The fighting lasted through the night.
The carnage was so total that even the Castle Faction's necromancers, moving through the streets to convert fallen corpses into new troops, couldn't keep up. Their arms waving those staves eventually went numb. There were too many bodies. They stopped trying to count.
By morning, Havenloch was quiet. A handful of defenders had slipped out using Teleportation Scrolls while everyone else was dead. The castle forces counted a billion of their own fallen. The Great Aetherium's losses were the lightest, their Guardian Angels had kept pulling soldiers back from the threshold, and those beyond saving had their souls routed to the Holy Grail of the Holy Light Temple, to be sorted later.
Haru would check the Grail when he had time. The exceptional souls would be given new bodies through the Angel Reincarnation Pool. The rest would be sent to 'Heaven', his Divine Kingdom to become the first generation of its native population, inheritors of a realm that was only just beginning.
For the citizens of the Great Aetherium, there was no higher honor than this. Their God would carry them forward.
…
By the time the Castle Lords finished counting their dead, the reports were already arriving.
Novara
Helix
Vireo
Axion
All cities had fallen. Each had faced siege armies numbering in the hundreds of billions—without air support, without reinforcement, without a chance. Together they represented the entire western border defense line of the Light Empire.
It was gone.
The news reached the imperial capital before midday and dark clouds gathered over the city.
Imperial Palace.
The 'Holy Lord' Asher sat on the highest throne, his expression ashen. Around him, the empire's twenty core ministers stood in silence, all High Gods, all wearing the same look.
"Can anyone tell me why?" Asher's voice was controlled, which made it worse, "We faced a newly risen castle faction and lasted only one day. Five border cities, twenty billion supernaturals, all gone in a single day!"
One minister stepped forward, "The Castle Faction had grown faster than anyone had modeled. They have hundreds of billions of troops, virtually every Castle Lord and Ranger on the continent has answered the Great Aetherium's call. They came with cannons, trebuchets, and siege equipment powerful enough to crack border-cities' barriers before nightfall. The defenders fought without flinching. Almost none surrendered or fled, but it hadn't mattered."
"Under the blessing of faith." The minister finished, "Their loyalty and fanaticism even match the Dimensional Demons."
Silence settled over the hall.
In their projections, five border cities should have held for at least a week. In past wars with the Dark Empire, border sieges lasted years. One day was not a mere setback. It was a different category of problem entirely.
…
"We have not lost many Gods." The minister continued, "Only Havenloch's Gods fell, they were encircled before orders could reach them. The Gods of the other four cities managed to evacuate in time."
This was the cold logic underneath the disaster. The mortal armies had been left as a deliberate delay, buying time for the upper echelon to reposition, and more than that, buying time against the Divine War itself. The longer the mortal-level war dragged on, the closer the Abyssal Army's arrival.
Once they entered the Endless Continent, the Great Aetherium and castle forces would have no choice but to pull back. Every hour the mortal legions could purchase moved the empire closer to that lifeline.
"Recall every God still stationed elsewhere." Asher said. "Gods in retreat, Gods exploring other planets, all return to the capital. Cities, towns, villages, territories outside the capital: abandon them. Let the enemy take everything except the heart of the empire."
He let that sit.
"We survive in the cracks. Draft every remaining mortal legion to slow the castle faction's advance. As for the Dark Empire's army pushing in from the southeast, don't fight them. Let them in. Let them take more territory. The moment the castle forces and the Dark Empire are occupying bordering territory, they will turn on each other. Our job is to still exist when that happens."
For a ruler of an empire, these were humiliating words. Everyone knew it and thus no one said anything.
…
One minister raised a suggestion: send their Gods disguised as Dark Empire's Gods to kill the Great Aetherium's Angels or Castle Lords to accelerate the conflict between them artificially.
Asher shook his head, "The Great Aetherium has an Angel who wields the Law of Fate. They will see through any falsehood. And Haru himself is a Space-Time Lord. He can reverse time to find the truth. That plan dies against them."
"Then how about we…"
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