate tower. Guards tried to intercept. He slid under the first blade, hamstrung the wielder in passing, came up inside the second guard’s reach, and buried a dagger in the base of his skull.
Three more defenders blocked the tower entrance.
Kael didn’t slow.
He hit them like a thrown knife, all momentum. Daggers found throats, eye sockets, and the soft spaces between ribs.The guards crumpled in sequence, dead before they’d properly registered the attack.
Then Kael vanished into the tower’s dark interior.
I held my breath without meaning to. Counted heartbeats. Strained to hear anything over the battle’s roar that might indicate success or failure.
Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
A scream echoed from inside the tower, wet and abbreviated, ending in a choked gurgle.
The gates groaned.
Ancient mechanisms engaged with the sound of metal grinding against stone. Chains rattled through hidden channels. The massive iron-reinforced doors began to swing outward with terrible, grinding slowness.
The gap widened. Six inches. A foot. Enough for light to spill through.
Enough.
“CHARGE!” Kaelen’s voice carried across the entire battlefield.
The resistance surged forward in a unified roar. Two hundred forty Fae warriors hit those slowly opening gates with all the momentum of their desperate sprint. Bodies pressed through the widening gap, shields raised against the inevitable counterassault, weapons ready.
The gates swung wider.
Steel met steel inside. Soldiers died screaming on both sides as the battle compressed into the narrow opening, every inch contested, every life spent purchasing ground.
But we were through.
The capital had been breached.
