The Sound of Three Steps

The gate wasn't the weakness.

The gate was the trap.

Inside the heart of Zantrayel, the sound of bells echoed from the watchtowers.

Not alarms.

Not panic.

But summoning.

From the homes carved into stone and the sanctuaries hidden in alleyways, people emerged. Some in armor. Some in robes. Some barefoot, hands still stained with ink, flour, or earth.

And they moved.

All of them.

Toward the gate.

At the center of this movement stood Ayira.

Wife of Jalen.

Voice of law.

Chosen of Tijan Petro.

She walked not with urgency, but with conviction—a woman who had once broken the back of a demi-god who mistook her silence for submission.

She wore no metal.

Only a long red cloth tied around her waist—the mark of one who speaks for flame.

Behind her, the heat shimmered. Not from fire—but from fury held in reverence.

She had not come to fight.

She had come to witness.

And Luruzt would not leave this city untouched—not with her watching.

Above her, the sky twisted once more. The gate still held, but now shadows ran along the walls of the city as if drawn to its defiance.

The people who gathered did not chant.

They did not cry out.

They watched Ayira walk.

And they followed.

Beside Ayira, two others emerged from the crowd:

Eshe – Swordmaiden of the Thousand-Fold Path.

Trained in silence. Favored by the god of storms who refused to show his face since the War of First Names.

And Nuru – A quiet gardener who, in truth, was a weapon buried by the gods themselves. She had once spoken a word that caused an entire river to boil. It was her silence that made the gods uncomfortable.

These were the three women that made a god once tremble.

They had not fought together since the day the sky wept blood. That battle was sealed in record, forbidden to be read even by the priestesses.

Now, they walked together once more.

"They didn't call us," Eshe said, adjusting the simple linen wrapped around her wrists.

"They didn't have to," Ayira replied.

And as they reached the battlefield edge, where Koko Miray and Zafana stood without flinching, the very stone beneath the city groaned.

The whispers Luruzt had sewn into the minds of the broken were being smothered. The pulse of fear he once stoked now collided with a wall of unshakable stillness.

Three women.

Three different paths.

One unyielding promise:

You will not pass.

And Luruzt, for the first time since his emergence, stepped back.

Just once.

Not because of pain.

Not because of defeat.

But because he had seen this formation before—etched on cave walls left by a civilization the gods tried to forget.

They were not warriors.

They were keepers.

And where they stood, he would break