Inside the grand throne hall of Paayasa's royal palace, King Es Ke and his senior ministers were comfortably enjoying a lavish morning banquet to conclude the daily court assembly.
"Does anyone else have anything further to discuss?" Es Ke asked, his voice booming with absolute authority across the vast marble hall.
The ministers quietly shook their heads. Several offered silent, heavy sighs, knowing all too well that whatever grievances or concerns they brought forward would fall on deaf ears. Instead of speaking out, they kept their thoughts buried, clinging to a desperate hope that when General Jietang arrived, he might finally talk sense into their stubborn monarch.
"Then let General Jietang enter," Es Ke commanded, waving a hand toward the tall mahogany doors.
Outside the hall, Jietang ascended the wide marble staircase one heavy, deliberate step at a time. Reaching the grand entrance, he paused, his weathered eyes sweeping over the ministers lounging comfortably at their dining tables. A bitter realization washed over him: while his king and ministers sat enjoying a warm morning feast, that food had been bought with the blood of every son, brother, and father currently trapped inside Ngabo.
Jietang strode down the central aisle, stopping directly before Es Ke's golden throne.
"Your Highness," Jietang said softly, lowering his head in a respectful bow.
"General," Es Ke greeted him, a faint, smooth smile playing on his lips. "How stands the situation on the frontier?"
"If I am standing before you in this hall, Your Majesty, then the situation is dire beyond measure," Jietang replied, his voice thick with gravity.
"We do not blame you," Es Ke said smoothly, waving a dismissive hand. "Please, take a seat and join us for lunch."
"Lunch can wait, Your Highness, but the lives in Ngabo cannot."
Jietang dropped heavily to his knees. The moment his legs hit the cold marble floor, a sharp, white-hot agony shot down his right calf from an old war injury. He didn't so much as flinch.
Es Ke's smile vanished instantly. Slowly setting his golden wine goblet down on the armrest, he glared coldly at the kneeling general, recognizing the purpose of his gesture.
"Whatever your request is, General," Es Ke said, rolling his eyes in irritation, "our answer is no."
"Your Highness has not even heard my plea," Jietang said, slowly raising his gaze to meet Es Ke's. "Why be in such a hurry to refuse?"
"We know precisely what you want, and we refuse to send a single soldier to Ngabo," Es Ke declared coldly.
A wave of hushed, panicked gasps rippled through the ministers seated across the hall.
"Your Highness, please hear me!" Jietang implored, taking a step forward on his knees. "There are only eight thousand Magoli soldiers at Ngabo right now, while we have fifty thousand standing idle in Zouis! If we dispatch ten thousand men immediately—combining them with Ngabo's ten thousand defenders and conscripted citizens—we will have a force twenty-five thousand strong! With those numbers, regardless of how formidable the Hmagol Eastern Army may be, Ngabo will not fall!"
One of the senior ministers abruptly stood up. "Your Highness! I agree with General Jietang! Ngabo is our ancestral land—if we abandon them now, we lose it to Hmagol forever!" He stepped out from his table and knelt beside Jietang. "Please, Sire... send reinforcements!"
Moved by his words, several more ministers stepped forward, dropping to their knees beside Jietang to beg their king.
"We understand your concerns," Es Ke said, his tone remaining cold and unyielding. "But Zouis is our capital! It must be protected at all costs. To lose our capital is to lose the entire Kingdom of Payapasa."
"Your Highness," Jietang argued, staring at the king's unbothered expression. "Drawing ten thousand men from Zouis will not weaken our capital's defenses, but it will save the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians fighting for their breath in Ngabo!"
"General!" Es Ke's voice thundered off the stone walls. "We have given you our royal decree! Why do you persist in defying us?"
"Because Your Highness's decision is wrong!" Jietang shouted firmly, refusing to back down. "If Ngabo falls, Payapasa will no longer be a kingdom worthy of respect or fear! We will be nothing more than another pathetic domain forced to bend its knee to Hmagol!"
In a flash of blinding rage, Es Ke snatched his heavy golden goblet and hurled it across the dais. The metal struck Jietang squarely in the chest, bouncing off his armor and tumbling onto the marble floor with a loud, ringing clatter.
Jietang watched the golden cup spin to a stop at his knee. He swallowed hard, his chest heaving.
"Then five thousand men," Jietang whispered, his voice trembling with desperation. "Give me just five thousand."
Before Es Ke could answer, the frantic pounding of boots echoed up the grand stairwell. A mud-splattered scout burst into the throne hall, dropping to his knees beside Jietang, gasping for air.
"Speak!" Es Ke barked.
"Your Majesty!" the scout cried out, his voice shaking with terror. "The... the Magoli! They have destroyed both the northern and southern bridges!"
The entire throne hall fell into a suffocating silence. Es Ke's face darkened instantly as anxious whispers broke out among the ministers.
Jietang let out a soft, hollow scoff. He closed his eyes. Even if Es Ke granted him fifty thousand men now, by the time they reached the riverbank, Ngabo would already be ash.
Reaching slowly inside his heavy robes, Jietang withdrew his carved ivory General's Seal—the physical representation of his authority over the king's armies. He placed the seal gently on the cold marble floor between them, pressing his forehead to the ground in a final, formal bow.
"Your Majesty," Jietang said, his voice flat and drained of all anger. "I have served this court and its people for nearly three decades. I am old, and my body is no longer what it once was." He let out a long, shuddering sigh. "This humble minister can no longer fulfill his duties due to advanced age and relapsing battle injuries. I request permission to retire, return to my family farm, and raise my grandchildren for the final chapter of my life."
Es Ke's face grew impossibly darker, but he remained silent.
Jietang slowly stood up. Without waiting for a royal dismissal, he turned his back on the throne and walked out of the hall into the late afternoon sun.
Standing at the top of the grand staircase, he looked out across the horizon. Far off in the distance, dark, billowing plumes of black smoke were already rising into the afternoon sky above Ngabo.
"When a king and his general share the same vision, the kingdom thrives and stands unshakable," Jietang muttered to himself, a soft sigh escaping his lips as his graying hair caught the golden light of the setting sun. "But when a general and his king walk different paths... the kingdom slowly rots from within, until nothing remains but a name in the history books."
With that, the old general slowly descended the stone steps, leaving the doomed kingdom behind.
"General! We can't even return fire!" a Paayasian soldier screamed, ducking as a blazing fire arrow hissed past his ear, missing him by a fraction of an inch.
Phia stood amidst the smoke and chaos, his hand gripping his bow so tightly his knuckles throbbed. He realized with a sickening sting that since the assault began, the arrow notched on his string hadn't even been loosed. Meanwhile, thousands of Magoli arrows had already plunged his men into sheer terror. Black flames licked at the timber parapets, spreading relentlessly across the battlements. Had it not been for his quick command to smother the black oil with sand and dirt, the entire stone walkway would already be an inferno, leaving his men with nowhere to run.
"Battering ram!" a defender yelled, pointing down toward the valley—before a spear-sized bolt from an arrow engine punched straight through his chest, dropping him dead onto the stone.
Down behind the heavy archway of the main gatehouse, Yongyee moved with cold, frantic efficiency. He bellowed orders over the thunderous booms echoing from outside, directing his men as they reinforced the massive oak gates with extra heavy timber braces. The iron portcullis had already been slammed down, its thick iron teeth locked into the stone floor. Behind it, a labyrinth of sharpened wooden spike fences had been dragged into place to halt any cavalry charge, while lines of nervous archers stood braced between the stakes, their bows drawn taut, ready to unleash hell on anyone who dared break through.
Down on the battlefield, Chinua watched the relentless bombardment. Catapults, heavy ballistas, and arrow engines hammered the battlements, yet the squad attempting to roll the heavy battering ram toward the main gates was being systematically picked off by Paayasian archers.
She let out a low, cold sigh. A gate reinforced with iron and timber is a death trap; a shattered wall is an open grave.
Nudging her warhorse forward, Chinua rode steadily down the line behind the shielded war machines.
"Listen!" her voice boomed across the ranks, cutting through the thunder of siege engines. "Fifty yards to the left and right of the main gatehouse! Focus all fire there—knock those walls down!"
The siege crews immediately pivoted, hauling the heavy catapults and ballistas into new firing lanes. Seeing the machines shift, the Paayasian archers atop the ramparts unleashed a desperate rain of fire. The front-line Magoli infantry surged forward, raising their massive tower shields into a seamless iron roof. Steel-tipped arrows punched violently into wood and flesh, felling soldiers on both sides, but the line held firm.
Under the cover of the shield wall, the siege engines locked into their new coordinates, leveling every single heavy projectile, boulder, and spear-sized bolt directly at the stone facade itself.
Chinua watched with unblinking eyes as the air fractured with a deafening roar.
The final barrage of massive stone projectiles struck the central bastion with a sound like tearing iron. For one agonizing second, the ancient granite held. Then, the internal pressure took over.
A spiderweb of massive cracks screamed up the stone face. Mortar pulverized into white dust as the packed-earth core groaned and pushed outward, forcing tons of granite blocks into the air. The parapets leaned forward, lost gravity, and plunged into the ditch below.
The valley shook violently as a massive shockwave of pulverized stone erupted, blinding the battlefield in a thick, gray shroud of ash and debris.
Where an impenetrable fortress wall had stood seconds before, only a jagged, open breach remained.
The wall had fallen. Ngabo City was breached.
Chinua raised her spear high into the smoky sky, her voice thundering like a tempest over the roar of her army:
"MAGOLI! RIDE FORWARD!"