The walls of the command hall shuddered—once, then again, and again, each shockwave hitting in rapid succession like the thundercp of distant gods at war. Within seconds, four massive detonations rocked the city of Stonewatch, their force reverberating through the bedrock like a death knell. The chandeliers overhead swayed violently, dust billowing from between the ancient stones as maps fluttered from their pins and fell to the floor.

  Margrave Halderan froze. Time dited for a breath. Then the sound came—rolling, crushing thunder, followed by the unmistakable roar of colpse and the screams of the dying. “By the Throne.” His mumble barely audible.

  A door burst open. A bloodied guard stumbled into the war room, wide-eyed and shaking. “My lord—four breaches—the eastern wall is gone! Sinkholes everywhere! They're pouring in!”

  Behind him, the great bells of Stonewatch began to toll.

  Slow. Deep. Grim.

  An old warning, not heard in generations.

  Halderan locked eyes with Erich, the court mage, who stood motionless before a trembling scrying mirror. “This wasn’t a siege,” Halderan murmured. “It was an infiltration.”

  Erich muttered arcane words, channeling power into the scrying focus. The mirror rippled and dispyed chaos: Verminthar erupting from sinkholes, Ratogers smashing apart buildings, and—worst of all—Thrakar in the streets, hacking down soldiers and civilians alike with savage efficiency.

  “They were already in the tunnels,” Erich said, voice tight. “The explosions were the trigger. Coordinated. Timed. A second wave is coming, but the first is already here.”

  Outside, the bells rang on—now drowned by screaming. Fires flickered across rooftops. Cries for help cut through the smoke.

  Elsewhere, in the war-torn streets…

  Ghorvak carved his way through a unit of stunned guards, his scimitar cleaving through armor and bone alike. The cunning beastman general stepped over the corpses and surveyed the crumbling city. Through the chaos, he saw the silhouette of the inner keep rising in the distance.

  They were deep in the city now.

  He turned to one of his horn-bearers—a massive minotaur draped in chain and leather—and barked an order. The horn was raised and blown, its deep bre echoing through the broken cityscape.

  A signal.

  The next target was the keep.

  On the western side, Warpsmith Jitter Cw screeched commands at his ratkin. The Verminthar gunners, hunched behind crude nethersteel pting, took aim and fired indiscriminately—civilians, soldiers, anyone that moved. Mechanical monstrosities, pieced together from junk and Netherstone, cnked and hissed as they marched behind swarms of cnrats. They were herding the chaos, encircling the keep, cutting off escape, cutting off hope.

  Back in the war room, Halderan’s knuckles whitened around the edge of the table. “The east wall is gone. The western districts are overrun. They’re trying to trap us here.”

  “We’re already trapped,” Erich said grimly. “They want the keep. This is a decapitation strike.”

  The mirror’s image shifted again—showing Ratogers charging through fire-scorched pzas, Thrakar minotaurs kicking down barricades, Verminthar warlocks erecting towers of bone and scrap right in the streets. Halderan saw his people dying. His knights, his citizens—his legacy—burning in front of his eyes.

  “We have to hold the center,” Halderan said. “If the keep falls, the entire region falls with it.”

  Erich’s eyes flicked toward him. “What of Reinhard?”

  Halderan’s jaw tensed. “He’s still in the tunnels. If he made it out of the workshop, he’ll know where to strike.”

  “I hope so,” Erich whispered, “because we’re running out of time.”

  The floor rumbled again. Faint screams echoed through the corridors now. The enemy was approaching fast.

  Halderan turned to his aides. “Activate the inner gates. Lock down the south and western sectors. Get every able fighter to the central ward. I want the inner keep defended to the st man.”

  He turned to Erich. “Get me whatever battle magic we still have—anything left in the vaults. And send word to the dwarves of Grimstone. If they don’t answer now, there’ll be nothing left to save.”

  Outside, the death knell bells continued to toll, lost amidst fire, blood, and the first cries of war.

  The outer city had colpsed into madness, but the Keep of Stonewatch still stood. Its bckstone walls shimmered faintly with runic power—ancient protections etched by forgotten hands in ages long past. As explosions rocked the surrounding districts, the runes fred to life, forming a shimmering warded dome that enveloped the keep and the courtyard surrounding it.

  Margrave Halderan stood at the top of the stairs, his sword drawn, not as a symbol but as a command.

  “Hold the line!” he roared as soldiers streamed into the courtyard, bleeding, burned, and ragged. Some made it. Others fell to bdes or cws just steps from salvation.

  Erich stood beside him, a beacon of focus amidst the chaos. Arcane symbols glowed around his hands, and his voice cut through the air in clipped incantations. Around him, mages braced at strategic positions, conjuring walls of fire, ice nces, or disintegration bolts—anything to slow the Thrakar and Verminthar that pressed from the smoke-choked avenues beyond.

  The gate remained open, but fnked by shield-walls of grim-faced halberdiers and pike-bearing guards. Every man and woman stationed there knew the risk: if they let in too many or faltered for a moment, the enemy would flood in.

  Crossbowmen on the upper ramparts loosed bolt after bolt, the fletching hissing through the air. Below, knights and militiamen pulled survivors from the streets while mages bnketed the enemy’s approach in fme or unched burst spells that scattered advancing formations.

  “They’re testing our perimeter,” Erich said through gritted teeth, “looking for weaknesses.”

  Halderan nodded. “They’ll find none.”

  Meanwhile, deeper in the ruined streets…

  Reinhard emerged from the tunnel into the choking haze of war. His breath hissed through his rebreather, his HUD flickering with telemetry as his drones hovered ahead, painting the chaos with bright red and orange threat indicators.

  The city was on fire.

  Bodies—human, Thrakar, Verminthar—littered the streets. Buildings colpsed in upon themselves. Choking bck smoke turned the midday sky into a hellish dusk.

  His ATAK interface lit up with movement.

  A cluster of Verminthar had set up a makeshift gun empcement at the intersection of two boulevards. Crude netherstone mortars were unching glowing projectiles toward the keep's perimeter, each bst shaking the runic barrier with dangerous strain.

  Jitter Cw.

  The Nethersmith warpsmith stood at the heart of it, overseeing the bombardment with twitching satisfaction, his augmented limbs cnking as he barked orders.

  Reinhard didn’t hesitate.

  “Engage.”

  His drones shot forward in a blur of silent motion. Two of them activated strobe mode, unleashing bursts of piercing white light into the narrow street, blinding the ratkin and throwing the Verminthar into disarray. The third dropped a teargas canister directly onto their artillery position while the fourth provided overwatch.

  The cloud bloomed instantly, choking out the gunners, who coughed and staggered, their cws groping in vain. Before they could recover, Reinhard moved.

  He sprinted into the smoke, flipping down his thermal optics. Verminthar lit up like candles. He fired in controlled bursts with his Banshee 300 BLK Out, the subsonic rounds punching cleanly through vermin skulls and chests. They dropped before they could scream.

  Jitter Cw reeled, sshing wildly with a nether-charged bde, but Reinhard ducked and unloaded two rounds into his abdomen. Sparks flew. The warpsmith staggered.

  One more shot—through the throat—dropped him with a gurgle.

  The artillery stopped.

  Reinhard reloaded swiftly, eyes scanning for further hostiles. Once clear, he strode into the broken building beside the street and ducked behind a shattered stone wall. A moment’s silence. Just the sound of distant fighting.

  He pulled out one of his data tablets, hands slick with sweat beneath the gloves.

  “Come on,” he muttered, navigating through the tabs until he found the synced tracking signals—custom tags he’d hidden in personal belongings for his family’s protection.

  Four pings. Alice. Annabelle. Emma. Heinrich.

  All active.

  But his blood froze.

  They were moving.

  Running.

  He zoomed in. The signal had been within the merchant quarter, not far from the eastern breach, and was now heading shouthwest—toward the keep.

  “Thank the gods,” he whispered.

  Reinhard’s face hardened behind the mask. His grip on the datapad trembled once, then steadied.

  He reached for his rifle. “I’m coming.”

  He signaled his drones.

  “Rally to me. Route to the alleyway. Mark any hostiles. Kill priority on threats near signal coordinates.”

  He stood, dust and fire swirling around him. Mars padded out from the alley, eyes gleaming beneath his armored vest, teeth bared and ready.

  They didn’t look back.