For five days, the castle stood alone.
Once the heart of Francian splendor, its towers now jutted above a wasteland of ruin.
The surrounding city—what had once been the crown of the western kingdoms—was silent save for the crackle of distant fires and the cawing of crows feasting on the dead.
Only the castle remained untouched, a pale fortress of white stone and golden spires, looming above the devastation like a relic of a vanished world, ringed in black iron fortress walls.
Around it, the Romanus war machine had built a second city.
Siege camps spread in all directions—rows of machines, trenches, and wooden palisades gleaming with fresh iron spikes.
Ballistae and trebuchets loomed like skeletal giants over the smoking plain.
Engines were being rolled into place with chains and oxen, their operators chanting work songs as sparks flew from hammers striking iron.
The castle's defenders had done nothing.
