The wooden shutter had barely clicked shut before the bronze war horns of Black-Marsh Citadel tore through the morning mist.
High atop the black ramparts, Grand Chancellor Vaelen stared down at the silent carriage with eyes like chips of flint. He had seen Kaelen’s unhurried gaze. He had heard the flat, dismissive promise delivered from the carriage window: In ten days...
“Ten days,” Vaelen murmured, his fingers tightening around his bone scepter until his knuckles whitened.
Beside him, an imperial censor bowed low. “Chancellor, does he intend to summon reinforcements from the frontier?”
“No,” Vaelen replied coldly. “A man who eats biscuits while facing two hundred thousand troops is not waiting for an army. He is waiting for a temporal threshold. An array alignment. Or the final hour of a breakthrough bottleneck.”
Vaelen turned toward the four armored figures kneeling behind him on the flagstones.
They were the Four Citadel Marshals of Black-Marsh: Marshal Tie-Zhen, Marshal Xue-Ren, Marshal Ba-Shan, and Marshal Lei-Kong. Each was a hardened veteran at the absolute peak of the Nascent Soul realm, clad in black dragon-scale plate and bound by blood-vows to the imperial throne.
“He will not receive ten days,” Vaelen commanded, his voice echoing with ruthless authority. “He will not receive four hours.”
