The horns of the Northern Crown wailed across the olive groves—three low, terrifying blasts of bronze and horn that shook the dry leaves from the branches.
Twelve thousand boots struck the paved stones of the Grand Imperial Highway in a single, earth-shaking rhythm. The vanguard did not bother with ladders or siege towers; the outer perimeter was abandoned, a hollow shell of granite left open to funnel the invaders into the narrow, winding avenues of the lower boroughs.
The Lion Gate loomed eighty feet above the road—a monumental arch of polished white marble flanked by twin bastions carved in the likeness of roaring predatory cats. Its double valves, cast from solid bronze four inches thick, were shut fast, barred from within by heavy iron portcullises.
Malakor rode the roan to within forty paces of the arch, then swung down from the saddle with effortless, terrifying weight.
He did not call forward the sappers. He did not signal the ox-drawn battering rams.
He drew his great sword from his shoulder, the dark steel immediately igniting with the molten, incandescent fury of his sovereign fire. He turned his head to look at Aurelia, who stepped up to his left shoulder, her curved daggers drawn and resting flat against her forearms, her eyes alight with the cold, pale luminescence of the Veil.
"Together," Malakor murmured, his amber gaze burning with an unholy focus that shut out the thunder of twelve thousand marching men behind them.
"Together," she answered, the silver glyphs across her collarbones and palms bursting into radiant, quicksilver fire.
They moved toward the gate in synchronized stride.
With every step, the metaphysical tether between their souls tightened, drawing the opposing poles of their power—thermonuclear sovereign heat and abyssal, absolute-zero frost—into a spiraling, unstable vortex that trailed across the flagstones behind them.
The air around them began to distort, warping into an optical haze that bent the marble facade of the gatehouse.
Ten paces from the bronze valves, Malakor coiled his frame, raising the great sword high above his right shoulder with both hands. Beside him, Aurelia crossed her daggers before her chest, channeling the entirety of her awakened lineage into the blade's runic edge.
Sovereign Cleave: Void Breach!
Malakor brought the blade down in a devastating, diagonal slash.
The strike did not merely hit the metal; it detonated against it. A cataclysmic shockwave of golden lightning and silver frost exploded outward from the point of impact. The thermodynamic shock tore through the crystalline structure of the four-inch bronze plates, freezing them to brittle glass in a millisecond before the sovereign fire shattered them into a hundred thousand jagged shards.
The Lion Gate ceased to exist.
A hurricane of pulverized marble, shattered bronze, and twisted iron blew inward into the empty boulevard, clearing a breach forty paces wide.
A stunned, suffocating silence hung over the lower avenue for the space of a heartbeat, broken only by the hiss of superheated steam rising from the cracked stone threshold.
Malakor stood in the center of the ruin, his chest heaving, his eyes burning like twin suns through the dust cloud. He didn't pause to admire the devastation. He reached out, caught Aurelia by the nape of her neck, and pulled her roughly against him, his lips finding hers in a brief, bruising kiss that tasted of ozone, pulverized stone, and victory.
"The way is open," he growled against her mouth, his breath hot and ragged against her skin.
Aurelia wiped a fleck of bronze dust from her cheek, her daggers spinning in her grip with practiced lethality, her eyes flashing with dangerous hunger.
"To the Wall of Saints," she replied, her voice steady and clear above the settling smoke.
Malakor turned to face the avenue, raising his smoking great sword toward the high silhouette of the Imperial Palace.
"Spears forward!" his voice boomed through the shattered gateway, echoing off the marble facades of the deserted city. "Take the avenues! Leave no garrison at our back!"
Twelve thousand warriors surged through the gap like a black flood, their war cries shaking the golden domes of Sol-Vaelen to their very foundations.