The silence following the shaman's death didn't last. It was swallowed by a sound far worse than the roar of monsters: the groan of twisting metal and splintering wood.
CRACK-BOOOOM.
The main gates of the outer wall gave way.
It wasn't a clean break. The massive iron-wood doors were blasted inward, sending shrapnel the size of spears tearing through the defenders in the courtyard below.
"They're in!" a soldier screamed, his voice cracking with despair. "The courtyard is lost!"
Oliver stood on the battlements, looking down into the hellscape. The breach was like a dam breaking. A torrent of black armor and green flesh poured through the gap.
He looked at the men around him. There were barely twenty left on this section of the wall. Their armor was shredded, their eyes hollow. They looked at him—not at the enemy, but at him. Waiting for an order. Waiting for a reason not to jump off the wall and end it.
