White solar fire roared against the golden barrier like a relentless ocean tide.
For fourteen days and fourteen nights, the nine bronze dragon-heads did not close their jaws for a single second. Streams of liquid planetary fire plunged into the chasm, filling the lower basin with forty feet of boiling golden magma.
Yet inside the ten-yard boundary of the Earth-Heart Flame, the air remained as tranquil as a mountain tea pavilion in autumn.
The little encampment had fallen into an orderly, domestic rhythm.
Deacon Vane sat atop an overturned wicker hamper, carefully checking off their remaining rations in his ledger.
“Two sacks of dried sweet potatoes remaining,” Vane noted with a soft pencil stroke. “Three jars of mountain honey, twelve rolls of dried spiced mutton, and forty bundles of winter-harvest oolong tea. Even if Solon burns his dragons for two months, our logistical supply lines are completely secure.”
Beside him, Linnea sat on a folding stool, carefully polishing her jade daggers with a smooth piece of volcanic pumice.
“In my former sect,” Linnea recalled quietly, “a siege meant sitting in freezing mud while the elders rationed spirit rice by the grain. I never imagined a siege where the biggest worry was whether the sweet potatoes would roast evenly.”
