The air atop the wall smelled of fear. The Adept in charge of the vision gem pressed the bronze spyglass to his face, his sweaty fingers leaving damp marks on the metal. Beside him, Fire Adepts nervously adjusted the levers on their launchers, the embedded gems pulsing with a heat that distorted the air.

  "Lord Garcia!" the messenger's voice echoed up the spiral staircase, preceding the man who appeared, gasping for breath. "Carlos's army is approaching! The vanguard is already entering the valley!"

  Garcia did not turn. His eyes scanned the line of defenders, stopping for a moment on the groups of Earth Adepts clustered around the massive trebuchets. The siege weapons looked like giant, slumbering crossbows, their slings loaded with stones the size of barrels, ready to awaken.

  "Alert me when they are within range of the trebuchets," ordered Garcia, his voice a low roar that carried on the wind.

  "Yes, my lord!" The messenger brought a small sound-gem to his ear, his eyes closing in concentration. "They march in formation... disciplined. They're stopping now! Establishing position!"

  A murmur ran along the walls. Garcia gripped the stone battlements, feeling their cold roughness even through his gauntlets.

  "Are they in range?" he asked, each word measured.

  "No, my lord," the messenger shook his head, confused. "They are far beyond the range of any weapon we know. They are... bringing the iron carts forward."

  "Must be the weapons Peixoto spoke of," Garcia thought, watching the distant metallic blots organize themselves. "They say they break stone. But no common stone raised these walls. My great-grandfather brought the best engineers and Earth Adepts from Portugal. Every block was fused with magic, reinforced with will."

  "They are moving the carts," the messenger reported, his voice taking on an urgent tone. "They seem to be loading something... iron balls..."

  The world exploded.

  First came the sound—a thunder that didn't come from the sky, but from the earth, deep and furious, followed by a sharp whistle in the air. Then, the impact.

  The wall shook like a wounded animal. Stones that had stood firm for a century leaped from their joints. A cloud of dust and shrapnel erupted twenty paces to Garcia's right, revealing a crater the size of a cart where solid stone had been. The shock made a nearby defender lose his balance—his arms windmilled in the air for an eternal moment before disappearing over the parapet. The wet thud that followed echoed louder than the initial blast.

  Silence. Then, screams.

  "What was that?!" someone bellowed.

  "Divine fire!" another cried.

  Garcia tasted dust and gunpowder in his mouth. His heart beat against his ribs like a caged animal. "By all the saints... they attack from that distance?"

  The thunder did not wait for his answer. Another whistle, another impact—this time lower down, shaking the foundations. Then another, and another. Each explosion was a celestial hammer pounding the fortress, each crater an open wound in the mountain's flesh.

  Atop the east wall, Peixoto clung to a battlement, his fingers white with pressure. Through the smoke, he saw the distant orange flashes before each impact. "Their math is perfect," he thought, his intellect calculating trajectories and speeds despite the terror. "They are adjusting their aim. The next volley will be even more accurate."

  Garcia watched helplessly as his castle was carved up from a distance. Anger rose in his throat, bitter and hot.

  "Loose the trebuchets!" he roared, turning to the artillerymen cowering by their weapons. "Fireballs too! We won't stand here like ducks on a pond!"

  The trebuchet captain hesitated, his face pale beneath his helmet.

  "My lord, they are over two thousand paces away! Our weapons don't even reach half that..."

  "And have you a better idea?!" Garcia advanced, grabbing the man by the breastplate. His eyes burned with a fury that made the captain recoil. "Shall we let them dismantle us stone by stone until nothing but dust remains?"

  The captain shook his head, defeated. "Loose!"

  The orders echoed. Men turned cranks, hemp ropes snapped under tension, heavy counterweights dropped with dull thuds. The trebuchets launched their loads—huge stones that rose in graceful arcs against the sky, followed by fireballs that left trails of black smoke.

  All eyes followed the projectiles. For a moment, it seemed they might reach... but then they began to fall, far short of the enemy line, raising harmless clouds of earth in the empty field.

  "Nothing..." the messenger whispered into the gem. "Nothing came close. They... they're laughing at us, my lord. They continue loading their weapons."

  "How do you defeat an enemy you cannot touch?" The question hammered in Garcia's mind as another volley of shots shook the walls. "How do you fight thunder that comes from nowhere?"

  The fury consuming him found an outlet. A roar erupted from his throat—not of fear, but of pure defiance. The gems in his gauntlets lit up, first with an amber glow, then with a light so intense the men around had to shield their eyes.

  "If machines cannot reach them," Garcia shouted, his voice distorted by the power flowing through him, "we will reach them with will!"

  He knelt, placing both hands on the wall's stone. The blocks groaned, trembled, then began to detach. The earth at his feet swelled like a living tide. With an effort that made the veins in his neck bulge, Garcia tore from the ground a stone that weighed more than three carts together—he didn't lift it, he commanded it.

  The Earth Adepts stood paralyzed. It was a display of power that defied everything they knew about their art. It wasn't technique, it was brute force channeled through pure will.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "GO!" Garcia bellowed, and hurled the massive projectile.

  The stone didn't follow an arc—it flew almost straight, as if thrown by a divine hand, cutting the air with a deep whistle that drowned out even the sound of the cannons.

  In the field, the Republican Army saw the shadow grow in the sky. Men who moments before had been laughing now screamed, breaking formation. Earth Adepts rushed forward, burying their staffs in the soil, raising barriers of compacted earth with desperate speed.

  The impact was like a small earthquake. The earth barrier shattered, but held—the stone exploded into a thousand fragments that rained down on the front lines like shrapnel.

  Atop the wall, the messenger listened to the report, his face a mask of hope.

  "Did it hit?" Garcia asked, panting, sweat streaming down his face. The gems in his gauntlets now glowed faintly, nearly spent.

  "Almost, my lord!" the messenger said, voice trembling with excitement. "It destroyed their barrier! The men are panicking! If we can launch more..."

  But Garcia already felt the drain. Each stone of that size cost a fortune in mana—soon he would have to abandon his post and go to the Rose-Gem in the castle's heart.

  Even so, he prepared for another launch. "If this is what they want," he thought, teeth clenched, "I'll give them mountains."

  ***

  In the field, behind the Republican lines, Specter observed through his own spyglass. His impassive eyes registered the defender's colossal power.

  "Interesting," he thought, numbers flowing through his mind. "Potential for brute force: equivalent to ten elite Adepts. If we relied solely on magical weapons, it would be a tough fight... however, we now have firearms."

  He made a discreet gesture. A figure with long black hair approached silently.

  "Whisper," Specter said without taking his eyes from the spyglass. "The Earth Adept. Highest priority."

  The figure merely inclined their head and disappeared among the shadows of the encampment.

  ***

  Inside the castle, in a vaulted room far from the outer walls, Inês clutched her two sons to her chest. The younger one, Luís, wept silently, his sobs muffled against her dress. Fabio, aged seven, put on a brave face, but his small fingers gripped his mother's sleeve with adult strength.

  "Everything will be alright," Inês whispered, stroking Luís's hair. "Garcia won't let anyone in. This castle has faced much worse armies."

  Another impact shook the room, making dust fall from the beams. Fabio let out a small cry.

  "What is that, Mother?" he asked, his eyes wide.

  "Just... thunder," Inês lied, forcing a smile. "Very angry thunder. But we are stronger."

  The door opened and the captain entered, his face smeared with soot but lit by a triumphant smile.

  "Lady Baroness! You should have seen it! Lord Garcia—" he choked with admiration, "he tore a stone the size of a house from the ground and threw it! It almost hit their cannons! The cowards have stopped firing!"

  Inês felt a spark of hope. "He did that? With his bare hands?" But something in the captain's exclamation sounded false. Too triumphant, too quick.

  "They've stopped firing?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "They've retreated!" the captain said, spreading his arms. "They were frightened by his power! The battle is won!"

  Atop the wall, Peixoto wiped his glasses, trying to see through the smoke. Something was wrong. The vision Adept beside him whispered frantically into his gem, his face pale as curdled milk.

  "What is it?" Peixoto asked.

  The Adept did not answer directly, but his words were transmitted below through the communication network.

  In the command tower, the messenger received the message, his face losing all color.

  "Lord Garcia..." he choked.

  "SPEAK!" Garcia ordered, still catching his breath.

  "An Adept... of darkness. Spotted briefly. She had a strange weapon, a long barrel... and a backpack. With... with oranges. Oranges with activated Fire-gems."

  The phrase fell like a blade.

  Everyone knew the stories. "Fire-oranges" used against the governor's army in Ouro Branco. Small, lethal, which could be thrown by hand or fired from contraptions. Primitive fragmentation bombs, but terribly effective against compact groups.

  Garcia began to turn, his mouth opening to give an order—any order—when the world exploded again.

  But this time, it wasn't the cannons.

  First came a single, dry crack—different from anything they had heard before. A rifle shot, precise, aimed at a specific communication gem on the wall.

  Then, the oranges arrived.

  They didn't fall from the sky—they seemed to materialize from the air itself, thrown by invisible hands. One at the base of the west wall, where Ice Adepts clustered. Another in the inner courtyard, near the water barrels. A third on the roof of the command tower.

  And the last—the most cruelly calculated—landed at Garcia's feet.

  There was no time to think, only to react. Earth and stone rose around him like a living shield, enveloping him in a protective shell the instant the world became fire and sound.

  The physical impact was horrible—a heat that burned even through the stone, a force that slammed him against the wall. But worse was the sensation that followed: a sudden, terrible emptiness. As if something vital had been torn from his chest.

  And then, through the ringing in his ears, through the screams of the men, through the shattering of stone and the crackle of fires, Garcia heard something else.

  A scream. Not a soldier's, not a mercenary's. A sharp, feminine scream, laden with a terror so pure it pierced stone, smoke, and distance.

  Inês.

  Garcia rose, stumbling. The command tower was in ruins around him, wounded men groaning on the floor. But he didn't see them. His eyes searched for the direction of the scream—coming from within, from the residential areas.

  "INêS!" he roared, beginning to run before his feet were steady.

  The captain tried to stop him. "My lord, the walls..."

  "THE WALLS HAVE ALREADY FALLEN!" Garcia shoved him, his strength still formidable even without the gems. "It's inside they attack now!"

  He descended the stairs in a uncontrolled rush, his footsteps echoing in the smoky corridor. The smell was different here—not gunpowder, but plaster dust, burning wood, and something sweeter, more metallic.

  Blood.

  The corridor leading to Inês's chambers was partially collapsed. A heavy beam lay across the passage like a broken bone jutting from the wall's flesh. And from behind it, the scream continued—no longer a scream of terror, but a wail, an animal howl of pain.

  Garcia grabbed the beam, the muscles in his arms bulging under his skin. With a roar that tore his throat, he pushed it—not with magic, but with the strength of a despair greater than any magical power.

  The scene that revealed itself stopped his heart.

  Inês knelt in the midst of the rubble, her dresses torn and covered in dust. In her arms, she held Maria, who was crying, unharmed except for a few scratches. But her eyes weren't on her daughter.

  They were fixed on the small body buried under a pile of stones and plaster. Only one hand was visible—Luís's small, perfect hand—emerging from the debris, motionless.

  "He doesn't answer," Inês whispered, her voice broken like glass. "Luís... he doesn't answer..."

  Garcia fell to his knees beside her, his hands—so powerful moments before, capable of tearing stones from the earth—now trembled helplessly over the rubble.

  Outside, the Republican cannons began to roar again. But inside that ruined room, the only sound that mattered was the silence coming from the small hand among the stones.