Fifty minutes melted away beneath the gathering shadow of the iron fortress.
High above the front gate of White-Lotus Academy, the sky burned the color of bruised plums.
The air had grown so heavy that loose gravel trembled against the flagstones, skittering in tiny circles across the battlements.
Inside the central command trench, Princess Valeria adjusted the straps of her silver breastplate, her dark eyes fixed on the floating behemoth half a mile away.
Beside her, Sect Master Horgath and the allied patriarchs gripped their weapons, their Golden Core Peak auras humming with quiet, resolute power.
“Their furnaces are reaching peak pressure,” Horgath warned, pointing toward the underbelly of the keep.
Thick plumes of sulfurous crimson smoke poured from forty iron flues along the citadel’s keel.
Beside Valeria, Deacon Vane watched the enemy lines through his brass spyglass.
