The city stopped pretending this was a raid and started admitting it was a war.
From the clock tower, the view was obscene. Fire tore the sky open as the three-headed dragon banked low, all wings and synchronized malice.
One head screamed flame, another lightning, the third something that looked like concentrated bad intentions.
Every breath hit the barrier like a hammer. The shield rippled, cracked, healed, cracked again.
The church blessing was holding, barely, like a clenched jaw refusing to scream.
The dragon's center head, the one wreathed in perpetual flame, inhaled deep enough to collapse the air around it.
Mages on the eastern wall screamed warnings. Too late. The torrent of fire came down like divine judgment, a column of heat so intense it turned stone to glass.
The barrier caught it, barely, spider-webbing across a hundred-foot section. Priests below chanted frantically, pouring mana into the failing ward.
One collapsed.
Then another.
