The stillness did not break so much as it widened.For nearly a full minute, neither army moved. Wind hissed through the canyon’s upper crags, carrying grit and the faint mineral tang of red stone. Then, at some unseen signal, the Imperial column exhaled and began advancing again not into the pass, but forward along its outer mouth, spreading wide across the flat basin where the desert met the canyon’s jaw.It was there, in the open ground, that Valthoria finally saw the true face of the Empire.Row after row of bronze-armored infantry filed into formation, their breastplates catching the dawn in a blinding, coordinated shimmer. Alex counted in blocks of ten out of habit, the way he once counted rebar shipments on a job site, and lost count somewhere past two hundred. Behind the infantry came the cavalry — sleek warhorses draped in quilted barding, riders sitting straight-backed with lances angled precisely at forty-five degrees, as though a drill instructor stood invisible at every st

The blue light did not stay a single point for long.It spread outward across the canyon floor like water poured over glass, splitting into dozens of smaller glowing threads that raced toward the buried soldiers, the panicked horses, the crushed wagons. Alex watched through his telescope, unable to look away even as every instinct told him something important had just changed.The Court Mages had not fled the chaos. They had walked straight into it.Twelve figures in black and gold robes stood in a rough circle near the center of the shattered column, their staffs raised, their voices chanting something too distant for Alex to hear. Around them, the air itself seemed to bend and shimmer, like heat rising off summer pavement, except this heat was cold and blue and alive.The first spell rose as a wall.A shimmering barrier of pale light unfolded across the canyon floor, curving upward and outward like the inside of a great glass dome. Falling rocks that struck it did not crush the men b

Smoke still poured off the burning camouflage netting when Alex forced himself to stop staring at what he’d lost and start counting what he still had.That was the first rule he’d learned on real job sites, long before any of this. A collapsed plan wasn’t a disaster. It was information. The site was never the problem; the problem was always whatever assumption had just been proven wrong. Panic came from staring at the wreckage. Solutions came from asking what was still standing.“Gideon,” Alex said, already moving down the ridge path, “I need the second supply cache. The one we buried near the eastern wall, not the main one.”Gideon blinked, still half in shock from the fire. “The reserve ballista parts? Governor, those were meant for repairs, not—”“They’re meant for whatever keeps us alive. Get them moving. Now.”Below, the exposed defensive line was already drawing fire. Imperial archers, no longer blind to the hidden ballista pits, had begun target volleys toward the positions the

Marcus stepped into the gap before anyone told him to.There wasn’t time to think it through. One second he was yelling at the line to pull back from the Champion’s reach, and the next his boots were planted right in the man’s path, sword up, because somebody had to be there and everyone else was either dead, wounded, or backing away with good reason.The Champion turned toward him without much urgency. Like a man swatting a fly he hadn’t decided was worth the effort yet.“Imperial steel.” His voice came out low and rough through the helm. “You hold like a soldier. Deserter?”“Something like that.”Marcus didn’t wait for a follow-up. He came in low, aiming for the knee, a move that had ended three duels for him back when he still wore the Empire’s colors.The Champion stepped past it like it had been thrown in slow motion.The counter caught Marcus across the shoulder hard enough to spin him half around, and he barely got his sword up in time to stop the next swing from taking his hea

The horns kept sounding long after Darius had removed his helmet, low and steady, rolling down the canyon like something with weight to it.Alex stood on the ridge with his telescope forgotten at his side, watching the Imperial line reform below with none of yesterday’s hesitation. Whatever exhaustion the previous day’s losses had put into that army, it didn’t show this morning. If anything, the soldiers looked steadier, packed in tighter, moving with the particular kind of energy that came from knowing their prince was about to fight beside them instead of behind them.The battlefield around him hadn’t slowed down to match his focus on the ridge below. Arrows were already crossing the canyon in both directions, thick enough in places to blot out patches of the pale morning sky before raining down in clattering waves against shields and stone. Somewhere behind the barricade, Annalise and two other women were moving between the wounded from yesterday, checking bandages, pressing water