Old Barnaby spat a curse and slammed his ironwood ladle against the porch post.
The scout’s warning hung in the courtyard air like cold smoke as Deacon Vane backed against the porch rail, his powdered face gray.
With Blood-Claw Tor’s fifty iron-plated vanguard raiders spearheading the magistrate’s column up the south road, the outer estate was already surrounded.
Across the southern lane, the earthbag barricade suddenly collapsed with a heavy crash.
Thirty Vance clan guards surged into the open alleyway behind a wall of leveled halberds.
Baron Derrick Vance led the charge, his black robes whipping back from his silver breastplate as his Rank 9 aura shook the willow branches overhead.
Cassian Vance stumbled along at his shoulder, his sweat-slicked fingers twitching around the grip of his notched steel sabre.
Cassian’s face was flushed with the reckless heat of Crack-Pills, his eyes bloodshot and wild.
“Open the gates!” Derrick’s voice roared down the alley, amplified by deep spiritual energy. “Magistrate Vane-Locke has arrived with an imperial warrant! Hand over Mina Vance to the county authorities, or the Third Herb Shed will be leveled to the ground!”
Cassian stepped forward, his laughter shrill and grating.
“Did you hear that, third brother?” Cassian taunted, pointing his sabre at the wooden palisade. “The magistrate has sealed the city! No merchant consortium can save you now! Surrender the girl, or we will drag you out by your hair!”
Inside the bedroom, Kaelen lay flat in his hemp hammock slung over the low bamboo cot beside Mina’s bed.
His eyelids remained tightly sealed.
Behind his closed eyes, the Fallow Slate blazed with blinding golden radiance.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Inaction Tally: 228 Hours 00 Minutes] [Current Multiplier: 229x] [Stage 1 Vessel Limit: 240 Hours (241x)] [Condition: Fallow Distension (Intense)]
Two hundred and twenty-eight hours of unbroken inaction pressed against his temples like molten iron.
The compressed energy inside his nine diamond pulse gates vibrated at an impossible frequency, humming like an imperial war drum.
Every breath he took caused the air around his cot to shimmer with heatless ripples.
Dust motes hovering above his chest froze dead in empty space, unable to penetrate the dense sphere of stillness surrounding his body.
Father chose the absolute worst twelve hours in clan history to pick a fight, Kaelen thought, his jaw relaxed on the cool linen. If he had waited until tomorrow morning, I might have bargained for silver. Trying to drag Mina out while my tally is at two hundred and twenty-nine times is an expensive mistake.
He did not open his eyes.
“Sera,” Kaelen whispered, his voice calm and level despite the roaring pressure in his skull.
Sera Thorne stepped into the bedroom, her grip tight on the shaft of Storm-Pike. “I am here, Master Kaelen.”
Deacon Vane hurried in behind her, his powdered face glistening with anxious sweat.
“Master Ash, two hundred troops are outside the manor,” Vane stammered, wringing his silk sleeves. “If the magistrate breaches the front gates, our merchant charter will not stop iron broadswords.”
“A charter never stops a broadsword, Weasel,” Kaelen murmured softly. “That is why we bought repeating arbalests. Sera takes active command of our fifty guards. Deacon Vane coordinates the alley perimeter with the market archers.”
“What are our orders?” Sera asked, her dark eyes flashing with lethal resolve.
“Hold the courtyard,” Kaelen said. “Do not let Derrick’s troops take a single yard of ground. Under no circumstances does anyone cross the porch threshold.”
“Consider it done,” Sera said, her voice hard as forged iron.
She turned and marched out through the linen curtain.
Vane swallowed hard, straightened his fur collar, and rushed out to rally the market mercenaries on the walls.
Outside, Cassian Vance stepped forward, brandishing his notched sabre toward the timber gate.
“Kaelen Vance!” Cassian screamed, his voice cracking with shrill malice. “You spineless rat! You lie in bed hiding behind sellswords while the magistrate claims your sister! Come out and face me like a man of the Vance bloodline!”
Cassian signaled to four clan guards carrying a heavy iron-headed battering ram.
The guards charged forward, slamming the timber ram against the courtyard gate.
Crash.
The heavy oak crossbar splintered down the center.
The double doors swung inward with a screech of iron hinges, spilling broken splinters across the gravel.
Cassian let out a triumphant roar, lunging through the gap with his sabre raised high.
“Cut them down!” Cassian bellowed, his Crack-Pill aura flaring in sickly green pulses.
Before his boot could touch the courtyard gravel, a silver streak blurred through the morning light.
Sera Thorne met him head-on.
Her Mortal Pulse Rank 8 spear Storm-Pike thrust forward like a striking serpent.
Cassian slashed wildly to parry, using the aggressive downward chop of the Vance Clan Sabre Art.
Clang.
Sparks showered across the flagstones as the steel blade met the spear tip.
Cassian sneered, throwing his entire body weight into the clash.
“I train eighteen hours a day!” Cassian snarled, spit flying from his lips. “You are just an indentured servant girl!”
“Training eighteen hours on rotten pills only ruins your balance,” Sera said coldly.
Thanks to Kaelen’s Cloud-Veined Supreme pills, her meridians held zero Pill-Poison.
Her internal energy flowed with absolute purity, granting her explosive speed and effortless recovery.
While Cassian overextended his shoulder, Sera pivoted smoothly on her left heel.
She slipped beneath his clumsy guard, rotating her spear in a tight circle.
She drove the heavy ironwood butt of Storm-Pike straight into Cassian’s sternum.
Crack.
The blow landed with surgical precision, cracking two ribs as his frostbitten shins buckled under the impact.
Cassian let out a wet, strangled gasp as the breath was ripped from his lungs.
He stumbled backward into the alleyway, clutching his chest and coughing dark flecks of blood onto his tunic.
“Guards!” Cassian shrieked, falling to his knees in the dirt. “Kill her! Tear down the walls!”
Derrick Vance drew his ancestral broadsword, his eyes burning with cold rage.
“Clan vanguard, forward!” Derrick commanded, leading thirty armored guards into the breach. “Overwhelm the sellswords!”
The clan guards surged forward with locked halberds and iron shields, attempting to push through the shattered gateway.
From the loft above the drying shed, Old Barnaby pulled a concealed rope latch.
The false decoy shutters swung aside, revealing the twenty heavy Spirit-Iron repeating arbalests mounted on swivel pintles.
Sergeant Korba and twenty veteran archers manned the weapons, their steel winches clicking in rapid rhythm.
Thwack.
Thwack.
Thwack.
A relentless hail of Spirit-Iron bolts poured down into the narrow alleyway.
The bolts struck with terrifying kinetic force, punching through heavy steel pavises and shattering iron greaves like brittle pottery.
Three vanguard guards were pinned to the stone floor by their calves, screaming in agony.
Derrick swung his broadsword in furious arcs, his Rank 9 sword-light deflecting four incoming bolts.
The sheer force of the repeating fire shoved him back two steps, the impact jarring his shoulders.
“Fall back to the stone pillars!” Derrick yelled, his face tightening with shock. “They have heavy repeating siege crossbows!”
For four grueling hours, the battle raged in the narrow southern lane.
Between noon and the fourth watch of the afternoon, Derrick and Cassian launched four separate assaults against the breach.
Each wave broke against the combined fury of Sera’s spear and the relentless crossbow fire from the loft.
Sera fought with terrifying stamina.
While Cassian wheezed and gasped from the toxic drag of his Crack-Pills, Sera’s breath remained steady and calm.
She deflected sword thrusts, cracked forearms with her ironwood shaft, and held the gateway like an immovable pillar.
On the walls, Deacon Vane’s Ghost Market archers showered the alleyway with suppression fire whenever clan guards attempted to climb the side masonry.
Old Barnaby dropped three ceramic pots of blister-sap from the roof eaves, coating the timber approach in boiling chemical resin that forced the guards to retreat in blistering pain.
Not a single clan guard managed to advance ten feet past the threshold.
Derrick leaned against an ornamental stone lantern post, panting heavily.
His breath came in ragged wheezes, his Rank 9 broadsword trembling slightly in his grip.
“How does the third son possess so many repeating weapons?” Derrick rasped, glaring through the dust at the herb shed loft. “Those are military-grade siege arbalests. Even the county garrison only maintains ten in reserve.”
“He bought them with ghost silver,” Cassian snarled, wiping bloody froth from his lips with his sleeve. “He sold clan secrets to the market scum. When the magistrate breaches the outer manor, I will carve the marrow from his bones myself.”
Inside the herb shed, Sera lowered the tip of Storm-Pike, wiping dark oil from the steel blade with a damp cloth.
Twenty-five mercenaries rested behind their bronze shields, taking quick swallows of cold well water.
In the loft above, Barnaby handed fresh iron magazines to the archers.
“Four hundred bolts fired,” Barnaby called down from the loft railing. “Every magazine accounted for. Derrick’s guards will not charge down that lane again without siege towers.”
“Let them try,” Sera said, rolling her shoulders with easy confidence. “My spear arm is just getting warmed up.”
Deacon Vane trotted across the flagstones, carrying two wooden buckets of well water for the wall sentries.
“The city gates remain sealed,” Vane reported, his voice shaky but determined. “The magistrate’s main column has crossed the northern river bridge. They will reach the outer manor within the hour.”
“Then we hold the gate,” Sera said, resting her palm on her spear.
Inside the quiet bedroom, the afternoon sun shifted across the floorboards.
The Fallow Slate flashed once more in Kaelen’s mind as the clock struck four in the afternoon.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Inaction Tally: 232 Hours 00 Minutes] [Current Multiplier: 233x] [Stage 1 Vessel Limit: 240 Hours (241x)] [Condition: Fallow Distension (Near Peak)] [Total Inaction Bonus: 233x multiplier available for immediate cash-out]
Two hundred and thirty-two hours.
His multiplier now stood at two hundred and thirty-three times.
Only eight hours remained until the ten-day milestone of two hundred and forty hours.
The spiritual pressure in his dantian was immense, feeling like a caged star waiting to burst through his marrow.
Yet Kaelen remained completely motionless.
His fingers stayed loosely entwined with Mina’s small hand.
Mina slept peacefully through the din of battle, shielded by the thick stone walls and the soothing warmth of the Supreme Pills.
Four hours bought, Kaelen thought, listening to the clatter of retreating iron greaves outside. Sera and Barnaby held the gate without giving up an inch. Derrick cannot break this courtyard with thirty clan guards.
The vessel hums like a swarm of hornets inside my skull, Kaelen reflected with quiet amusement. Every further hour I refuse to stand up adds one point to the multiplier for tonight; the minutes count toward that next hour, not as fresh twenty-four-hour credits. Let them bring all two hundred men.
Outside, Derrick Vance dragged a sobbing, bloodied Cassian back behind the stone pillars.
Twelve of their thirty clan guards lay groaning in the gravel, incapacitated by bolt wounds.
Derrick’s silver embroidered robes were shredded along the sleeves, his pride shattered into pieces.
He stared at the herb shed with bitter, helpless fury.
He had lost the afternoon.
Dusk crept over the Ashford valley, painting the sky in deep shades of violet and crimson.
The Fallow Slate clicked forward, marking two hundred and thirty-four hours of accumulated stillness.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Inaction Tally: 234 Hours 00 Minutes] [Current Multiplier: 235x]
Only six hours remained until midnight and the completion of the ten-day stack.
Suddenly, a faint metallic click sounded beneath the porch eaves.
Ping.
The small bronze chime gave a clear, delicate ring.
In the hammock, Kaelen’s ears twitched.
The silver tripwire on the watchtower stairs, Kaelen thought with ice-cold clarity. Someone just stepped on the fourth tread.
High above the manor compound, on the observation deck of the eastern watchtower, a dark silhouette emerged against the blood-red sunset.
Madam Evelyn Vance.
She stood on the wooden platform, looking down at Derrick’s defeated guards in the lane below.
Her face was twisted with vicious, frantic hatred.
“Useless fools,” Evelyn hissed through clenched teeth. “Derrick cannot even handle a pack of sellswords.”
She looked toward the northern ridge, where the dark shapes of two hundred Blood-Wolf raiders and yamen troops waited in the forest gloom.
They were waiting for the signal to storm the postern gate.
Evelyn threw open the sandalwood chest beside the railing.
She pulled out the first three signal flare tubes, completely unaware that Sera had swapped them for Barnaby’s decoys the previous night.
She struck an iron flint against the brass striker, touching the spark to the braided fuses.
Hiss.
The fuses sputtered with blinding white sparks, burning down into the gunpowder chambers in half a second.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Three pillars of blue-white phosphorus fire roared into the twilight sky, bursting above the manor roofs in a shower of purple-gold sparks.
The signal had been fired.
Beyond the northern ridge, two hundred Blood-Wolf raiders saw the flare code and let out a chorus of bloodthirsty roars, charging toward the dry back moat.