Chapter 991

Arslan stopped long enough to breathe. Only once. Only because his body demanded it before the next push turned dangerous.

The flame around him faded in layers, his Flame Overdrive shrinking from a roaring mantle into scattered embers that hissed out beneath the rain. Steam rose from his armor and shoulders as cold water finally reached skin and steel that had been burning too hot for too long.

His sword remained ready . His eyes remained forward.

Behind him, Lionsguard held formation, breath rough, shields dented, spearpoints dark with blood and rain. They had done well. Better than well. They had punched into the enemy’s opening line, shattered its shape, and made the Empire pay dearly for thinking numbers alone could crush them. But Arslan did not let himself enjoy it. Because the enemy was adapting.

He could see it in the way their forward units began taking steps back. Not fleeing. Not breaking. Backing away under orders. Shields came up. Spear formations tightened. Mages pulled into safer pockets. The line was no longer trying to overwhelm Lionfang in a direct push.

They were settling. Bracing. Enduring. Arslan’s jaw tightened.

“They want a battle of endurance,” he muttered.

That was the last thing Lionfang needed.

Lionsguard had started with momentum because they had to. Their strength came from sharp action, brutal timing, and making every prepared trick hurt before the enemy could fully adjust. But a drawn-out field battle against superior numbers was poison.

Ten thousand in front. More behind. Likely reserves still waiting. Maybe runic units. Maybe worse. Every minute the fight dragged on favored the attacking side. Arslan could feel that ugly truth pressing against his ribs harder than any blade. A shout came from the left flank. Then another from the right.

Arslan’s gaze cut sideways. Through the rain, beyond the shifting infantry lines, he saw them.

Magic catapults.

Large, ugly siege frames rolling forward from the sides of the battlefield, pulled by teams of armored beasts and reinforced carts. Their arms were carved with runes that glowed beneath the rain, each machine surrounded by guarded mage crews and soldiers carrying tower shields.

Not ordinary siege weapons.Those would have been slow, clumsy, and less useful in this weather. These were built to throw enchanted payloads.

Firestones. Mana bombs. Maybe alchemical rot if the Regent’s side felt especially honest about being filth. And they were not aiming for the battlefield. They were angling toward the town. Arslan’s expression went cold.

“So that’s the next move.”

They wanted to destroy as much of Lionfang as possible. Not only walls. Homes. The streets children had been playing in that very morning before the world remembered it liked blood more than peace.

They wanted smoke rising behind the defenders. Wanted screams from civilians. Wanted guild members turning their heads at the wrong time because the place they were protecting was burning behind them.

They wanted morale damage. Arslan hated that he respected the logic. One of the nearby members stepped closer, face pale beneath the rain and mud.

“Guildmaster?”

“I see them.”

“What are your orders?”

Arslan glanced forward again.

The imperial line was bracing now, inviting Lionsguard to keep crashing against shields while siege weapons moved into range. If he pushed too hard, he would spend his frontline into a wall. If he fell back too early, the catapults would gain clean firing lanes.

No easy answer. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the strain Flame Overdrive had left in his muscles. He had gone all out at the start to cause as much damage as possible before the enemy understood the shape of Lionfang’s front line.

It had worked. But now that window was closing. Arslan lifted his sword again. Not high. Just enough for those nearest him to see.

“Signal the wall,” he said. “They know what they should do..”

The member nodded.

“Send runners to the flank mages. I want mud pits under those wheels if they can reach them. Water teams disrupt the beasts. Archers target crews only if the shields open.”

“And the frontline?”

Arslan looked at the enemy, then at the magic catapults crawling toward firing positions like beetles made of bad intentions.

“We do not chase their center.”

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The captain blinked. Arslan’s voice hardened.

“We cut the sides.”

Understanding flashed across the man’s face.If the enemy wanted to turtle forward and drag this into endurance, then hitting the braced center would be wasteful. But the catapults had to be protected from the flanks. That meant their side formations mattered. That meant there were joints. And joints could be broken. Arslan inhaled slowly, letting the last fatigue of the first Overdrive settle where it belonged.

Arslan’s eyes moved toward the town. Toward the walls. Toward the place the northerners were still waiting. A grim smile touched his face. Arslan looked back at the troops nearest him and raised his voice.

“Do not waste strength on their shield wall! They want you tired. They want you to be angry. They want you staring forward while their siege crews aim at your homes.”

The line shifted. Faces turned. Even through rain and battle noise, they listened. Arslan pointed his blade toward the left flank, where one of the magic catapults crawled closer under guard.

“So we make them regret showing us what matters.”

A few smiles appeared. Hard ones. Tired ones. Good enough. The enemy had chosen endurance. Arslan would choose surgery. He drew in another breath, feeling fire begin to stir again beneath his skin despite the strain. Not full Overdrive yet. Not unless needed.

No waste. No pride. Only the next cut.

“Left formation,” Arslan ordered. “Move on my mark.”

Froststeel shields shifted. Spears angled. Mages behind the line began gathering water and earth mana, preparing to turn rain and mud into weapons again. The catapults rolled closer. The enemy center held steady, thinking the first storm had passed. Arslan’s eyes narrowed. It hadn’t. It was only changing direction.

The magic catapults lit up.

Runes carved along their arms flared bright beneath the rain, one after another, until the siege engines looked less like machines and more like beasts opening glowing jaws. Mana gathered at their launch points, forming dense projectiles wrapped in unstable light. The air around them bent. Mud steamed beneath their frames.

They were about to fire.

At Lionfang. At the walls. At the homes behind them. Then the first catapult exploded. Not from misfire. Not from overload.

Something struck it from above with enough force to turn the entire siege frame into splinters, twisted metal, and screaming magic. The projectile it had been forming detonated prematurely, blasting the transport crew off their feet and throwing armored handlers through the mud like broken dolls.

On the opposite side of the battlefield, another catapult was torn apart by a blast of wind.

The attack hit from the flank, invisible until impact, cutting through support beams, runic braces, and the reinforced launch arm in a single brutal sweep. The machine folded sideways, its half-formed spell collapsing into a burst of blue-white sparks that scattered across the rain.

For a second, the crews around both siege engines froze. Then panic hit.

Transport handlers scrambled up from the mud, coughing, bleeding, trying to understand what had happened. One shouted for shields. Another screamed that mages should counterfire. A beast pulling one of the remaining catapults reared and nearly crushed its own crew beneath armored hooves.

From Lionfang’s wall, two figures watched from different sides of the defensive line.

Gaius stood on the western section, one hand raised, wet hair plastered to his face as another massive boulder hovered above the wall behind him. It was not a clean stone missile. It was ugly, compacted, jagged, and heavy enough to make the wall beneath him groan faintly when he shifted control over it.

On the eastern side, Maurien stood with his cloak snapping violently in the rain, one hand extended as wind coiled around him in cutting spirals. His eyes were narrowed, sharp and cold, already tracking the next siege engine dragging itself into range.

More magic catapults were approaching. The enemy had not sent two. They had sent a line of them, spread across both sides of the battlefield, guarded by soldiers, mages, and shield teams. Their purpose was obvious enough that no one needed to explain it.

Force Lionfang’s defenders to turn their eyes backward. Gaius and Maurien had one job. Stop them. Gaius clenched his jaw as his next boulder rose higher behind him. The Empire. Or perhaps the Regent’s underlings. Either way, it all led back to the same rotting structure.

For years, he had carried fragments of the truth like shards under the skin. The attack that had tried to kill him. The quiet coverups. The convenient disappearances. The way certain names vanished from reports whenever he got close enough to ask the right questions.

Now he understood. Or at least, he understood enough.

The people marching on Lionfang were not strangers wearing imperial colors. They were part of the same rot that had reached for him years ago. The same hidden hands. The same kind of polished cowardice that killed from behind curtains and then called the blood a necessary adjustment.

His grip tightened. The boulder above him trembled. For one ugly moment, his thoughts went darker. His wife. His daughter. He had buried that pain deep enough to function, not enough to forget. Never enough to forget. And now, watching imperial siege weapons roll toward the town his family had helped build, the old wound opened with fresh teeth.

What if they had been behind that too? The thought came without permission.

Cold. Poisonous.

What if the deaths he had told himself were tragedy had been strategy? What if the hands now trying to crush Lionfang had once reached into his home and taken everything from him because he had been inconvenient even then?

The boulder shook harder. Stone cracked under his boots. Gaius shut his eyes for half a breath. No. Not now. Rage could wait. Grief could wait.

If he let that darkness take the reins, if he turned this battlefield into a place for personal revenge instead of duty, Lionfang would pay the price. A missed catapult. A delayed throw. One moment of indulgence, and fire would fall on the market, the shelters, the children hidden behind walls that were not meant to withstand everything forever.

He opened his eyes again. They were colder now. Focused.

“Later,” he muttered.

Then he threw the boulder.

It crossed the rain-dark field like a piece of the mountain had decided it hated siege engineers personally. The enemy shield mages raised barriers. The boulder hit anyway, smashing through the first layer, cracking the second, and slamming into the side of the next magic catapult hard enough to fold the entire machine around the impact.

The projectile forming inside it burst apart. Another siege weapon died before firing. Gaius lowered his hand, already pulling more earth from behind the wall.

Later.

He would find answers later. Right now, he would make sure there was still a home left to return to when the questions came due.