The towering South Gate of Ntsua-Ntu stood three hundred yards away, a gray monolith against the morning sun. Chinua watched it with a cold, focused intensity. With a sharp motion of her hand, the heavy cavalry beside her split apart like a curtain, allowing six massive arrow artillery machines to be wheeled forward. They ground into the dirt, locking their wheels at the two-hundred-yard mark.
From the rear, four large projectile machines—the heavy engines of the Eastern Military—groaned as their tension arms were pulled back. They were loaded with clusters of small ceramic clay pots, each one filled to the brim with volatile oil.
Chinua's hand snapped forward.
The machines thundered. The four projectiles launched a lethal arc of pottery into the sky. Hundreds of small ceramic pots whistled through the air, tumbling end-over-end toward the city ramparts.
They didn't explode with fire—not yet. Instead, they shattered upon impact. Shards of sharp ceramic flew in every direction, slicing through the leather armor and exposed skin of the soldiers who lacked heavy shields. But the shards were only the beginning. The thick, dark oil smeared across the stone, soaked into the wooden hoardings, and drenched the clothes of the panicking defenders.
"Oil! Oil!" the voices on the rampart screamed, the terror rising in their throats. They knew what was coming next.
Below the wall, the civilians who had been desperately pleading for the gates to open finally broke. The hope of escape was gone, replaced by the primal need for cover. They scattered into the alleys and shadows of the city, leaving the South Gate to the mercy of the machines.
On the blood-red soil of the battlefield, Chinua raised her hand, her fingers curling slowly into a tight fist. She held it there, silhouetted against the pale morning light, a silent command that froze the world in place.
She watched the ramparts, her keen eyes tracing the movements of the panicked men above. She wasn't waiting for her machines to reload; she was waiting for the terror to sink into their bones. She knew the anatomy of fear—how it starts as a frantic heartbeat and settles into a cold, paralyzing weight. She wanted them cornered. She wanted them to look at the oil on their hands and the fire in her eyes and realize that the wall was no longer a shield, but an altar.
In her heart, she was still the woman who had bowed three times. She didn't want to see them burn. She didn't want to hear the screams of men dying for Dzhambul's ego—a cause that felt like hollow madness to her. Every second she held her fist in the air was a second of mercy she was gifting them. She was counting on their survival instinct to outweigh their misplaced loyalty.
"Surrender," she whispered under her breath, her gaze fixed on the South Gate. "Do not make me be the monster you think I am."
On the city rampart, the scene was one of frantic, oily desperation. Soldiers scrambled, upending water casks and canteens to wash away the slick, black liquid, but the water only seemed to spread the grease, driving it deeper into the seams of their armor and the pores of their skin.
"Remove your clothes! Strip the armor and change, quickly!" Dawa's voice boomed across the wall. His eyes never left the figure of Chinua standing motionless on the battlefield.
Dawa had never liked Chinua. To him, she had always been a disruptor of the old ways, a threat to the world he understood. But as the minutes stretched—minutes where he expected a rain of fire to turn the South Gate into a funeral pyre—he felt a grudging, heavy respect beginning to take root in his chest. He saw her raised fist. He saw the hesitation. He understood, with the clarity of a veteran, that she was offering them a bridge of mercy. She was giving them a final, silent chance to live.
However, the battlefield is a cold accountant. Chinua's mercy, though noble, played directly into the defenders' hands. With every second she held her fist high, the panic stabilized. Men stripped off their oil-soaked tunics, donned fresh leather, and scrambled back to their posts with renewed purpose.
Chinua watched from her saddle as the frantic scrambling on the ramparts turned back into disciplined lines. She saw the soldiers donning fresh tunics and gripping their bows with renewed vigor. She shook her head slowly, a deep, weary disappointment clouding her eyes. Their actions spoke louder than any shout: they had chosen to die for a ghost of a cause, clinging to a Prince who would never do the same for them.
The time for waiting was over. To break the city, she had to smoke the defenders out of their stone nest and force Batzorig onto the open field.
Chinua opened her fist, her palm flat and cold, and swept her hand forward in a final, decisive arc toward the South Gate.
At her signal, the front line of archers stepped forward. The sound of hundreds of flint-strikes sparked in unison, followed by the low woosh of oil-soaked rags catching flame. They raised their bows, the orange glow reflecting in their eyes, and drew the strings back to their ears.
"Loose!"
A synchronized roar of bowstrings snapped. Thousands of fire arrows vaulted into the morning sky, trailing plumes of smoke and streaks of amber light. They arched high over the "No-Man's Land" before descending toward the South Gate like a meteor shower in a midnight sky. It was a beautiful, terrifying rain that promised to turn the oil-slicked stones of Ntsua-Ntu into a furnace.
The fire arrows descended with a hungry hiss, piercing through the air and burying themselves into the wooden hoardings, the stone crevices, and the flesh of the defenders. Though the soldiers had tried to wash the ramparts, the oil had claimed the deeper pores of the stone and the thirsty grain of the wood. The outside of the city wall, still slick and black, caught the first spark.
In an instant, the South Gate became a furnace.
The soldiers caught in the initial volley became living torches. They let out gut-wrenching screams, their hands clawing at the air as they collapsed and rolled on the ground in a desperate bid to smother the flames. But the stone beneath them was still smeared with the invisible film of the oil. Instead of extinguishing the fire, their movements only fed it, spreading the orange glow across the floor like a lethal tide.
Chaos broke out across the line. Discipline, already fragile after the three bows and the taunting, finally shattered. Archers abandoned their posts, dropping their bows to help their brothers-in-arms. They used cloaks, tapestries, and bare hands to beat at the flames, but the oil was relentless. The South Gate was no longer a defensive position; it was a trap of fire and bone.
The foundation of Ntsua-Ntu groaned. Six heavy thumps shook the earth as the massive bolts from the arrow machines hammered into the base of the wall. The vibration traveled up through the stone and into the boots of the terrified men above. The rampart was no longer a fortress; it was a trap. The soldiers were caught between two horrors: the fire consuming their skin and the masonry threatening to bury them alive.
"General! We must abandon the wall now!" Chengzhi yelled, stumbling through the smoke toward Batzorig.
The decision was already being made for him. His men, the backbone of the Northern defense, were already flooding down the stairwells in a desperate tide, carrying the charred and the broken. Batzorig watched them, his heart fracturing. These were men who had followed him through a decade of peace and a year of hell. To see them burn like dry straw was more than he could bear.
"Abandon the city wall now!" Batzorig's voice broke. He reached down, hoisting a wounded soldier over his shoulder, but as he stepped toward the stairs, a seventh bolt slammed into the stone beneath him, sending a fresh tremor through the dying gate.
Outside, Chinua saw the dust of the collapsing wall rising to meet the smoke of her fire. She wheeled her horse, her eyes reflecting the orange glow of her childhood home in flames.
"Today's war is not what we wanted," she called out to her silent, iron-clad army. "We gave them every chance. Yet they die for a tyrant. Remember—the blade has no eyes. They will not see you as countrymen. Show them no less than the cold steel they offer you."
She paused, her voice thickening with the weight of her choice. "Today, there are no winners. The world may call us demons, but this war decides the fate of our children. Those with reasoning minds will understand."
A heavy boom echoed as the South Gate finally groaned open. Through the inferno rode Dawa, Chenghiz, and Bolor, leading a final, thunderous charge of the Northern cavalry.
Chinua didn't hesitate. She tore her spear from the earth and spurred her horse. The slow walk turned to a trot, and then a terrifying, ground-shaking gallop. A wall of Eastern steel surged behind her, rushing to meet the ghosts of the North in the center of the killing field.
The moment of impact was no longer a battle; it was a cataclysm. As the two massive cavalry lines drew within twenty yards, the air became a suffocating soup of gray masonry dust, acrid wood smoke, and the metallic tang of blood. The world of Ntsua-Ntu was literally turning to ash and powder behind them.
The collision was a wall of sound—the scream of thousand-pound warhorses, the splintering of ashwood spears, and the sickening crunch of steel meeting bone.
Chinua took the first wave like a lightning bolt. Her spear flashed through the haze, taking a Northern rider through the chest before he could even level his blade. Beside her, the Eastern Military held their "V" formation with terrifying discipline, their heavy shields acting as a prow that sliced through the desperate, disorganized charge of the Northern guard.
Through the swirling dust, she caught a glimpse of a familiar plume. Dawa.
He was fighting like a man possessed, his saber dancing in a frantic, bloody arc as he tried to punch through to Chinua. He wasn't fighting for Dzhambul anymore; he was fighting for the honor of the men he had just watched burn on the ramparts.
As they closed the distance toward each other, a massive groan erupted from the city. The South Gate's upper archway, weakened by the arrow machines and hollowed by fire, finally gave way. Tons of stone and burning timber cascaded down, sealing the entrance in a tomb of rubble. The retreat was gone. There was no city to go back to, and no mercy in front of them.
"Chinua!" Dawa's voice cracked through the roar of the melee.
She parried a stray strike from a Northern soldier without looking, her eyes locked on Dawa's. She didn't shout back. She simply lowered her spear, her face a mask of cold, tragic resolve as their horses thundered toward a final, inevitable meeting in the heart of the dust.
Meanwhile, in a quiet hut far from the screams of the South Gate, the only sounds were the soft clink of stone on wood and the rhythmic breathing of two men. Hye sat across from Batsaikhan, a bowl of fermented mare's milk resting untouched beside him. They were deep in a game of shatar, the ancient chess of the plains.
The door burst open, cold air and the smell of distant smoke rushing in. A messenger, breathless and covered in dust, dropped to one knee.
"Report, Your Highness!"
"Speak," Batsaikhan said, his eyes never leaving the board.
"Batzorig has opened the South Gate. The foundation has given way—the gate is crumbling, sealing the exit behind the cavalry."
Hye didn't look surprised. He stood up slowly, his robes rustling as he walked to a large table where a detailed map of Ntsua-Ntu was spread out. He looked at the markers representing the different gates. With a steady hand, he swept the stones from the West Gate and shifted them toward the Central Military Camp.
"Send word to Azad," Hye commanded, his voice cold and precise. "Have him completely abandon the West Gate. Move all his men to the Military Camp immediately. If the defenders there do not move, do not waste energy or weapons. Simply surround them. If they surrender, keep them contained within the camp."
He paused, placing a single, gold-colored stone near the Palace.
"Have Buqa and Dolgoon stand by. Our golden bird is going to fly out of his golden cage any minute now."
"Yes, sir!" The soldier retreated as quickly as he had arrived, the door slamming shut behind him.
Hye turned back to the game, a small, knowing smile playing on his lips. He looked at Batsaikhan, who was still contemplating his next move.
"Now," Hye said softly, "where were we?"