A River Between Walls

The morning after the breach came bitter and silent. Smoke drifted low between broken towers, clinging to the wounds in the wall like rot. The Gale command post had taken over the eastern battlements, a stripped canvas pavilion flapping under the scorched sky. No fanfare. No flags. Just command and continuation.

Chaghan arrived first. His armor was streaked black from fire soot. Blood crusted the buckles. Dents along the shield's rim marked where axes had tried, and failed, to punch through. He dropped to one knee, stood again, and said nothing.

"Report," Altan said, not looking up from the map he was marking with charcoal.

"Outer wall's secure. Last defense lines folded. Some tried to beg. Most just ran. Stormguard held. Regulars bled, but not enough to matter."

Khulan came next, dragging her saber along the stone. Dried blood clung to the edge. Her eyes were raw. "Flanks are stretched. We need the rear line rotated—supply trails are exposed. I've got cavalry posted, but they'll break if pressed."

Altan nodded once. No complaint. No comment.

Burgedai arrived with boots caked in ash and dried mud. His face looked carved from iron. "Moat's reinforced. Ward sigils run deep through the stone now. Zhong mages blew every inner bridge. No one's crossing without glowing like a lantern."

Stormwake appeared as if conjured by silence, the edges of his coat still damp from dawn mist. Hawks perched along the beams, feathers twitching. "Some spies slipped out with the civilians. Most went west. But a few stayed. Too curious. Too calm."

Altan didn't blink. "Let them. But watch them. If they move—cut their throats. Quiet."

"Whisperbugs go in tonight," Stormwake said. "They'll burrow through the brick, find the hollow places beneath the palace. We'll hear their breath."

"Good."

Altan turned to Khulan. "Guard the rear. If the Free Cities twitch, you strike first. Convoys from the coast are hiding more than grain."

"I'll send scouts into the copper woods before dusk," she said. "If I see movement, I kill it."

They didn't need ceremony. The council dispersed with nods and gravel-thick words. No one lingered. Outside the tent, the cries of the dying still echoed against the breached stone. The outer wall had fallen. But the city stood. Six legions lost—bodies shattered beneath crumbling towers.

Altan didn't rise.

"Chaghan. Burgedai. Remain."

The two warriors stayed as the others exited. Once the flaps fell shut and the wind outside swallowed the noise, Altan reached into his satchel and unrolled a thick scroll, stained with oil and ash.

On it were sketches—machines built low and heavy, their backs arched like armored beasts.

"They'll build five. Iron-shelled. Mobile. When they reach the moat, they extend, like a turtle stretching its neck."

The siege machines looked obscene laid out in scale—like monsters flayed for study. Spinal supports. Folded neck-pistons. Reinforced bridge plates built to snap forward and hold.

"They breach the moat, or we rot in this ruin," Altan said.

The engineers didn't speak. They understood.

"One week."

They nodded.

"Prepare the path," he told Burgedai. "Keep it level. Hide the work. Bury it if you have to. If someone sees it, kill them."

Burgedai didn't flinch. "Understood."

Interlude: Under the Canvas

The western quarter of the Gale Army's camp had gone dead quiet.

On the surface—grain sacks, dry rations, wagons lined in rows. But beneath a false ridge, a shallow pit had been dug and sealed with crossbeams. From above, it looked like a livestock enclosure. Inside, it was something else.

Engineers worked without voices. The reek of iron, sweat, pitch, and fire choked the air. Torches burned with filtered flames, hidden behind angled tin to block the glow. Smoke hissed out through fake chimney flues routed to cooking tents.

What lay beneath was construction.

Timber frames like curved shells dominated the floor, each one reinforced with blackened iron and aurichalcum mesh. Massive ribs arched upward, hollow but strong. Near the center of each structure, the folded neck-mechanisms were being tested—designed to uncoil and slam forward in one brutal movement. The bridge wouldn't lower gently. It would lurch out like a spear.

Orders came from a squat, bald woman with a voice like a rasping file. Engineer Daalo.

"Brace two's crooked. Fix it, or it'll kill someone before it kills the enemy."

"Pulley locks. Again. If the bridge slams early, you die first."

No names. Just badge numbers and clockwork discipline. The first shell already resembled the back of something monstrous. Bonewood and iron. Pressure tubes along the spine hissed as air was tested and released.

Underneath, two engineers worked in the dark.

"Stable?"

"For now," one muttered. "If the trigger jams—"

"Then we die under a turtle with its neck cut off," the other said.

Chaghan entered without warning. The air seemed to drop two degrees. He walked the length of the shell, boots scraping over plank and steel. No one saluted. No one dared to.

He stopped beside Daalo.

"Report."

"First's ready in three days. Frame two's behind. I need more rivets and fewer mouths."

"You'll get what you need. But seven days. Not one more."

Daalo didn't smile. "We'll do it in six."

Chaghan turned, paused at the lip of the pit.

"No songs. No humming."

Daalo rolled her eyes. "Even the wood's afraid to creak."

Overhead, tarps shifted like dry breath. From outside, it still looked like grain.

There were no drums. No banners. Only the quiet, violent birth of a machine built to kill a wall.

Outside, the smoke clung to broken stone. One wall was down. But ahead: the cursed river, the glowing sigils, and the Zhong emperor's final guard.

That night, Altan issued his next command.

A notice echoed through the shattered districts: any citizen still breathing could flee. They had two days.

After that, nothing would be spared.

The storm would move again. And this time, it would not stop.

Zhong Side – Within the Inner Wall

The surviving Zhong command gathered atop the inner wall's western tower. The air stank of old blood and crushed stone. Beneath them, the outer city smoldered.

"Six legions lost," one captain muttered. "And not even a pause."

Another pointed to the far plains, where Gale engineers swarmed like ants. "They're building again. Machines. Bigger than the last."

"Last ones were eaten alive," said the old archer, spitting over the side. "Whispershell bugs. Cursed vermin."

The officer in black armor didn't respond. His eyes stayed locked on the breach. "Those weren't vermin. That was war doctrine."

The inner moat shimmered with wardlight. Sigils glowed like bruises under the water's surface. What bridges remained had been destroyed by their own men.

Within the palace grounds, two legions of elite guards patrolled day and night—one made of former cavalry, their horses long dead, their discipline intact. Four more legions of regular troops rotated wall duty, bolstering each position with archers, shock units, and hastily restored siege defense towers.

But the Zhong engineers were behind. Their last defense machines had been gutted, eaten from within. They now worked in haste, rebuilding from scraps and fear.

They knew the Gale would return. And when it did, it wouldn't come like a tide.

It would come like thunder, armored and hungry, with machines that screamed as they broke the earth.