On the war's nineteenth day, Demeterra descended.
The decision was strategic, not emotional. Her thirty-day operational window was narrowing — the Ashwall, despite breaches and engineering delays, remained a defensible obstacle that was consuming Accord forces at an unsustainable rate. The engineering column's reduced Siege Shaper complement was advancing again, but the three-day delay caused by the Sword Saint's strike had compressed the Phase Two timeline past the point where systematic demolition could precede the Phase Three interior offensive.
The arithmetic was simple: the Accord needed the Ashwall eliminated, and the engineering capability to eliminate it systematically had been degraded below the threshold of operational utility. The remaining option was divine intervention.
Descent.
