The serenity shattered the moment Lucan's body struck the earth where he had stood so proudly a heartbeat before. Silence gave way to a maelstrom—dry shouts, the clash of steel, and the slow, relentless rise of chants from the four corners where the Amplifiers stood waiting.
"Legatus Varian!" I barked, forcing my voice over the rising din—half to steady him, half to steady myself as the world tilted into chaos.
"At your command, Praefectus!" Felix snapped back. His face was taut, jaw clenched, eyes burning like embers as they darted from one shifting body to the next. "
"I'm heading to the front," I said, forcing steel into my voice. "The Hierophants will be ready to unleash their wrath, and I'll keep their fire fixed on the gates. When my signal comes, you lead the charge. Make it swift, make it clean. Gather the men—have them brace for impact."
"I let a grim edge into my words. 'Pray they leave us something standing to charge into. More likely, we'll be left with ash and rubble.'
I spurred my mount down the rows of men, weaving between raised spears and steel edges as the formation lurched forward, closing the gap to the walls. Ahead, the central Amplifier's glow began to pulse, faint at first but growing with every stride. The sound of prayers swelled with it—low murmurs rising into a tide of voices, calling down the Wrath of the Lifegiver. I pressed harder, hoping to reach the Hierophant before his Holy Communion consumed him—before this world lost all weight beside the fleeting rapture of standing, if only for a few breaths, in the footprints of gods.
I knew I wasn't in a position to command them—only to offer suggestions. As I closed the distance, the sound of their prayer swelled to a crescendo. Hard white light spilled from the Words etched across the Amplifier's surface, each engraving pulsing, burning brighter, angrier. It was like watching lightning trapped in a vial, shaken to fury, straining against the glass that held it.
"Focus on the gates!" I shouted as I rode in close, the glittering vials scattered across their bare feet blazing like a field of stars on the earth.
I had only seconds left to ensure the first strike would not bring the city's entire wall down. Then I saw the Hierophant move.
His hand slipped to one of the glass vials dangling from his belt. His gaze snapped to me—pupils blown so wide the whites had all but vanished, leaving only dark voids that seemed to drink the light. He never turned his head, yet his eyes fixed me with a force that pierced through the chaos around us.
"I'm not the one who gets to choose, my boy," he said—calm, clear, impossibly audible in the storm of clashing voices and steel.
He raised the vial to his chest, lips shaping a soundless prayer, then lifted it to his brow. His eyes tracked the motion as though bound to it. Finally, he brought it level with his mouth, pulled the cork free, and with a sharp flick of the wrist, emptied the dark-blue liquid into his waiting throat.
His eyes, now two obsidian caverns that swallowed every shard of the numinous glow, turned to the gates. His lips moved once, and the whisper carried like thunder.
"Purge."
My heart forgot to beat.
Sound surrendered to light.
The brilliance of the Lifegiver swelled to the edge of the Amplifier, then erupted. A pillar of searing radiance leapt forward, coils of living fire spiraling around it. The world dissolved in white.
The sound returned the moment it struck the gates.
It was not thunder, nor chaos, but the toll of a bell calling to temple—insular in its purpose, allowing no other sound to exist beside it.
The beam did not fade but folded into itself, burrowing, gnawing. Iron groaned and caved at the center where the wrath touched, slow and helpless, as if the metal itself remembered its mortal limits.
As the brilliance of the Amplifier waned and the chorus of prayers ebbed to weary murmurs, the world seemed to breathe again. Where once the gates had stood whole, a wound now yawned in their heart—a molten hollow, its edges sagging like wax abandoned to flame. Liquid metal wept downward in slow rivulets, each drop hissing as it struck the stone, the iron itself surrendering to the mark of divine fury.
It should have struck me then as strange—that the gates, though torn and blistered, still stood. In truth, I could recall few walls that had withstood a single disgruntled Hierophant. Yet the thought slipped away as quickly as it came, carried off by the torrent of what unfolded next.
"Again," murmured the Hierophant, his ebony stare drinking in the white-hot tears of iron weeping from the wounded gate.
The priests struggled to steady themselves at his command. Their faces were drawn, hollowed by the strain of guiding his prayer through the Amplifier. Sweat gleamed on pallid skin as their voices wove together once more, rising into a chant that trembled under its own weight.
Terrified young eyes surrounded me, each pair reflecting the same dawning truth: that the place they had been promised in creation bore little resemblance to the one they now endured.
One of them caught my gaze. She was young—not a child, not yet a woman. Her skin had blanched to ivory, jaw trembling beneath clenched teeth. Tears streaked her cheeks, pulled sideways by the current that tore at her face as the Amplifier roared awake. Her eyes had hardened, yes—but only to cage the despair spilling from them.
The air cracked with the sound of an ending, without the bright violence of a beginning.
Twelve thunders rolled at once, rumbling like gods bellowing with no lightning in sight, only faint puffs of grey smoke drifting from Lapurum's walls.
My ears rang against my skull, every breath a knot twisting upward in my throat.
And then came a sliver of Oblivion to welcome us.