The Siege of Byron
It was the dead of dawn, well before the morning sun broke over the horizon.
Even in the imperial palace, where the daily routine began earlier than anywhere else, slumber would normally have held sway at this hour. Yet not a single soul—least of all the Crown Prince—showed the slightest trace of drowsiness.
"Your Highness! The rebels have begun surrounding the ramparts...!"
"Their numbers...?"
"Approximately one thousand each stationed to seal off the east, west, and north... while an army of roughly three thousand is advancing straight toward the main gate."
"And Adelheid...?! What of that Remus bastard?!"
"Prince Romul has not been sighted, but... Adelheid is personally leading the vanguard on horseback, riding toward the main gate."
"Useless fools!"
The Crown Prince unleashed his fury at the thought of Nox, who had mobilized every operative under his orders two days prior, only to vanish into total silence. But he quickly had to remind himself that he had no luxury to indulge in petty wrath.
"Your Highness... should we reassign the troop dispositions?"
A general from the military staff cautiously ventured the question. The Central Army had not been sitting idle while the rebels closed in, having already stationed garrisons at every gate. Even so, the sheer disparity in both numbers and quality between their men and the enemy was staggering.
"Have the troops sent to hunt down the remnants returned yet...?"
Though he already knew the answer, the Crown Prince asked with the desperate urge to wring out one last drop of hope. Naturally, no optimistic reply was forthcoming.
Reinforcements from the eastern front remained impossible due to military provocations from Remus. Meanwhile, the dukes of the south and north were blatantly sitting on their hands, waiting to see which way the wind blew. Driven to the absolute brink, the Crown Prince realized once more that he held no viable cards when it came to sheer numbers.
If he could not match them in quantity, then he needed quality. Yet that avenue was equally bleak.
"What of the Azure Sky...?"
"He remains cloistered in his tower, refusing to take a single step outside..."
As one of the continent's foremost apex figures and the empire's sole Tier 5 master, the Azure Sky had officially refused to take part in the war. Not even the Crown Prince possessed the authority to order such a living legend around.
While there were Tier 4 masters among the high-ranking generals and the Imperial Royal Guard, their presence alone could hardly bridge a twofold disadvantage in a battle involving thousands of soldiers. Worse yet, even if he scraped together a razor-thin victory, what stood at the end would not be an emperor ushering in a glorious new era, but a mangled, dying wolf who had lost everything just to save its own skin.
In the end, only one card remained: his own family—former rivals whom he had deliberately stripped of all influence and kept suppressed under constant surveillance. Unlike Adelheid, they had once coveted the throne, fought him for it, and lost. They had survived only by groveling in the dirt.
Granting them an opportunity to win military distinction now would inevitably fan the flames of their ambition, making them a direct threat to his imperial authority down the line. But if Adelheid were not stopped this very day, his reign would end before the sun even set. Back pressed against the wall, the Crown Prince chose to issue an empty promissory note.
"Send word to my brothers and sisters in the Detached Palace... Order them to halt those wretched traitors..."
As the edge of the sun breached the eastern horizon, tinting the dawn sky a cold blue, the first piece of hopeful news arrived.
"Your Highness...! The commander of Nox has returned! She reports that she used her subordinates as decoys to launch an ambush yesterday, and barely managed to claim Prince Romul's head before shaking off pursuit...!"
"Ah...!"
When contact had been severed, he had wanted nothing more than to wring her neck with his bare hands. But with battle staring him in the face, having a Tier 4 combatant whom he could deploy without political baggage filled the Crown Prince with immense relief. For the first time all morning, a smile crept across his lips.
"What is her condition?!"
"She stated that her failure is a crime deserving of death, but if granted a chance to redeem herself, she vows to join the front line immediately!"
"Commendable! Order her to the southern main gate! Tell her to whittle down the enemy's strength while they fall into disarray!"
He was a man whose pathological paranoia had turned the entire world into his enemy. Yet at the final, most critical juncture, the Crown Prince did not harbor even a shred of doubt toward the subordinate he had so recently discarded.
"Your failure is a sin worthy of death, but His Highness has taken pity on the loyalty that brought you back on your own two feet and granted you one last chance. Join the forces at the southern gate and whittle down the enemy's strength."
"Understood."
Her mouth concealed behind a hood, her garments stained with fake blood, Nox feigned ragged breath as she listened to the royal command, inwardly scoffing.
He spent his entire life suspecting everyone, yet the moment fire caught his own heels, he deliberately gave up on thinking.
When he held the upper hand, he indulged in paranoid delusions, manufacturing nonexistent sins and suspecting shadows; yet in the hour of direst crisis, when caution was most vital, he brushed all doubt aside in his desperate scramble to save his throne. Whatever lingering hesitation Nox might have held about her betrayal evaporated completely.
In an era of peace, perhaps things might have been different. But in an empire surrounded by enemies, that man must never be allowed to rule.
It was likely self-rationalization to justify denying everything she had lived for until now, she mused with self-mockery. Leading the small retinue of subordinates she had brought along, Nox rushed toward the southern ramparts. From atop the wall, she could already see Adelheid's Revolutionary Army closing in fast across the open ground.
"Intercept them! Cut their numbers down before they reach the walls!"
Veins bulged along the neck of the field commander as he roared his orders, unleashing a barrage of cannon fire and magical artillery from the battlement. Yet the explosive firepower hurled from the ramparts crashed into a raging gale that enveloped the rebel vanguard. Cannonballs detonated harmlessly against the barrier of wind or were deflected off course, gouging pointless craters into the scorched earth.
"Blade Wind...!"
It was already well known among the Central Army that Lucius, the 'Blade Wind' of Remus, had joined forces alongside Prince Romul. The commander bit his lip in frustration, powerless to prevent their approach. Believing it would be far more efficient to concentrate their firepower to pierce the tempest once the enemy clashed directly with the walls rather than wasting ammunition and the stamina of their mages on futile long-range bombardment, he gave the order to hold fire.
Yet he had made one fatal miscalculation.
That three-thousand-strong host did not merely consist of imperial rebels. Riding among them was Lucius and his fifty elite warriors from the Kingdom of Remus. Yielding to Lucius's persistent, almost childish badgering, Romul had reluctantly secured Adelheid's permission for them to operate independently. Every single one of Remus's battle-crazed elites had been itching for bloodshed, and the very instant the bombardment ceased—
"Come on, boys! Move out! On this glorious day where we tear down the empire's sun, we're the ones kicking off the show!"
Lucius swept his broadsword downward with a mighty roar, gathering a vortex beneath the feet of himself and his fifty men. A whirlwind surged upward like a waterspout, launching their bodies into the air and hurling them straight toward the top of the ramparts.
"B-Blade Wind! He's charging the walls himself with his men!"
"They aren't Central Army rebels! It's Remus! The demons of Remus are flying up here!"
The defenders' reluctance to draw blood against former comrades with whom they had shared mess tables just a month prior was instantly obliterated, replaced by cold terror: the realization that the lunatic warmongers who had struck the empire first on the eastern front and held firm for an entire year were now descending upon their heads.
"Bwahahaha! Imperial curs! Is there not a single bastard among you man enough to host my funeral?!"
In stark contrast to his rough, bandit-like swagger, Lucius manipulated the air currents with breathtaking precision, setting himself and his soldiers safely onto the parapet. In the blink of an eye, he cleaved through the nearest imperial soldiers and kicked their corpses off the ledge to clear room.
"South Wind!"
As befitting a Tier 4 aura master who had honed his aura to the absolute limit and manifested his own Ego, Lucius conjured a concentrated whirlwind directly from his blade. The razor-sharp vortex sliced the defensive cannons lined along the rampart cleanly in two, a terrifying display that proved he truly was the Blade Wind incarnate.
"Holy hell, those crazy bastards... they actually jumped up there..."
"I pray to the gods Lady Adelheid never picks a fight with Remus while I'm still breathing."
Naturally, the Revolutionary Army was just as appalled by the suicidal madness of Remus's shock assault. Yet as far as they were concerned, there were no allies more dependable than those madmen.
"Advance while the Remus troops keep the battlements occupied! Move, move!"
Taking the clash on the walls as their signal, mounted cavalry and veteran aura users of Tier 2 and above surged forward, galloping headlong toward the main gate. At last, the all-out clash of the civil war for the imperial throne had begun in earnest.
It was a battle against time: whether the capital could hold until reinforcements from provincial lords arrived. Reinforced with layers of defensive magic and forged from indestructible alloys, Byron's ramparts and gates were sturdy enough to weather relentless barrages of artillery and high-tier spells without buckling. So long as they desperately held the capital's four primary gates, hope remained for the outnumbered Central Army.
Thwack!
"Wh-what...?!"
"Sorry. Nothing personal."
Yet that premise crumbled in an instant, less than an hour into the engagement, undone by the treacherous blade invited inside by a Crown Prince too panicked to conduct even the most basic verification. Taking advantage of the chaos while everyone's attention was riveted to Lucius's assault, Nox thrust her dagger deep into the field commander's chest.
"Aaargh?!"
"What's happening?!"
"Tr-treason! It's a trai—glargh!"
Simultaneously, the Nox operatives she had brought with her—who had long since assassinated imperial guards and stolen their appearances through flesh-grafting disguise magic—hurled explosive satchels right into the dense formations of their own allies. They overwhelmed the operators manning the winch mechanisms and threw the levers.
Creeeeaaak—!
Ten minutes after the Revolutionary Army and the Central Army engaged.
The southern gate, where the largest rebel force was concentrated, was breached for the hollowest of reasons: betrayal from within.
"Charge! Breach the gate!"
Instantly grasping that this was the opening Adelheid had hinted at, the rebel commanders spearheaded the breakthrough, surging through the widening gap. In a heartbeat, the tide of battle turned irrevocably.
"They said these bastards were a disorganized rabble, but this is pathetic even compared to the first lot we tangled with. Does the empire keep its best troops in the provinces instead of the capital?"
As the tumult he created atop the battlement gave birth to even greater chaos below, Lucius seized the momentum to ramp up the carnage.
Slash!
While the defenders shrank in horror from the sudden betrayal below, Lucius darted straight into the imperial rear guard, slaughtering the mages who had been frantically chanting their incantations. Flicking the blood from his blade, Lucius knew victory was already assured, yet his scarred face bore no hint of satisfaction.
"At this rate, the bastards will abandon the defense entirely and focus all their energy on running away."
After all, this war could only truly end when they caught the enemy's leader.