Chapter 1000

They were made to stand. Several pyres had been built across the enemy’s front line. Rough wooden stakes rose from piled logs soaked dark by rain and oil. Bound to those stakes were Lionsguard members.

People who had been dragged away the day before, now displayed like warning signs nailed to the edge of hell.

They were alive. That was the worst part. Alive enough to sag against ropes. Alive enough to tremble. Alive enough for their heads to lift weakly when Lionfang’s walls came into view.

Their fingers were gone. All of them. Some had had their limbs cut and then healed afterwards…

Hands reduced to butchered stumps wrapped badly enough that the bandages had soaked through. Some wounds still dripped. Others had been burned shut. None had been treated with care. Their legs had been broken.

Knees bent wrong. Shins angled in ways bones were not meant to remember. Ankles twisted. Feet dragging uselessly beneath them. And still, they had been forced upright.

Ropes around their chests and throats held them against the stakes. Their bodies hung from the bindings more than stood, legs useless beneath them, heads lolling. Some were conscious. Some drifted in and out. One was muttering something no one on the wall could hear.

Another tried to raise a hand. There was no hand left to raise. The battlefield lost all sound. Even the rain seemed quieter.

Lionfang stared. Ten thousand enemies stood behind the prisoners and waited.

No speech. No demand. No offer. Just the prisoners. Just the pyres. Just the promise. Move, and they burn. Do not move, and watch. A recruit on the wall made a choking sound.

Someone below whispered a name. Then another. Then more.

A Torvares soldier beside the eastern stair turned away and vomited against the stone. One of the civilian water carriers dropped a bucket. It spilled across the ground and rolled twice before stopping.

No one picked it up. Arslan did not move. His hands rested on the battlement. Rain ran down his face. Inside him, something black and hot opened its eyes. The mana in his body responded.

Slowly, at first. Then harder. The air around him warmed. Rain hissed as it struck his shoulders. Steam rose from his armor in thin white curls. Darnell saw it and stiffened.

“Arslan,” he said quietly.

Arslan heard him. He did not answer. Below, the northerners changed. Not physically. Not in any way a scholar could neatly measure and place into a report. But everyone felt it. Their aura thickened.

The air around them grew heavy, dark, and wild. It spread from warrior to warrior like storm clouds gathering over a mountain ridge. The northerners did not shout. They did not beat weapons against shields. They did not roar for blood.

That would have been easier. Instead, they went quiet. A deep, dreadful quiet. The kind that came before avalanches. Companionship was not a joke to northerners. They fought like beasts, drank like fools, argued like children with axes, and laughed at wounds that made southern healers consider retirement. But once they called someone comrade, that word settled into bone.

A comrade was not left. A comrade was not abandoned. A comrade was not displayed on a pyre while enemies waited with torches. That was not war to them. That was insult. That was debt. That was something older than kingdoms and cleaner than politics.

Kharnek stood beneath the gate, staring through the iron bars at the prisoners.

For once, he did not move. His massive hands were wrapped around the haft of his weapon so tightly that the wood began to groan. The handprint on his cheek was still visible, red beneath rain and soot. His eyes were fixed on the pyres.

Beside him, Sigrid’s face had gone utterly still. That was worse than anger. Her fingers rested on the hilt of her blade. Not gripping. Not yet. But close. One of the younger northerners took half a step forward. An older warrior caught him by the shoulder and dragged him back. The younger man’s face twisted.

“They’re right there,” he hissed.

The older one said nothing. He only held on. Because they all knew. Every single one of them knew. The fires would be lit the moment Lionfang moved. Maybe sooner. The logs beneath the prisoners were too carefully stacked. The oil sheen was visible even in the rain. Mages stood behind the pyres, hands ready, eyes watching the wall.

There would be runes too. Arslan could tell that without seeing them.

Underground. Buried beneath the mud between the walls and the pyres. Blast runes. Flame runes. Compression traps. Maybe wire triggers. Maybe pressure plates. Maybe something worse stolen from Velis designs.

The obvious path was a mouth full of teeth. If they opened the gate and charged, dozens would die before reaching the prisoners. Maybe hundreds. The first wave would hit the runes. The second would run into spellfire. The third would meet the army. And the prisoners would burn anyway.

It was insane. It was obvious. It was exactly what the enemy wanted. And every man on the wall wanted to do it. Arslan included.

Mana surged in his chest, bright and furious, flooding his limbs until every muscle begged for motion. His sword felt too light at his hip. The distance to the enemy seemed shorter with every breath.

Open the gate. Charge. Cut them down. Reach the pyres. Save who could be saved. Kill who deserved killing.

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Kharnek looked up at him. Their eyes met. The northern chieftain did not speak. He did not need to. Arslan could see the question in his face.

Are we doing this?

And beneath it, something sharper.

Can you still tell me no?

The answer should have come easily. It did not. Arslan looked back toward the pyres.

For a single stretched heartbeat, part of him still searched for an answer. A clever angle. A hidden path. A sudden opening.

Some impossible little trick Ludger would have found by staring at the field for three seconds, insulting the enemy’s construction standards, and doing something absurd with mud, rain, and spite.

There was nothing. The prisoners were too far. The pyres were too exposed. The enemies were ready.

The trap field had been partly ruined, but not completely. The golems were still there. The mages were still there. The catapults were still waiting. The prisoners could not walk. Could not crawl. Could not even fall properly without the ropes around their bodies.

Saving them was impossible. The words settled inside Arslan with the weight of a grave marker. Impossible. He hated that word. He hated it more because it was true. The flame mage’s hand lifted higher.

A thin trail of fire stretched through the rain, crawling toward the first oil-soaked pile. One of the prisoners saw it. A recruit barely older than Viola. She had joined because her older brother had died years before.

She had cried the first time she killed a man yesterday. Now she was tied to a pyre with broken legs and no fingers. Her mouth opened. No sound reached the wall.

Maybe she screamed. Maybe she prayed. Maybe she just tried to breathe. Arslan let out a sigh. It was not loud. It did not carry. It was not theatrical. It was the sound of a man accepting that mercy had changed shape.

They could not save the prisoners. Not anymore. The only thing they could do was prevent them from suffering much longer. Even if they weren't burn alive, their wounds were too deep…

The flame touched the first pyre. Oil caught despite the rain. Fire crawled up the logs with obscene eagerness, orange and red blooming beneath gray skies.

A sound came from Lionfang. Not a roar. Not yet. It was something lower. A collective wound opening at once. Kharnek’s aura darkened until the men nearest him stepped back. Sigrid’s face remained still, but tears cut clean lines through the soot on her cheeks. Darnell gripped the battlement so hard his knuckles turned white.

Arslan looked at the burning pyre. Then at the others waiting to be lit. Then at the enemy army standing behind them like men.

No. Not men. Not anymore. He turned away from the field and faced Lionfang. Below him stood everything that remained. Lionsguard members with broken armor and sleepless eyes. Northerners shaking from rage so deep it had become discipline by force.

Torvares soldiers pale with fear and fury, still not knowing whether their lord lived or died. Civilians clutching bandages and buckets like those things could ward off horror.

Recruits who had joined for coin, pride, survival, or because Ludger had somehow made building a guild look like building a future.

They all looked up at him. Behind Arslan, the first prisoner began to burn. The smell reached the wall a moment later. Someone sobbed. Someone else cursed. A young fighter dropped to one knee and retched.

Arslan did not soften his face. He could not. If he softened now, the town would break. So he gave them steel.

“Look at them,” he said.

His voice carried over the wall, over the rain, over the crackle of fire. No one wanted to. They looked anyway.

“Do not turn away.”

The words struck harder than comfort would have. Arslan pointed toward the pyres.

“Those are our people.”

The second pyre caught. Then the third. The enemy mages moved carefully, lighting them one by one. Slow enough to make Lionfang watch. Slow enough to make every heartbeat another knife.

“They stood with us yesterday,” Arslan said. “They bled with us. They held the line when the Empire sent soldiers, mercenaries, machines, and cowards wrapped in banners. They were taken because they were exhausted after saving this town.”

The fire climbed higher. The prisoners writhed as much as broken bodies allowed. Not much. Too much. Arslan’s mana stirred around him, but he did not let it explode. Not yet.

“The Empire wants this to break us.”

His voice hardened.

“They want you to see their pain and become animals. They want you stupid. They want you blind. They want you running into every trap they buried between us and them.”

He paused. Rain ran down his face. Behind him, screams finally reached the wall.

Weak.

Raw.

Human.

His jaw tightened until it hurt.

“They are too late.”

Silence rippled beneath the words. Arslan drew his sword. The sound was clean. Almost beautiful. A disgusting contrast to the pyres.

“They are too late because they have already shown us what they are.”

He turned slightly, enough for the blade to point toward the enemy army.

“This is not law. This is not justice. This is not the Empire protecting order from rebels, traitors, or whatever pretty name they have painted over their rot.”

His mana surged. Heat rolled from him in waves. Rain hissed into steam around his shoulders.

“This is rot wearing a crown.”

The words settled over Lionfang.

“This is what happens when corruption survives long enough to call itself tradition. This is what happens when nobles, senators, regents, councils, merchants, and monsters learn they can feed people into the dark and still be called rulers.”

The Lionsguard listened. The northerners listened. Even the wounded who could barely stand listened. Arslan’s gaze swept over them all.

“If the Empire’s rot has reached this level, then the Empire as it stands must be destroyed.”

The word destroyed did not come out like rage. It came out like judgment.

“I would rather die on this field than fail to tear it down as it is now.”

Darnell looked at him sharply. Kharnek’s teeth bared. Maurien’s expression remained calm, but the wind around the tower shifted. Arslan raised his sword higher.

“Do not misunderstand me. This will not be clean. It will not be glorious. Songs will lie about it later if anyone is stupid enough to sing. We will make sacrifices. We will lose friends. We will make choices that burn worse than wounds.”

His eyes flicked to the pyres. Another scream broke, then ended. He swallowed the grief and turned it into iron.

“We have already made one.”

The crowd below went utterly still.

“We cannot save them.”

The truth hit harder than any lie. Several faces crumpled. A northerner slammed his fist against his chest hard enough to bruise. A Torvares soldier bowed his head. Arslan did not let them drown in it.

“But we can end this quickly.”