Stormguard Front, Day of the Siege
By dawn, the Blacktide fleet had blockaded every inlet along the Threnari coast. Ships with black sails and spiral symbols stood like sentinels on the sea, forming a chokehold around the island. No vessel entered. No vessel left.
Inland, the Blacktide Legion had moved swiftly, digging deep, disciplined trenches that encircled the enemy fortress. Earthworks rose with brutal geometry, layered defenses, barricades, and siege positions drawn in concentric lines around the stronghold like a noose. On the inner ring, the Stormguard assembled beneath steel-colored skies.
Across the bluff, the Dazhum fortress loomed, stone-faced and veined with magickal wards. Runes glimmered faintly across tower faces, humming with defensive enchantments. From the high battlements, the stronghold commander stood cloaked in gray armor, flanked by archers and spellcasters.
Altan stepped forward through the drizzle. His voice was calm and cold.
"You can still surrender," he called, lifting the banner of parley. "We will offer you quarter. Your soldiers will be treated with honor."
The commander offered only a tired laugh.
"I have one legion of marines," he replied. "Enough stores to outlast your siege. My walls are carved with glyph-iron and sealed in old stone. My gates are reinforced with spell and steel. Why would I yield?"
Altan's gaze darkened. "Then remember you were given the chance."
He lowered his hand.
A signal flare burst behind him, green and crackling with static.
The Aether-Lance groaned like a waking beast. Its chassis was heavy and squat, built low for stability, reinforced with black-iron ribs and storm-treated ironwood plating. The barrel shimmered, not with fire or alchemical flame, but with electromagnetic energy, humming beneath spiral-forged coils of stormmetal. Runes etched along its length flickered with unstable power.
This was the first prototype of its kind. Forged in secret beneath Stormtide Bastion, designed by Commander Altan and brought to life by Daalo, Stormguard's master engineer, it was a siege engine meant to rewrite the rules of war. Daalo had called it his Iron Tongue of Judgment, but the army simply knew it as the Aether-Lance.
It did not fire arrows or hurl boulders. It fired rods, sigil-etched cores powered by runes and elemental charges, each forged for a distinct purpose.
Daalo stood beside the frame, hands behind his back, eyes sharp beneath his wide-crowned helm. At his signal, a young war engineer stepped forward, pack of rods clamped to a steel harness across his shoulders.
"Null Sigil," Daalo ordered.
The assistant obeyed without hesitation, pulling the violet-etched rod free and slotting it into the power chamber. It locked in place with a hiss and a sudden pulse of light. The machine groaned.
"Fire the rod."
The Aether-Lance bucked with a sharp jolt. A ripple tore through the air, silent but visible, like glass cracking beneath the skin of the world. Fortress wards spasmed, then collapsed in a cascade of broken light.
"Fire Sigil," Daalo commanded next.
The second rod slid into place, its copper runes flickering red orange.
"Fire the rod."
A searing bolt of flame lanced forward, striking the main gate. Wood ignited, iron blackened, screams echoed.
"Kinetic Sigil."
The third rod was inserted. Power built.
"Fire the rod."
A thunderous blast of force shattered stone braces and burst hinges from their sockets. The gate buckled.
"Breaker Rod. Final shot."
The last core, dual-marked in white and red, was placed with steady hands.
"Fire the rod."
The Aether-Lance screamed. The final blast tore through what remained of the gate. Stone, steel, fire, all were reduced to ruin. The Dazhum stronghold lay exposed.
Altan raised his falcata.
"Attack."
The Stormguard surged forward, trench lines emptying as the Threnari warriors let loose a cry that echoed off the cliffs. Arrows rained from behind. War drums thundered across the moor.
The Dazhum fortress, once thought impenetrable, now stood naked to the storm.
The gate was gone. Smoke and splinters choked the breach.
Altan lowered his spear. One word cut through the static haze.
"Now."
From the trenchlines, the first wave moved, silent and black.
The Blacktide Spear Cohort advanced like a wound opening across the earth. No war cry. No drumbeat. Just the whisper of wet boots and cold steel.
Each warrior bore the mark of the spiral, wax-sealed on their orders but absent from their armor. They wore no color. No banner. Their blackened breastplates drank the light, etched with runes that shimmered faintly against the rising smoke. Helms concealed all identity, no eye slits wide enough to reveal a soul, only the sliver of purpose in steel.
They moved as one, disciplined, deliberate, detached.
Through the breach they poured.
A forward unit scaled the collapsed gate supports, slipping over stone and ruined iron like shadows reborn. The Tidecut spears thrust in formation, short, brutal jabs to the throat and belly, but also to the neck, armpits, eyes, and open chest, exploiting every weak point in the armor. The precision of their strikes turned the narrow breach into a slaughter corridor. The clash was wet and immediate. The Dazhum defenders never had time to reform. The Blacktide did not allow it.
A war mage raised his staff from the inner wall. A Tidecut pierced his chest before the incantation finished.
In the courtyards, Dazhum marines shouted orders, their officers forming ranks, but the Falcata blades were already at their ribs. Curved steel, short and heavy, fell in sharp angled arcs. Shields split. Necks opened. Limbs severed.
Bodies dropped with no scream.
The Blacktide oval shields turned strikes aside with sudden shifts, the gaps between the formations closing instantly. Every movement felt rehearsed. Every kill without sound.
Blood slicked the stone.
Then came the second wave.
The Threnari.
Where the Blacktide were silence, the Threnari were fury. They charged as clans reborn, tattooed, bare-armed, cloaked in boiled leather and blood-streaked cloth. They wore old iron, bull-hide shields strapped to their forearms, and some carried bucklers or small round shields for maneuverability. Warpaint streaked across their faces like lightning.
Their swords were double-edged, leaf-bladed, meant for close kills and ancestral retribution. They screamed as they came, raw-throated cries that shattered the air, a sound torn from generations of oppression.
They had been broken. Chained. Their god-stones desecrated. Their lands carved by imperial boots.
Now, vengeance bled from every strike.
A Threnari warrior hurled his spear through a Dazhum officer's jaw. Another leapt over a barricade, sword biting into a soldier's thigh, dragging him down before gutting him in one clean, practiced motion. They did not stop. They did not flinch.
They fought for every ancestor buried under foreign rule.
Courtyards became slaughtergrounds.
The Dazhum archers fell back to inner walls. Too late. A Blacktide squad had already breached the upper stair. One by one, the bowmen fell, their cries cut short by black spears driving through spine and lung.
A Threnari chieftain ripped the helm from a mariner captain and bashed his skull open with the rim of his bull-hide shield. Blood sprayed the stone. The clansman turned, snarling, and led his kin deeper into the keep.
Altan watched from the hill as the fortress interior burned.
The Blacktide moved ahead, slicing down stragglers. The Threnari followed, setting fire to storerooms, dragging broken Dazhum banners down with howls.
The sky darkened as ash rose from the inner hold.
By dusk, the courtyard was soaked red.
And the god-stones of the Threnari, once defiled and buried by the Dazhum, had been unearthed from beneath the fortress tiles and stood again under open sky, bloodstained, but unbroken.
The siege had ended. The island would remember.