The wall did not simply break. It exhaled stone.
Dust surged outward in a choking wave, thick enough to swallow sight and sound alike, carrying with it fragments of the city that had stood for generations. For a heartbeat, there was no army, no defenders, no attackers. Only the roar of collapse and the grinding avalanche of shattered masonry spilling into the gap.
Then shapes moved inside the dust. Men. Steel. Intent. And the breach became a doorway to violence.
The first figure through it was General Lasalle, not waiting for the air to clear, not waiting for the ground to settle. His horse stumbled over loose stone, nearly throwing him, but he drove it forward anyway, forcing a path through rubble that had not yet finished falling.
"Through!" he shouted, voice cutting through the suffocating haze. "Do not stop here!"
Behind him came the leading ranks of his cavalry, some mounted, others already dismounting as the terrain worsened, abandoning speed for survival. They forced their way into the city like water through a cracked dam, uneven but unstoppable.
At the same moment, General Rapp's infantry surged forward, tighter, more controlled, their formation holding just long enough to cross the broken threshold before dissolving into the narrow, ruined streets beyond.
The defenders fired blind.
Shapes appeared in the dust, and they fired at them, not waiting for clarity, not waiting for certainty. Muskets cracked in rapid succession, flashes lighting the smoke in brief, violent bursts.
Lasalle felt the air snap past him as shots tore through the haze. A rider beside him pitched sideways, dragged down by his horse as both crashed into the rubble.
Lasalle did not look back. "Forward!" he shouted again, forcing motion into men who might otherwise have hesitated in that suffocating confusion.
When the dust thinned, the city revealed itself in fragments.
Broken stone. Narrow streets. Barricades hastily thrown together from whatever could be found. And men.
So many men.
Militiamen, veterans, remnants of units that had once stood in formation, now gathered into a jagged line just beyond the breach. They did not look uniform. They did not look steady. But they did not move.
Rapp saw them first. "Into them," he said, his voice low but immediate.
His infantry did not fire again. They closed.
The collision was not clean.
It was not a line meeting a line. It was bodies crashing together in confined space, momentum breaking into impact, into struggle, into something far closer and more brutal than the battlefield beyond the walls.
A militiaman swung his musket like a club, striking a Luxenberg soldier across the face. Another lunged with a blade that looked more like a kitchen knife than a weapon of war. A third simply threw himself forward, grappling, dragging both himself and his opponent to the ground in a desperate attempt to stop the advance.
They were not trained for this. They did it anyway.
"They fight like animals," one of Rapp's officers said, shocked.
"They fight like men with nowhere left to go," Rapp replied.
Lasalle carved space where there was none.
He drove forward through the chaos, sabre flashing in tight arcs, each strike calculated to open a path rather than win a duel. Where his horse could not pass, he dismounted without hesitation, continuing on foot, forcing his presence into the thickest resistance.
"Move!" he called, grabbing a soldier by the shoulder and pushing him forward. "Do not let them hold the ground!"
His men responded, their aggression turning scattered clashes into forward pressure. They did not pause to secure every position. They broke it and moved on, leaving others to follow and clear what remained.
Deeper within the city, the defenders gathered again.
General Furuq had not remained at the breach. He had anticipated it. He had drawn his remaining strength inward, forming a second line where the streets narrowed, and the advance could be slowed.
"Here," he had said. "This is where we take their strength from them."
Now he stood among his men, not elevated, not removed, but within the line itself.
"Steady," he told them as the first sounds of the breach reached them. "They will come through confused. Use it."
Around him, militia tightened their grip on weapons they barely trusted. Veterans adjusted positions, placing themselves where they could anchor the line.
Fear was there. But so was resolve.
Rapp's advance struck them minutes later. There was no warning beyond the noise. No signal beyond the sudden appearance of Luxenberg soldiers pushing through the smoke and rubble into the narrow street.
"Now!" Selim called.
The defenders fired at close range, the volley ripping into the front of the advance, halting it for a moment, forcing men back, breaking the initial surge.
Then they closed.
Selim fought at the centre. He did not issue orders from behind.
He moved with the line, blade in hand, striking where needed, his presence steadying those around him.
"For the city," he said again, quieter this time, but no less firm.
The line held. For a moment.
Lasalle saw the resistance ahead stiffen. "There," he said, pointing with his blade. "That is the line."
He pushed toward it, forcing his way through the remnants of the first defence, his men following in a widening path of broken resistance.
Rapp converged from another angle, recognising the same point. "Press them," he ordered. "Break them here."
The pressure mounted.
More Luxenberg soldiers poured through the breach, filling the streets, turning the fight from isolated clashes into sustained assault. The defenders, already strained, were forced to give ground step by step.
Selim felt it. The line trembled under the weight.
A militiaman beside him faltered, stepping back as a bayonet drove toward him. Selim stepped in, deflecting the strike, pushing the attacker aside.
"Hold," he said.
The young man nodded, though fear was plain on his face.
It did not hold. Not fully.
A gap opened. Small at first. Then wider as pressure forced men apart. Rapp's infantry surged into it immediately, splitting the defenders, turning one line into two struggling halves.
"Close it!" someone shouted from the Sultanate side.
But there was no time.
Selim stepped forward into the gap. If it could not be closed, it could be held. For a moment. For anything.
The fight around him became tighter still. Steel met steel in a confined space. Muskets were useless now, reduced to weight and wood. Men grappled, pushed, struck with whatever they had left.
Selim engaged one soldier directly, their blades meeting in quick succession. He forced the man back a step.
Then another came from the side. He turned.
Too late.
The bayonet entered cleanly. A sharp, direct thrust into his chest, the force of it enough to halt him completely.
The world narrowed. Sound dimmed. The soldier pulled the weapon free and moved on, the battle already shifting beyond that moment.
Selim remained standing. For a second. He looked at the men around him, still fighting, still resisting, even as the line broke apart. Then his strength left him.
He sank slowly, one knee touching the ground, then the other. His hand loosened on his sword. He felt the warmth spreading, the weight of it, the certainty.
There was no panic. Only a quiet acceptance.
"A soldier's death," he said under his breath.
It was enough. He lowered his head. And was still.
With him, the line lost its centre. Not immediately. But inevitably.
The defenders continued to fight, but their resistance fractured, becoming isolated pockets rather than a unified stand.
Rapp's infantry pushed through, clearing space, forcing the defenders back toward the heart of the city.
Lasalle's men followed, ensuring that no regrouping held for long.
"They fall back," Anton said, receiving reports from the breach.
Victor nodded. "To the palace."
The battle did not end there.
It continued through streets and courtyards, through buildings and barricades, each one contested, each one taken in turn. The militiamen fought with everything they had, clawing for advantage, refusing to simply yield, but the outcome no longer shifted.
The weight of the Luxenberg army pressed inward, steady, relentless.
By the time the sun began to fall, the shape of the fight had changed.
No longer spread across the city. Now focused. Directed. Everything led inward.
At the centre of Turkistan, before the Sultan's palace, they gathered.
Five hundred Janissaries. They stood in perfect formation. Their numbers reduced. Their uniforms marked by battle. But their discipline unbroken.
They knew. They had always known. Behind them stood the palace. Before them, the end.
They did not speak. They did not move.
They waited.