[Units Deployed: 1 Panzergrenadier Ptoon; 1 Panzer ptoon]

  [Command Mode Active: Frontline Assault]

  [Remaining Points: 213]

  [Designation: Confirmed]

  Across the burning city, a shudder rippled through the air — not from explosions, but something deeper. Older. A primal shift that resonated in the marrow of every living being.

  Atop the keep’s walls, Erich stumbled mid-incantation, his hands trembling. “What… was that?” he whispered. The runes on his staff pulsed once, then dimmed, as if momentarily bowing to a greater power.

  Halderan felt it too. The air changed. It no longer tasted of smoke and despair — something else was rising. A pressure behind the eyes, a tension in the soul. He turned toward the merchant quarter, where the fires bzed highest. “Something’s... awakened,” he muttered, voice low. “Something ancient. And angry.”

  Even the invaders paused. A beastman berserker stopped mid-charge, hackles raised, eyes scanning the sky. A cnrat chittered nervously, its whiskers twitching before backing into the shadows.

  And from beneath it all — from the earth itself — came a low, metallic hum.

  A new power had entered the field.

  The streets trembled.

  From behind shattered buildings and broken fortifications, the two Hummel self-propelled artillery units extended their stabilizers and locked into firing positions. Their tracks had crushed a path through debris-littered alleyways, now nestled between the scorched ruins of the Merchant Quarter.

  Inside each armored vehicle, ghost-silent soldiers moved with mechanical calm. They spoke only in clipped commands—centuries of doctrine distilled into fwless execution.

  A pulse flickered on Reinhard’s HUD: [Target Designation Updated – Sync Complete]

  He gave a single command through clenched teeth: “Commence fire.”

  The first Hummel’s gun cracked like the voice of vengeance.

  **Boom**

  Its shell arced high into the ash-choked sky before falling with unnatural precision into a cluster of beastmen rallying behind a gutted brewery near the eastern breach. The explosion vaporized flesh and shattered bone—fire and iron tearing into fur and steel with ruthless indifference.

  A second shell followed moments ter, bsting a Verminthar mortar nest into silence. Another shell fell into one of the remaining sinkhole edges, colpsing half of its perimeter and trapping the reinforcements trying to cw their way out.

  These weren’t mystical attacks. No Soul Points burned.Only fuel, steel, and human willpower powered these machines. Their thunder was real. Their impact, irreversible.

  Reinhard stood just behind the smoke-belching barrels, the glow of muzzle fshes reflected in his visor. Around him, the Panzergrenadiers formed staggered lines, rifles raised, MG42s resting across colpsed bricks and window frames. The street was being cleared one building at a time—methodically, surgically.

  The enemy had torn open Stonewatch.

  Now, Reinhard would cauterize the wound with fire.

  The earth shook under their feet.

  Margrave Halderan paused mid-shout, hand raised toward a retreating squad of wounded soldiers trying to make the inner wall. For a brief moment, even the screams and snarls of the enemy seemed to hesitate—repced by an echoing thoom in the distance.

  Then came the second. And the third.

  “Artillery?” Halderan muttered, disbelief etched across his features.

  Erich, standing atop the wall beside him, turned his head toward the rising smoke columns in the east. Fmes were already licking at the sky, but these were different. Not wild, uncontrolled—precise. Measured. Tactical.

  “That’s not from our stores,” Erich said, narrowing his eyes. “That’s modern… something I haven’t seen before.”

  Another shell struck. A warehouse-turned-beastmen-staging-ground disappeared in a roar of fire. The Verminthar ranks staggered as their fnks began to burn.

  “Where is it coming from?” Halderan asked.

  Erich raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the remains of the Merchant Quarter.

  “Reinhard.”

  The shaman known as Gruth’Kal the Howler staggered down a blood-slick alley, his antlered staff dragging behind him. The air stank of smoke, ozone, and the iron stink of ruptured flesh. His protective wards crackled with flickering green energy, barely holding.

  Another thunderous crack split the sky.

  Gruth’Kal flinched, spinning around just in time to see a second-story building—occupied moments ago by Verminthar nethergunners—explode into fme and stone. Screams were swallowed by the bst as jagged debris rained down in every direction.

  “What sorcery is this?!” one of the beastman shield-bearers barked, his curved horns painted with the blood of civilians.

  “It is no sorcery!” hissed a panicking Nethersmith lieutenant, dragging a half-crushed cw behind him. “It’s metal. Earth magic! Sky fire!”

  “There were no mages!” shouted a berserker, eyes wide. “No chants! No glow! Just fire and thunder!”

  Further down the ne, Ratogres flinched and snarled, pawing at their ears, driven mad by the sudden unrelenting rhythmic cracking of MG42s. Dozens of slugs chewed through cobblestone and flesh, tearing apart squads before they could form ranks. The suppressing fire pinned down units that had never known fear.

  Ghorvak smmed his axe into the stone wall beside him. “You said the city was ripe for conquest!” he bellowed, staring down the cowering Nethersmith. “You said their warriors were few, their relics dim!”

  “They were!” the rat snapped back. “There were no signs! No aether surge! This is new! This is… unnatural!”

  Another boom. A Panzer IV round punched through a makeshift barricade three streets away, reducing three Thrakar shock troops to smears on the walls.

  The frontline was colpsing.

  The shamans began retreating, their protective wards now focused solely on survival. The beastmen fell back in disorder, growling in frustration. The Verminthar scrambled to reposition artillery salvaged from deep within the tunnels—but they were being hunted now.

  A second shaman shouted across the square, trying to rally. “Find the source! Find the caster or the summoner—cut him down and this ends!”

  But none dared move forward.

  Because for the first time since the attack began, the invaders were no longer the predators.

  They were prey.

  The fires of Stonewatch roared like a dragon’s breath, bathing the shattered streets in flickering red. Reinhard’s breath was steady beneath his rebreather. The roar of distant MG fire and thunderous artillery was no longer dissonant noise — it was rhythm. It was order. It was his will made manifest.

  Through his HUD, Reinhard surveyed the battlefield.

  [Soul Units Deployed: 49 Infantry | 2 Tiger IIs | 2 Panzer IVs | 2 Hummel Artillery][Status: Engaging][Enemy Morale: Crumbling]

  A building crumbled to his left as a Tiger II fired through its third story, blowing apart a nest of Nethergunners. Fire and dust mushroomed into the sky. The scream of beastmen echoed down the alley ahead.

  The path to the keep was open — but that wasn’t the objective. Not yet.

  [Tactical Directive Updated: Relieve Inner Keep – South-Eastern Sector]

  He turned to his newly formed command unit — two veteran NCOs and a field engineer who had appeared moments after the summoning, all of them ghosts made real through grief and purpose.

  “Push south-east,” Reinhard ordered. “Sweep. No quarter. Secure the cathedral ruins and that pza. Choke their supply lines and force them back into the tunnels.”

  The engineer saluted sharply. “Understood, Kommandant. We’ll link with the armor and cut off their fallback.”

  The ptoon moved like liquid death, their tactics honed in a war that had been lost once before. Fnking maneuvers, suppressive fire, staggered formation advancement. Every step was measured, calcuted.

  Reinhard moved with them, his Banshee rifle tight against his shoulder. He cleared a side street with two precise shots, dropping a pair of fleeing beastmen. Mars fnked him, silent, his eyes glowing faintly with residual fury.

  Another corner. Another nest of resistance.

  He dropped a teargas canister into the center of a cobbled pza, then leaned into cover.

  Hiss…

  Screams followed.

  The Panzergrenadiers swept in from both fnks. Short bursts from Stg. 44, a thunderous roar of a Tiger’s coaxial MG slicing down the st of the shambling resistance.

  Blood painted the cobbles.

  And then silence.

  Reinhard took a breath and gnced up at the crumbling skyline of the city he once called home. For now, they had a foothold.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  Not yet.

  [Soul Points: 356][Logistics Status: Functional | Supply Trucks En Route][Deployment Zones Secured: 1 / ???]

  Reinhard’s eyes narrowed.

  “More.”

  He raised his hand to signal the next wave — and the street behind him shook with the roar of heavy engines.

  **** At the Keep****

  The roar of heavy guns echoed over the rooftops, not from the keep, but the eastern quarters of the city. The bsts were deliberate. Measured. Not the chaotic madness of Netherstone — no, this was coordinated.

  Erich stepped up beside Margrave Halderan, wiping soot from his face with a bloodied sleeve. “It’s him. Reinhard.”

  Halderan’s grip tightened on the edge of the stone rampart. His eyes locked onto the advancing smoke and fire rising behind the city’s ruined skyline. The shriek of burning rubber. The barks of strange, rapid-fire weapons.

  “I don’t know what he’s done,” Halderan growled, “but I’ll be damned if we let this chance slip through our fingers.”

  He turned to the remaining officers and mages around the inner courtyard.

  “Close the western gate, and form up at the main gate. Get in formation behind it and prepare crossbows for volley fire. Channel the wounded inside, but we hold here. Archmages — I want a counter-barrage spell to follow their push. We’ll drive them out of our walls one corpse at a time.”

  Erich raised his staff, its blue runes bzing to life. “And I’ll lead the casting line. We strike soon,— when the enemy reels.”

  And with that, Stonewatch's defenders began to rally, not with desperation — but with fury.