I. The Bread of Defiance
The air in Obsidios Iubeo was vibrating. It wasn't a sound you heard so much as felt in your teeth—the rhythmic, bass-heavy thrum of twenty thousand pairs of boots marching in time, miles away.
Deep in the communal bakery of the Second District, Elara slapped dough onto a floured table with more force than necessary. The bakery was hot, smelling of yeast and the metallic tang of the Dark Harvest grain.
A young girl named Sola, a refugee who had only arrived last week from the starving south, dropped a basket of loaves. The thrumming outside was getting louder.
"They're too many, Elara," Sola whispered, her hands trembling as she reached for the spilled bread. "I saw them from the wall. It's the whole world coming to kill us."
Elara stopped kneading. She wiped sweat and flour from her forehead, looking at the girl. She remembered that fear. It was the same fear she used to feel when the Union tax collector knocked on her door in Pravum, knowing she didn't have the coin, knowing her husband would be dragged away to the debtor's prison.
But this was not Pravum.
Elara walked over, her heavy boots steady on the stone floor. She didn't offer comfort; she offered reality. She pointed up to the rafter where a black raven sat, watching them with intelligent bead-like eyes.
"Look at the bird, Sola," Elara commanded gently. "The Raven Lord sees us. He feeds us. When did the Union ever feed you anything but lies?"
Sola looked up, then back at the bread.
"The Union wants us to be afraid," Elara said, her voice hardening into the stone of the city. "They want us cowering in cellars waiting to be chained again. Are you a slave, Sola?"
Sola straightened up, wiping her nose. "No. I am Obsida-Serva."
"Then act like it," Elara said. "Take this basket to the wall reserve. The Second Legion needs fuel to fight."
As Sola hurried out, Elara reached under the heavy oak prep table. Her hand closed around the handle of a heavy, butcher's meat cleaver. She pulled it out and laid it on the counter with a loud thack. It wasn't a soldier's weapon, but in her hands, it felt like one. If the walls fell, the bakery would not be a hiding place. It would be a choke point.
II. The Silence of the Line
On the high battlements of the main gate, the wind was cold, smelling of the ozone charge of the Obsidian Ordo.
Tarik, once a quarry slave who used to flinch at sudden noises, stood in the front rank of the Obsidian Phalanx. He wore full Obsidian Plate, the heavy armor feeling not like a burden, but like a second skin forged of night itself. His large rectangular scutum shield was locked perfectly with the man to his left and right, forming a seamless wall of black steel.
Through the slit of his visor, he watched the Union army deploy. It was an ocean of metal. Siege towers clad in wet hides creaked forward like lumbering beasts. Catapults were being loaded. The sheer scale of it was designed to break a man's spirit before the first arrow flew.
Tarik felt a tremor start in his hand, the old instinct of a slave facing his masters.
A gauntleted hand clapped onto his shoulder plate. It was solid, grounding.
"Breathe, Tarik," said Captain Sol.
Sol was young, promoted from the ranks during the Pravum campaign for holding a street against twenty mercenaries. His voice was calm, almost bored by the spectacle below.
"Look at them," Sol said, gesturing with his chin toward the Union lines. "They're shouting. They're banging their drums. They're trying to scare themselves into fighting."
Sol tapped his own breastplate, the sound sharp and clear in the silence on the wall.
"We don't make noise. We don't need to. We know what we are." Sol looked down the line at the thousand silent, motionless black statues. "We are the judgment they bought with their coin. Hold your shield. Trust the man next to you. Trust the Marshall."
Tarik looked over at Obsidian Marshall Garrus Vane, who stood by the gate mechanism, watching the enemy approach with the cold detachment of a butcher sizing up a carcass.
Tarik swallowed the fear. He gripped his shield handle tighter. The tremor stopped. He was part of the wall now.
III. The Shadow on the Road
Ten miles away, on the Via Obsidia, the First Legion moved at a supernatural pace. The magic of the paved road reduced fatigue, allowing them to jog in full plate for hours without breaking formation.
Legion Commander Veridian Vex ran at the head of the column of 3,500 soldiers. They were the Hammer, swinging wide to strike the Union's exposed back.
The Black Flock scouts overhead shrieked the signal: CONTACT IMMINENT.
They rounded a bend in the road, coming out of the cover of the rocky foothills. The sight before them was disgusting.
The rear of the Union army was a chaotic mess of baggage wagons, drunken stragglers, and the gold-standard banners of the mercenary companies. And there, in the center, were the slave cages—children and women huddled in the cold rain, guarded by laughing men who treated them like livestock.
A wave of pure, molten fury washed through the First Legion through the Flock-Link. The discipline barely held; every soldier wanted to break ranks and charge immediately.
Veridian held up a fist. The legion stopped instantly, a sudden silence that was more terrifying than a roar.
"You see what they bring," Veridian said, his voice low, carried by the wind to his captains. "They bring chains. They bring rot."
He drew his Obsidian Gladius. The black blade hummed.
"Fix shields. Phalanx formation. We do not just defeat them. We erase them. CHARGE!"
The First Legion broke into a dead sprint, a tsunami of black steel thundering down the road toward the unsuspecting Union rear.
And then, the world screamed.
From the rocky crags on their right flank—the very hills they had just passed—a new enemy erupted. Drawn by the immense concentration of magic and life, sensing the structure of the Imperium and hating it, the Pale Ones attacked.
A pack of over a hundred Insidiator—starving, frenzied, their bone-spikes bristling—poured down the slopes like an avalanche of white muscle and teeth. They weren't attacking the Union. They were throwing themselves directly at the charging flank of the First Legion.
Veridian Vex, mid-charge toward the Union, saw the white nightmare crashing toward his right side.
He had seconds to react. If he turned the whole legion to fight the monsters, he lost the momentum against the Union, and the pincer failed. If he ignored the monsters, they would tear through his ranks from the side like a buzzsaw.
The test of command had arrived.