[The First Day of Destruction, 21:40]
[The Inner Wall — The Parapet]
The hymn from the Earth Cathedral echoed faintly across the burning plaza. It was a fragile, desperate sound. Up on the shattered ramparts of the Inner Wall, the Lieutenant could not hear it.
He stood over the ruined body of Commander Vane. The silence on the parapet was heavier than the deafening roar of the siege.
Vane had died exactly as he had lived: stubborn, unyielding, and violent. He sat propped against a shattered stone merlon. His heavy breastplate was caved in, crushed by the sweeping, entropic strike of a Doom Lord's halberd. His dead, bloodshot eyes were fixed permanently on the glowing green horizon. His enchanted broadsword, sheared clean in half, lay uselessly in his lap.
The Lieutenant wiped a thick mixture of cold sweat and hot blood from his eyes. His dented gauntlet scraped painfully across his cheek. He looked around.
Out of the three hundred men that had formed the Paladin wedge to hold the breach, perhaps a dozen remained.
They lay scattered among the rubble, gasping for the toxic air. Their heavy armor was shredded like tin foil. Their spears were snapped. Their shields were splintered into kindling. They were the highest-ranking officers left on this section of the wall, and they were dead men breathing.
"They're coming," a sergeant hissed.
The man was missing his left arm from the elbow down. A crude, blood-soaked tourniquet was tied off with his own teeth. He peered through a jagged, V-shaped break in the battlements.
The Lieutenant stepped up to the edge and looked down into the Middle City.
The green fog was a physical wall. It swirled and eddied against the broken masonry, opaque and thick as tar. The sickly light illuminated the silhouettes of the slaughter.
It was not the sight that froze the blood in the Lieutenant's veins. It was the sound. The sound was the steady, undeniable heartbeat of the end of the world.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The perfect, mechanical rhythm of the march returned. It lacked the chaotic war cries of Beastmen or the disorganized clatter of a human army. It was the synchronized impact of heavy iron on stone.
Out of the emerald mist, the Death Knights emerged.
Not one. Not ten. A legion.
They stepped into the clearing before the breach in a perfectly straight, unbroken line. Their towering, spiked black armor drank whatever ambient light remained in the sky. Their weeping tower shields were locked. Their massive flamberges rested easily on their shoulders. Beneath their horned helmets, their red eyes burned with a cold, calculating hate. It felt less like an emotion and more like a law of physics.
Behind the infantry line, the massive, rusted shapes of the Doom Lords loomed in the fog. They looked like siege towers wrapped in rotting flesh and black iron.
"They're reforming," the Lieutenant whispered. His voice caught in his dry throat. "They aren't pushing through a chaotic breach. They're dressing the line. They're going to take the wall in a single, coordinated push."
He reached down and gripped his spear. His hands were numb. He could not feel the wood grain. He felt detached from his own body, a ghost merely waiting for the paperwork to be finalized.
"Brace!" he croaked. His voice cracked horribly. He slammed the butt of his spear against the stone. "Spears up! Die well, brothers! For the Six!"
The surviving paladins dragged themselves to their feet. They did not shout. There were no battle cries left in their ruined lungs. They leveled their broken weapons toward the breach. They accepted the abyss.
Below them, the front rank of the Death Knights raised their flamberges. They shifted their weight. Their iron boots scraped against the cobblestones. They took a single, synchronized step forward.
Then, the apocalypse paused.
It was not a tactical hesitation. The undead did not adjust their footing to assess the pathetic defense remaining on the wall.
It was an immediate cessation of all kinetic movement.
The terrifying rhythm cut out instantly. It was as if a conductor had sharply dropped his baton. The grinding of heavy armor, the low, guttural moans of the zombies in the rear, the crackle of the necrotic auras—it all silenced in a fraction of a second.
The Lieutenant blinked. Acidic sweat stung his eyes. "What...?"
Below, the lead Death Knight slowly lowered its massive sword. It was a towering monstrosity completely devoid of human hesitation, yet it stopped. It did not look up at the defenders on the wall. It did not look at the breach.
Instead, the creature slowly turned its horned head to the side. It tilted its helm slightly, listening intently to a command spoken on a frequency that human ears were incapable of perceiving.
A ripple moved through the undead legion. It was perfectly uniform.
With terrifying, mechanical synchronization, the entire front line of Death Knights pivoted on their heels. They turned their backs to the breach, entirely exposing themselves to the defenders.
Step. Step. Step.
They walked away.
The Lieutenant watched, his jaw slack. The legion marched straight back into the emerald fog. They did not rush. They did not flee. They moved with the exact same deliberate, measured pace they had used to advance.
The towering silhouettes of the Doom Lords faded back into the mist like terrible nightmares dissolving upon waking. The ethereal, floating shapes of the Soul Eaters evaporated into wisps of black smoke. Further back in the city streets, the thousands of lesser zombies and skeletal warriors collapsed. The necromantic energy animating them vanished. They returned to lifeless piles of scattered bone and rapidly rotting meat upon the cobblestones.
Even the environment reacted. The suffocating green fog, which had pressed relentlessly against the inner wards, recoiled. It sucked back toward the Outer City, rolling over itself like a tide retreating unnaturally fast before a tsunami.
"They're... they're leaving?" the one-armed sergeant whispered.
His voice trembled with profound, existential confusion. He stood up slowly, fully exposing his chest to the street below. No arrows flew. No magic struck him. His broken sword hung limp at his side.
"Why?"
The Lieutenant could not answer.
The silence rushing in to fill the void was infinitely heavier than the noise of the battle. It was a hollow vacuum. The sharp smell of ash, ozone, and sudden decay filled the space where the killing intent had been so thick just moments before.
Through a clearing break in the receding smoke, the Lieutenant saw all the way down the grand avenue of the Middle City. The buildings were hollowed-out, glowing shells. The streets were paved with the dead.
It was empty. Silent. Still.
"Signal the Marshal," the Lieutenant rasped. His voice was hollow, devoid of the joy or relief of victory. "Tell him... tell him the tide is gone. The assault has stopped."
He looked down at Vane's body. The Commander's gauntleted hand was open, reaching toward nothing. He had died holding a line that the enemy had decided they no longer cared to cross.
The Lieutenant turned his gaze back to the smoldering, green-tinged horizon. A cold, creeping terror began to coil in his gut. It was a dread far worse than the fear of the charging Death Knights.
The enemy had not been beaten. Their lines had not been broken. They had not suffered heavy casualties or a brilliant tactical maneuver by the Theocracy.
They had been recalled.
Someone, somewhere in the dark, had flicked a wrist. They had decided the grand, apocalyptic slaughter of Kami Miyako was over for the evening. The survival of the few thousand souls huddled inside the cathedrals was not a testament to the strength of their gods or the thickness of their walls. It was a byproduct of a monster's whim.
The question of why the Sorcerer King had stopped the blade inches from the throat hung over the burning silence of the city. It was a suffocating dread, far heavier than any siege engine.