"Some will remain who will still adore her. Extirpate them without compromise. For as long as they pray for her return, my seals will be in danger. Better a pure ash than an ember that smolders."

  — Words of Solar?s, XIX

  Revealed to Thérion the Veiled, Year 1 of the Endless Day

  On the north bank, shortly before the statue's destruction, Mei rushed toward the Intendant's tower, shadow among shadows, her boots barely grazing the cracked pavement as she plunged into chaos. Walls crumbled under voracious fires, projecting sprays of sparks that sizzled in the atmosphere saturated with soot. Through the smoke veil, she distinguished silhouettes in the distance—five looters in ebony armors sprinting toward the north port with disordered haste. She accelerated, her breath measured despite the heat that scraped her lungs, and rushed into a narrow parallel alley, her movements fluid like a blade sliding in shadow.

  "You will go no further," she murmured with determination under her mask, her piercing eyes fixed on her prey.

  She plunged into a building in flames, its wooden walls moaning under fire's assault, ardent tongues licking the beams above her head. The Sun's oppressive heat, amplified by the braziers, made sweat bead under her mask, but she advanced, elusive specter in the furnace. She climbed a half-consumed framework, her gloved fingers seizing the smoking wood, to hoist herself onto a gutted roof. From there, she spotted the looters at a good dozen paces, running westward, their armors gleaming in the flickering clarity. She leapt in silence from the height, her throwing daggers glittering in her hands. In full flight, she projected three blades that split the air in a sharp whistle, each striking with mortal precision: two pierced napes while the last planted itself between a enemy warrior's shoulder blades. The three soldiers collapsed in cries of pain, their bodies rolling on the slabs in vain spasms.

  With suppleness and without any noise, the Noohrikane landed and drew her twin daggers in a fluid gesture to finish the woman lying on the ground. Alerted by their companions' howls, the two survivors pivoted, their pikes raised in a guttural cry. The specter danced between them like a macabre shadow in the flames' gleam.

  Her first blade cut a throat in a scarlet jet, blood splashing her mask as the man toppled backward, his hands trying to stop the hemorrhage, in vain. In the same surge, she pivoted while crouching slightly to plant her second dagger three times under the assailant's armpit in the blink of an eye, not leaving him time to react. This part of the body being devoid of all protection, the triple attack perforated his left lung in several places without any resistance. He sagged, his eyes dying in the dust, and silence fell back, broken only by the fires' crackling.

  "Rest in ashes," she whispered as she sheathed her weapons to sprint toward the tower, her shadow stretching on the calcined walls.

  Arrived at the north bank's market square, she glimpsed the back of the Ancient King's statue through the smoke as well as the point of a dark tower located a few alleys to the right, exactly as Lieutenant Bjornhold had indicated to her. She rushed through the alleys for a brief span of time when at the turn of a crossroads, the Intendant's tower rose before her, still spared by the surrounding roaring flames. The entrance door wide open, Mei pressed against the exterior wall to verify if any presence could be felt inside the building.

  Nothing.

  At full speed, she launched into the spiral staircase located in the upper corner of the entrance hall. Once the summit reached, she broke down a half-open door with a shoulder blow, and penetrated into the offices.

  "Intendant! Where are you?" she called out while scrutinizing the room.

  Behind an immense light wood table, she could glimpse a crimson puddle on the parquet. With muffled steps, she headed there. The intendant lay there, lifeless, back to the ground, her robe once of immaculate white reddened by her blood. A gaping wound at the throat, clean and deep, betrayed the blade that had killed her. Her glassy eyes fixed the ceiling, frozen in mute terror, but her right hand still gripped a manuscript. A yellowed parchment, its edges stained with hemoglobin. Mei knelt and delicately, she withdrew the document from the clenched fingers.

  "Please excuse me, I wasn't fast enough..."

  With respect, she closed her eyelids before sliding the manuscript into a pocket located at the bottom of her back.

  "But this... This is surely worth something."

  Nothing held her here anymore. So she pivoted to head toward the exit but her Noohrikane instinct was attracted by noises coming from the window overlooking the ocean and the maritime city's bay. The specter approached it and what happened before her eyes left her perplexed.

  The immense bronz?te statue of Aagard?ne stood before her, majestic, its shadow cast toward the bay in the shape of a crescent moon. It was one of the last wonders of the Ancient World still standing, witness of a glorious extinct civilization, proudly dominating Port-Foam with its 150 meters high like a man would dominate an anthill.

  There, two enormous ships were docked at its feet where the Chains allowing rapid navigation with the capital were wrapped around its ankles. In a frenzied rhythm, men pulled out dozens of barrels to attach them to the King's feet.

  Once finished, all the knights rushed into the city, leaving a soldier on each side of the canal. A barrel in his arms, he opened a cork located at its base and traced a long black line on the ground from the statue's feet until he too disappeared inside the city. Having lost sight of the soldier on the north side, Mei quickly changed windows and by chance, saw him on the market square. When he had finally finished tracing his line, another arrived, torch in hand to throw it on the black line that wound through the alleys.

  "The blast alchemy!" she exclaimed, recognizing the black trail. "They're going to..."

  Her gaze turned toward the statue.

  "By Solar?s... They're going to destroy the Chains!"

  Barely had the flaming piece of wood touched the ground when the black powder illuminated in a myriad of sparks traveling the path in reverse, confirming her worst fears. The soldiers ran as fast as they could and Mei, knowing exactly what would follow, rushed toward the opposite window. Without knowing if any building was located below the window on the east side, the specter crossed the room in a heartbeat and jumped through the glass. By miracle and just barely, she reached the roof of an inn that juxtaposed the tower. With a roll, she cushioned her heavy fall's impact, stood up and continued her race across the city's heights until a dull rumble burst the atmosphere.

  The blast shook the ground under her heels so powerfully that it made her stumble, followed by an ardent breath that swept the bank, carrying whirlwinds of embers and columns of black smoke that rose in furious spirals toward the zenith.

  One knee on the ground, the Noohrikane turned around. Through the veil as dark as the barrels' powder, she could see from her height the entirety of the port and the bronz?te colossus that began to oscillate, slowly. Its arm raised toward Emporium described a derisory arc of circle, as if the King saluted the horizon one last time. The statue swayed thus until a metallic moan rose from its bowels in an agony cry that froze the specter's blood.

  The titan wavered forward, its mutilated feet seeking support that no longer existed. For an instant, Aagard?ne seemed to want to regain its balance, straightening in a titanic effort that made its entire internal framework crack. The Chains that connected its ankles to the capital, taut like bow strings, now lay at the bottom of the canal, their rings scattered among the debris.

  But the damages were far too deep. With a crash that covered the population's cries of terror, the statue toppled definitively toward the sea.

  Its fall seemed to last an eternity. One hundred fifty meters of bronze and stone that struck down toward the waves in a metallic scream. Mei couldn't turn her eyes away, petrified before this millennial colossus's agony.

  The impact was apocalyptic.

  An immense water column exploded toward the sky. A titanic geyser rose well above the city, projecting tons of foam and spray into the air. The liquid mass fell back in a diluvian rain that struck down on Port-Foam in a deafening crackling, extinguishing the braziers that still ravaged certain quarters. Volutes of steam rose everywhere where water met flames.

  Then came the wave.

  Not a devastating tidal wave, but a powerful swell, three to four meters high, that swept from the impact point in concentric circles. It swept the seafront, penetrating the coastal alleys in a dull rumble, carrying debris and ashes. Water invaded the warehouses, rushed into the quays, carrying with it the ores and goods destined for Emporium toward the bay's depths. The wave swept the seafront. Boats and skiffs shattered against the jetties, but the war ships, heavily anchored to the south quays, resisted the deluge, their hulls moaning under pressure.

  Mei saw the water rise, climb along the facades, lick the public squares' first steps before slowly receding, abandoning behind it a sticky carpet of mud, algae and soaked ashes.

  When the waters finally withdrew, only the colossus's skull's back still emerged, like a new island in the middle of the waters. A?gardyne's Chains were no more, their broken rings scattered on the quays and seabeds, and two gaping holes were in place of the giant's feet.

  A strange silence fell over the city while Mei understood what the tragedy that had just occurred before her eyes implied for Solheim. Nothing other than the lapping of water slowly regaining the sea and the dying crackling of the last drowned braziers.

  Then suddenly came the cries, the calls for help, and old Dragar's voice ordering his soldiers to get up. Chaos regained its place in this city smoking with extinguished embers. As she approached a cornice to descend from her height and join Lieutenant Bjornhold and his units, she glimpsed three enemy ships emerge from the crescent moon's points. Two headed toward the port at a pace they shouldn't have held.

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  "These bastards had everything planned from the beginning..." she said to herself with rage while letting herself fall from the roof, her mid-length hair floating in her fall.

  Landing with agility on the wet ground like a feather landing on a puddle, she readjusted her hood and rushed toward the drawbridge.

  On the other side of the navigable way, R?chard tumbled down the rickety tower's steps, his boots hammering the cracked stone in a frenzied race. He leapt from rooftop to rooftop until reaching the south bank's edge where stood a small elevated wooden platform, adjacent to the passage connecting the two banks. Without hesitation, the young prodigy stepped back five paces to take the necessary momentum and jumped onto the raised drawbridge. He slid along the rough planks and, barely had his feet touched the ground when he rushed toward the command mechanism, his hands firmly gripping the crank worn by years, his muscles contracting under the effort as he made it turn with fierce determination.

  The rusty chains moaned in a metallic concert and the bridge struck down in a deafening din, its heavy planks crashing on the opposite bank in a cloud of ashes and ochre dust that momentarily obscured the air.

  The instant the drawbridge struck the pavement, Lieutenant Bjornhold emerged from the smoke screen like an avenging specter, his battalion rumbling behind him like a starving pack. He brandished his war axe toward the darkened skies, his weathered face tense with glacial rage, and thundered in a voice that carried beyond the flames.

  "Forward, Golden Lances! Let's go carve these filth into pieces before they regain the open sea!"

  His men responded with a primal howl that resonated between the calcined walls, their blades bursting from sheaths in a sharp whistle, and they launched onto the bridge in an inexorable wave of iron and leather. The planks bent dangerously under their combined mass, lugubrious crackings punctuating each martial stride.

  Reaching the southern bank, Dragar cast a glance to the left, where the young archer still had his hands gripped on the bronze mechanism, and pointed one of his axes in his direction while briefly nodding in recognition. Knight Desrosiers returned the salute with a martial gesture and joined the group that continued its progression along the quays to the south port.

  Before them opened the watercourse's entrance—one of Solheim's architectural prides, carved in rock to connect the marine waters to the capital—now transformed into a tomb of collapsed stone. Gaping breaches had taken the place of Aagard?ne's monumental feet, and rocks, fragments of the colossal statue and ship debris obstructed the navigable passage. Water stagnated in troubled and greenish eddies, imprisoning in chaos beached craft, their gutted hulls impaled on the jagged blocks like dying beasts.

  In the distance on the horizon line, purple and black sails took shape with arrogance—one of Ashengard's ships had already regained the open sea, its sinister emblem snapping in the salty gust, seeming to mock Solheim from the free waters. Arrived at the devastated mouth, Dragar noticed that the last enemy vessel still remained docked at one of the stone quays, its soldiers rushing there with feverish haste. The lieutenant's expression then changed radically: from burning frustration, he passed to pure warrior intoxication, and accelerated toward the quays without uttering a word, inhabited by the sole joy of still being able to spill blood.

  At the same moment, about thirty enemy soldiers emerged onto the port through a paved alley, pursued closely by Siegfried and Juuh'ma who preceded the lieutenant and his men by only a few meters. But as Solheim's knights' troop rushed onto the quay to mount the assault on the ship, two silhouettes surged from the vessel's stern, imperiously barring their route, a presence that froze the atmosphere all around them.

  Twins stood facing the assailants, svelte and graceful women, draped in scarlet capes bordered with obsidian threads, their blood-red hair cascading respectively on the left shoulder of one and the right shoulder of the other in a long tight braid that contrasted with their light armor engraved with glittering silver runes. Two curved scimitars hung at their slender hips, their polished steel blades glittering with a sharp and hypnotic gleam, ready to dance their mortal ballet in chaos. Their eyes, of a troubling acid green, swept the knights with a mixture of haughty disdain and calculated coldness. Behind this living barrier, Ashengard's soldiers marked a hesitant pause, their gazes nervously oscillating between their formidable chiefs and the craft, their hands clenched on their weapons' handles.

  "Lieutenants ?mdras!" a young man with a face stitched with scars called out, his voice trembling with urgency. "What are you doing? We must flee, get aboard!"

  In sync, they raised a gloved hand with a sharp gesture that cut their calls short, then the woman with the braid falling on the left turned toward her men.

  "Flee," she ordered before the other continued in her place.

  "We accomplished our mission successfully so leave. We won't tell you one more time."

  From the stern, a warrior placed her two hands on the ship's wooden railing, and shouted with all her strength.

  "LIEUTENANTS!!!! Don't sacrifice yourselves for..."

  She couldn't finish.

  An arrow from R?chard, who had climbed a building to find himself a high point, pierced her skull. The woman's face crashed against the railing. At the same moment, Dragar's voice was heard.

  "TO THE ATTAAAAAAACK!" he launched in a cry of fury.

  "FLEEEEEEEE! NOW!" the lieutenant with the braid falling on the right side instantly shouted, a mixture of rage and sadness filling her gaze.

  While the men leapt into their ship with feverish haste, and the Golden Lances charged, the twin lieutenants removed their capes to throw them over their shoulders. The fabrics carried by the wind, the warriors seemed to unite to form only one single woman with four arms, one melting totally into the other's shadow, like Sh?lla, the Goddess of Cold.

  "Are you ready Mar?-Anne?" the one standing in front called out, braid falling on the right, while drawing her two scimitars.

  Drawing her blades in perfect synchronization, the other murmured to her with anger.

  "Let's make them regret what their god did to our islands, L?l?-Anne."

  From the ship's deck, a prolonged note that seemed to resonate into the marine depths rang out. Solheim's first lances struck down on the sisters at the very instant when thick steel chains burst from the water at the vessel's prow, tensing brutally in a deafening metallic clicking. The vessel bounded forward with supernatural violence, as if torn from the quay by an invisible force lurking in the depths. Water exploded in white sprays around the stem while the craft streaked at a pace that no oar, no wind could have given it.

  In a macabre and hypnotizing dance only possible thanks to their almost unreal dexterity and coordination, thirteen knights of Solar?s lost their lives without a single one of their attacks being able to even graze the blood-haired twins.

  Only Dragar still stood there at the center of this carnage, standing on a carpet of corpses, multiple lacerations running across his body in a reddish cascade. Still with that savage smile barring his face, the happiness of warring emanating from his entire being, the lieutenant continued to attack relentlessly despite none of his blades being able to feel his enemies' flesh. The twins were strong and the man of the Bjornhold clan was no longer the so-feared bloodthirsty warrior he once was. His sixty-one years spent under the Sun were not to his advantage. However, if this fight had taken place at the beginning of the assault or ten years earlier, the devilesses would have had their skulls split in less time than it would have taken to carve a grisbouc. But there, the more the old man from the North made his axes dance, the more his blood covered his armor.

  The present members of squadron Vaan Hart knew perfectly well they couldn't intervene in the lieutenant's duel.

  However, when one of his axes flew through the air following a riposte from the ?mdras twins to plant itself on a wooden plank further in the combat zone, Siegfried understood.

  Death hovered above the old warrior, She tenderly extended her arms to take him to join the Zenith's warmth.

  The paladin's heart couldn't resign itself to let his lieutenant die.

  "My eyes will not watch this brave man fight until death. Save him, my brother!" he ordered.

  "Are you sure of yourself?" the N'zonki asked him while attaching his gold chains to each other thanks to one of his necklaces that he used as a baldric to have better reach.

  The knight nodded, a fierce determination running through his gaze.

  "I will gladly pay the price if necessary but Lieutenant Dragar Bjornhold will not die under my watch."

  Without further delay, Juuh'ma whirled his long chain and advanced a few steps. He made it snap like a serpent?s attacking its prey across the quay to catch the old one-eyed man by the waist. Barely was the chain wrapped around the old man when the Stoneskin pulled him forcefully toward him. After a flight of about twenty meters, the N'zonki caught him in his immense arms.

  "Please excuse us, my Lieutenant. My chief has spoken and he doesn't want to see you die."

  "And you think I care about his feelings?! I swear you'll pay for this, knight," he shouted while struggling, still caught in the colossus's embrace while he returned to his brother's side.

  Siegfried ignored the pain burning his ribs as well as his lieutenant's words. Already concentrated on his combat, he advanced one step, his longsword pointed toward the Ashengard devilesses. His gaze remained calm, cold, gleaming like that of an ashwolf gauging its prey. Under the Zenith's rays piercing the little remaining smoke cloud, he detailed the ?mdras lieutenants.

  "Agile. Fast. Too light to take hits, but also too swift to be easily touched. In my state, if I want to have a chance of defeating them, I'll need to play with cunning," he told himself after analyzing each of their movements with methodical precision.

  He knew they would strike like a storm, and that he would have only one single opportunity to kill them. He therefore prepared his mind and body to take the deluge of blades that would strike down on him.

  He pivoted slightly toward his Shield who still held the lieutenant in his arms and commanded him in a low but firm voice.

  "Watch over him, and treat his wounds please, my brother."

  Then, before raising his closed fist to indicate to his archer not to intervene, his gaze transformed and the beast that slumbered in him added.

  "Even if you see me place a knee on the ground. No matter that I'm in difficulty. Don't come to my aid. I know how to win this duel."

  The N'zonki perfectly knew the savage aura emanating from his brother. He simply nodded, total confidence in the paladin's victory. He stepped back, his chain dragging softly against the ground and placed the old man on a crate before separating his chains to wrap them around his forearms. Then with his right hand, he went to fetch from his back pocket some bandages and a bit of ointment.

  "I warn you, you better not put your big hands on me, Stoneskin," the one-eyed lieutenant growled while extending him a bloodied hand, a grimace at the corner of his lips. "Pass me those bandages, I don't need a nurse to bandage my wounds!"

  "Hmmm, as you wish, my Lieutenant," Juuh'ma breathed calmly while going to sit on a half-calcined crate that was next to him, his gaze turned toward the duel that was about to burst.

  "To think I was going to die just because I dropped one of my axes," Dragar muttered with irritation while he cut a piece of bandage with his teeth. "I was about to carve them up, these demon women... If they don't kill him, I'll strangle him myself in his sleep for this affront, may Solar?s witness it!"

  His sentence just finished, Lieutenant Bjornhold felt a murderous shadow cover him. A shiver ran down his spine. A sensation he hadn't felt for decades. He raised his eyes to see the N'zonki standing who fixed him with the gaze of one who had sworn on his life to protect the knight's, the Shield's gaze.

  "Don't say things you might regret, my Lieutenant. If my brother decided to save your life, so be it. Stop your lamentations and admire what Knight Siegfried Vaan Hart is capable of, he for whom we would give our lives," he explained with unusual severity.

  "No need to take it like that, monster, I won't kill your brother. But be sure to be severely punished once back at the capital!" he replied, fear gradually fading.

  The man from the North understood once more that squadron VIII was not a squadron like the others.

  "Pffffff. Let's see then what he for whom you would give your life has in his guts."