The dawn didn’t bring light. It brought the color of bruised slate.
The first timed together barrage from the Cult’s time trebuchets struck the kiln at sunrise. Five paradox boulders hit the eastern dome at the same time, their contradictory causal weights exploding in a rolling thunderclap that blew the clay chimney stack sixty feet into the air.
Inside the gallery, the air turned white with crushed brick dust.
The eight-foot walls of fired earth held, but deep within the stonework, the mortar turned to dry sand. Long, jagged fractures tore across the ceiling arches, showering the huddled refugees in red rubble.
Then came the horns.
It wasn’t the brass fanfare of human soldiers. It was a wet, whistling screech that sounded like steam escaping through a cut windpipe.
“Barricades,” Lord Ren’s voice cut through the dust, commanding and tireless.
The Emperor stood at the eastern archway, his blackened broadsword drawn. Behind him, thirty men from the refugee camp braced their shoulders against the oath-bound iron grates. Their faces were pale beneath coats of red soot.
