Silence.
Then the dwarven chanting resumed.
It came back different. The funeral hymn was gone. What replaced it was raw, guttural, and triumphant, a roar that erupted from thousands of throats at once, swelling across the field like a wave crashing against cliffs. Fists struck breastplates. Boots hammered the earth. The dwarven artillery crews, who had been loading their next volley with grim professionalism seconds ago, abandoned their stations to scream at the sky.
They were cheering, cheering because they had just witnessed a single man do what their entire war machine was designed to spend days accomplishing.
And he'd done it in one hit.
General Thorga stood behind the main battery line with her arms crossed and her mouth hanging open. She closed it. Opened it again. Closed it a second time. Then she turned to her aide, a young dwarf with ink-stained fingers who was supposed to be recording the bombardment timeline.
His quill was on the ground. His ledger was blank.
