The horns didn't sound like horns anymore.
They sounded like something dying.
Lysander heard them from the eastern tower—three long blasts, then three short, then a third pattern that wasn't a horn at all but a thousand men screaming at once, the sound rolling across the bay like a wave that had learned to break on stone.
He turned.
The eastern gate was open.
Not breached. Not broken. Open. The massive bronze-and-oak doors—doors that had held against the black ships, against the Sea Peoples, against two years of siege—were swinging inward. Slowly. Deliberately. Like a hand was pulling them.
And Greek soldiers were pouring through.
For one heartbeat, Lysander didn't understand.
Then a second heartbeat.
Then a third.
Someone opened it from the inside.
The thought landed in his chest like a stone.
