Outside Havenloch, the siege had been going on for a full day.
Hundreds of thousands of magic cannons, trebuchets, and giant crossbows hammered the city's barriers from the ground. High above, two Astral Cities from the Great Aetherium and hundreds of airships added their own fire. Havenloch's Airship Corps had been the first to go, thousands of warships reduced to shrapnel raining down on the plains below.
The city had tried to punch back, hundreds of millions of Demigods sortied to destroy the Astral Cities, the airships, the cannons. The Great Aetherium answered with more Demigods, and the sortie turned into a rout. What returned to the walls was a broken army shedding corpses as it retreated.
The castle vanguard had moved early to cut off another option entirely, striking the teleportation arrays before the main assault even began. No reinforcements were coming in and no one was leaving.
Inside the city, the mood curdled toward something past desperation.
"Lord Jonas is dead, beheaded by a Fourteen-Winged Angel, his soul sealed!"
"The barrier's at minimum thresholds! Even with every mage in the city feeding it, it won't hold!"
"The teleportation arrays are gone. We're trapped."
Even so, no one ran. No one surrendered. Supernaturals packed the walls and kept throwing spells and skills into the siege lines below, chipping away at an enemy three times their size with the grim focus of people who had already done the math and decided it didn't matter.
…
Outside the walls, the Castle Lords watched.
The defenders' stubbornness moved them. They discussed it openly—the courage, the discipline, the refusal to break—and then they kept the bombardment going anyway.
They had their own math. The Abyss' Army would reach the Endless Continent, and everything that couldn't fight back would die. The Castle Lords had seen Arboriel: a planet tiled in bones, its oceans clogged with the dead. Havenloch's defenders would face that eventually regardless. At least this way their deaths built something.
They told themselves this until it felt like conviction.
…
The barrier finally gave out at dusk. It had taken all day, and afterward, the Castle Lords were honest about why.
"Without the Great Aetherium's Astral Cities and Airship Corps, we'd never have cracked that barrier." The strength of their own magic cannon wasn't enough. The Astral Cities had been the deciding factor.
When the shield collapsed, the crack ran through the entire dome at once, one moment shimmering, the next simply gone, and the silence before the charge lasted exactly as long as it took ten billion soldiers to register what had happened.
Then came the roar. The Castle Faction's army and the Great Aetherium's Imperial Army poured through four breached walls simultaneously. The streets of Havenloch became a grinding, city-wide melee. Angels, Elves, Death Knights, Dragons, Titans, Cyclops, and many more races crashing against the city's defenders.
At extreme altitude, Demigod Tier Laws collided in silent explosions of color. In the mid-sky, Saint Tier powerhouses tore at each other above the smoke. On the ground, King Tier creatures on both sides fought and bled in the streets. Three separate wars, stacked on top of each other, all happening at once.
There was no line. There were no tactics. Whoever lasted longest won.
The defenders of Havenloch chose their last card.
"The heroic people of the Light Empire do not kneel to live!" An executive officer's voice rang through every street and rooftop, "Faith is the past. Truth is what we have left. Truth is supreme, guard the Empire!"
'Truth is supreme.' The words passed through the city like a current. Every defender who heard it fought harder.
The Castle Faction's troops answered without hesitation.
"Loyalty is faith!" Their lords called back across the smoke, "Our forces will rule the Endless Continent. Every enemy blocking that road, be it a Dimensional Demon or a native, must die. Kill!!"
Two sets of fanatics, answering each other across a burning city. The Castle Faction, which had expected collapse, got a second wind instead. A city of people who had already decided to die and were simply choosing how, and an army that found this more motivating than surrender would have been.
'A big fist is the truth.'
One of the Castle Lords would say afterward, and the others laughed, because what else could you say.
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