The port city of Stormhaven, located twenty miles south of the Capital, was burning.
It was not the clean, magical fire of the Academy, nor the primal fire of the dragon-lines. It was the dirty, choking fire of oil and coal. The Iron Sultanate had not put all their faith in the Capital landing; while the Dreadnoughts hammered the Great Spire, a secondary force of heavy mechanized infantry had beached at Stormhaven to cut off the Kingdom's supply lines.
Commander Silas Thorne stood behind a barricade of overturned carts and shattered cobblestones, wiping a mixture of soot and blood from his visor. He was a man carved from granite, his armor a patchwork of Royal Guard plate and salvaged industrial scraps. Unlike the mages of the Academy, Thorne possessed no internal core. He had survived twenty years in the Guard through sheer, brutal discipline and a mastery of "Null-Combat"—the art of fighting magic with steel and silence.
"They're cycling the vents!" a militia soldier screamed from the left flank. "Get down!"
Thorne didn't flinch. He watched as the silhouette of a Sultanate "Steam-Juggernaut" emerged from the smoke. It was a bipedal tank, fifteen feet tall, its hull plated in the same Lead-Bismuth alloy as the ships. It hissed, a cloud of superheated steam venting from its joints, before raising a rotary cannon arm.
Thump-thump-thump.
Heavy iron slugs chewed through the barricade, shredding wood and stone. The militia—brave men and women from the Gut, armed with little more than pikes and stolen mana-pistols—scattered.
"Hold the line!" Thorne roared, his voice cutting through the din. He hefted a heavy, pneumatic pile-driver he had salvaged from a mining rig. "Their plating grounds magic, not kinetics! Aim for the joints! The knees are iron, not alloy!"
But his voice was lost in the chaos. Two more Juggernauts crashed through the city gates, their iron feet crushing the ancient archway. The defenders were breaking. They had the spirit of the revolution, but against the weight of the Iron Sultanate's industrial superiority, spirit was just soft flesh waiting to be pulped.
Thorne gritted his teeth. He looked up at the smoke-choked sky. "Where are you, Saint? You broke the grid, but can you break this?"
As if in answer, a high-pitched, harmonic whine pierced the roar of the battle.
From the northern ridge, a silver streak descended. It was the Academy Slip-Runner, piloted not by Kael, but by Pip. It screamed over the battlefield, banking hard as it dropped a payload—not bombs, but three massive, bronze cylinders attached to parachutes.
"The Blessing-Engines," Thorne whispered, a grim smile touching his lips.
The cylinders slammed into the earth behind the militia's lines, embedding themselves in the cobblestones. A moment later, a figure leaped from the moving Slip-Runner, landing in the center of the square with a shockwave that cleared the smoke.
Kael Light rose from the impact crater.
He looked different than he had in the Capital. His grey cloak was gone, replaced by a battle-tunic of woven Void-Silk. His iridescent eyes were blazing with a terrifying intensity, the silver-blue ring of the Goddess Aura pulsing in sync with the golden-violet of the Star-Core. Behind him, Garret and a pack of twenty Moon-Scarred were already tearing into the flank of the Sultanate forces, their howls mixing with the hiss of steam.
"Thorne!" Kael shouted, his voice amplified by his own resonance. "Secure the perimeter! I'm turning the Engines on!"
"They're immune to magic, Weeper!" Thorne yelled back, firing his pile-driver into a Juggernaut's leg. "Beam attacks won't work!"
"I'm not aiming at them," Kael said. "I'm aiming at you."
Kael rushed to the central Blessing-Engine. It was a crude, hasty modification of Ignis's Radiant design. Instead of a focusing lens for a beam, it had a diffusion array—a series of spinning crystal prisms designed to scatter light.
Kael slammed his hand onto the catalyst plate. He didn't use his blood this time; he used the "Blessing." He reached into the silver-blue halo in his eyes, channeling the concept of "Faith" directly into the machine.
"Radiant Art: The Mantle of the Dawn!"
The engine roared. A wave of soft, iridescent light exploded outward, washing over the retreating militia.
It didn't burn. It didn't push. It infused.
Thorne felt it hit him like a physical injection of adrenaline. The fatigue in his muscles vanished instantly. The pain of his fractured ribs disappeared, replaced by a cool, numbing sensation. His perception slowed; the massive Juggernauts seemed to be moving through molasses. His strength, already formidable, spiked to impossible levels.
He looked at his hands. They were glowing with a faint, silver-blue aura.
"What is this?" a militia soldier gasped, looking at his own glowing pike. "I feel... I feel like I could punch through a wall."
"Don't question the miracle!" Kael's voice boomed. "Use it! Push them back to the sea!"
The tide of the battle turned in a single heartbeat.
The militia, no longer terrified peasants but empowered zealots, surged forward. They moved with the speed of vampires and struck with the weight of werewolves. A soldier with a rusted hammer leaped fifteen feet into the air, landing on a Juggernaut's canopy and smashing the reinforced glass with a single blow. Another group tackled a mech's leg, physically toppling the five-ton machine through sheer, coordinated strength.
Thorne didn't hesitate. He activated his pile-driver and charged the lead Juggernaut. He moved faster than the machine's tracking sensors could follow. He slid under the rotary cannon, planted his weapon against the Juggernaut's "Lead-Bismuth" torso, and pulled the trigger.
The pile-driver, enhanced by Kael's aura, struck with the force of a meteor. It punched clean through the anti-magic plating, shattering the boiler inside. The Juggernaut exploded in a shower of shrapnel and steam.
Kael stood by the engine, maintaining the flow. The "Stable Agony" was screaming in his chest—the cost of maintaining a city-wide buff was immense. His bones were fracturing and resetting every second, a constant drumbeat of torture that fueled the light.
THEY LIKE THE TASTE OF IT, KAEL, the God whispered, watching the carnage. LOOK AT THEIR EYES. THEY AREN'T FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM ANYMORE. THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR THE RUSH. YOU AREN'T JUST HEALING THEM; YOU ARE INTOXICATING THEM.
Kael looked at the soldiers. The God was right. There was a manic, ecstatic quality to their violence. They laughed as they tore the iron machines apart. They didn't flinch when they were wounded; the "Blessing" numbed the pain and cauterized the cuts instantly.
He was turning them into berserkers.
"Enough!" Kael gasped, pulling his hand from the engine.
The light faded. The militia stumbled, the sudden return of gravity and pain hitting them hard. But the job was done. The Juggernauts were scrap metal, smoking ruins littering the streets of Stormhaven. The remaining Sultanate infantry, terrified by the sudden display of supernatural strength, were throwing down their weapons and fleeing toward the docks.
Thorne walked over to Kael, dragging his pile-driver. The commander was panting, the glow fading from his skin, leaving him looking older and more tired than before.
"That was... dangerous," Thorne said, wiping oil from his face. "Effective. But dangerous. You turned sheep into wolves, Weeper. What happens when there are no more machines to kill?"
"We cross that bridge when we get to it," Kael wheezed, sitting heavily on the casing of the engine. He coughed, a speck of golden-violet blood hitting the cobblestones. "Is the city secure?"
"For now," Thorne said, looking at the cheering militia. "But the Sultanate will adapt. They always do. They'll bring heavier armor, or they'll start using the Grey Inquisitors to nullify your light."
"Let them try," Garret's voice rumbled as the werewolf loped into the square, transforming back into his human form. He was covered in oil and blood, but he looked energized. "The pack grows, Father. The militia... they have the scent now. They know what it feels like to be strong."
Kael looked at the faces of the people he had saved. They were chanting his name. Saint. King. Weeper.
He felt a chill that had nothing to do with the "Stable Agony." He had liberated them from the Academy's harvest, but he had bound them to a new kind of dependency. They needed his light to feel powerful. They needed his war to feel purpose.
"Thorne," Kael said quietly, so only the commander could hear. "I need you to train them. Not just to fight. But to control it. If they become addicted to the Blessing, we've just traded one slavery for another."
Thorne looked at Kael, his hard eyes assessing the young man. He saw the burden in the iridescent eyes, the weight of a god sitting on human shoulders.
"I'll drill them until their bones ache," Thorne promised. "We'll make them soldiers, not zealots. But Kael... you need to be careful. A King who gives his people miracles eventually runs out of magic. And then they eat him."
"I have plenty of magic left," Kael said, standing up.
He looked toward the harbor. The Sanguine Courts held the Capital. The Moon-Scarred held the walls. And now, the "Army of the Broken" held the south.
"We have the land," Kael said. "Now we need the sea."
He pulled out the map he had taken from Site-Two. He pointed to a location off the coast, near the ruins of Aethelgard.
"Site-Five," Kael said. "The Sunken Cradle. The Sultanate's fleet is blocking the surface, but they can't block the deep. If we can liberate the Cradle underwater, we can turn the ocean against them."
"And who is going to swim down there?" Ignis asked, joining them via a crackling radio-link from the Capital. "The pressure alone would crush a Dreadnought."
Kael smiled, a grim, humorless expression.
"I know someone who doesn't mind the pressure," Kael said. "I'm going back to where I died."