No one who truly understood warfare would ever call a ballista a crude weapon.That was something only outsiders believed. People who had never stood beside one while it was being loaded. People who thought war was all muscle and shouting. In truth, building a ballista required restraint. Precision. A kind of patience that bordered on obsession.Wood, iron, rope. Yes, those were the materials. But forcing them together meant nothing without care. A fraction of misalignment, a tension pulled too tight or not tight enough, could ruin the entire machine. Worse, it could kill the crew operating it.Within the Siege Engineering Corps, ballista design had been refined for decades. Each generation improved upon the last. Errors were shaved away. Power increased. Accuracy sharpened. And when the gray dwarves joined the process, everything changed.They were short folk, broad and heavy, with hands scarred by years of metalwork. Their instincts leaned naturally toward balance and tension, gears

The Holy Legion withdrew without a single shouted command.Steel boots pressed into frost hardened earth. Armor brushed against armor. Shields shifted. The sound was low and steady, like a tide moving back at the pull of something unseen. No one panicked. No one hesitated. Every soldier knew what was expected of them, and they obeyed as naturally as breathing.The battlefield slowly opened.When the dust settled, the space at the center stood bare.Almost bare.One man remained.Ares Valen stood alone beneath the open sky, golden armor catching the pale light of noon. Behind him were no more than five hundred soldiers. They stood close, shoulder to shoulder, unmoving. Their weapons were ready, their faces calm. Not one of them looked away from the vast enemy force gathering in the distance.Five hundred against tens of thousands.The numbers were laughable.And yet, not a single man stepped back.Ares Valen frowned.This was not a tactical maneuver. It was not part of any plan he had

“What is your name?”The question did not echo across the battlefield.It struck.Lucullus was already kneeling, his forehead pressed firmly against the cracked stone beneath him. The ground was still warm, as if the battle had only just ended moments ago. Not long before, this place had been filled with chaos. Men shouting orders, steel colliding with steel, the sharp metallic scent of blood hanging thick in the air. Now there was nothing.Silence.Not the peaceful kind, but a heavy, oppressive stillness that felt unnatural. Even the wind seemed uncertain, as if it did not know whether it was allowed to move anymore.“Lucullus,” he answered, forcing the words past his dry throat. His voice trembled despite his effort to remain composed. “I am Lucullus. A Roman general and a consul of the Senate.”He did not lift his head.He could not.Above him, the sky bore the scars of divine wrath. The clouds had been torn apart, scorched by lightning that did not belong to this world. The air it

The decision to send an imperial embassy to the Kingdom of Tailand was not something Emperor Ares Valen made lightly.It came after three long, restless nights. Nights spent staring at maps until the candlelight burned low and the ink on parchment blurred together. Sleep had come in fragments, if at all. When it did, it brought no rest.On his desk lay charts of rivers and roads, lists of trade goods, estimates of troop movement and supply capacity. Those were the obvious concerns. Necessary ones.But they were not the real problem.The true calculations were harder to measure. They involved people. Loyalties. Old grudges. Quiet ambitions. The invisible lines of trust and fear that held the human world together, barely.This mission was not a polite exchange of envoys or a ceremonial gesture meant to keep appearances. It was not about seals, signatures, or carefully worded promises.It was the first move in a war that had already begun, whether the world admitted it or not.A war that

The sun drifted slowly toward the western horizon, lingering as if it were reluctant to disappear. Its light softened as it fell, spreading warmth across the land in fading waves.Above the palace, the sky burned.Crimson clouds stretched endlessly, glowing like liquid fire poured across the heavens. They shifted constantly, reshaping themselves in slow, restless motions. One moment they looked like rolling flames, the next like torn banners caught in a silent wind. The light they cast stained the world below in deep reds and muted gold, giving the evening a weight that felt solemn and heavy, almost sacred.Anyone seeing such a sky would expect something magnificent beneath it.And yet, hidden behind the tall, dignified walls of the imperial palace, there was a courtyard so ordinary that it almost felt wrong.It was clean.Quiet.Unremarkable.Yes, it was larger than the courtyards of common homes, but size alone was its only distinction. There were no elaborate fountains carved from