Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

Chapter 250: Fall of the soul

Chapter 250: Fall of the soul

The day of the assault dawned gray and heavy, the air thick with the kind of tension that pressed down on the shoulders of every soldier before the start of the meatgrinder. The skies above were eerily empty, the usual flocks of ravens that circled battlefields conspicuously absent. Far beyond the city walls, they feasted still on the banquet left for them by the Yarzats few days prior, when fleeing stragglers and discarded corpses littered the fields a few kilometers away.

The silence in the skies only deepened the foreboding stillness. It was as if even nature itself held its breath, sensing the storm that was about to break. The small walls sorrounded the keep, was their last bastion, their last hope built on sands and ready to unravel at the slightest touch of reality.

Behind the walls, the remaining embers of the army that defended the city now moved with the same hopeleness of a man going to work knowing that tomorrow he would die, each soldiers casting final glances at comrades who might not see another sunrise.

Inside the city, the defenders were gripped by fear, their hearts heavy with the knowledge of what was coming. But outside, it was a different story. Alpheo's men weren't paralyzed by dread; they were restless, driven by the promise of victory. Many of them weren't thinking about survival—they were thinking about the wealth waiting behind those walls. Craving to get their hands on the richness of a noble house that lingered for half a century

On the walls of the keep, fewer than 200 men remained, a ragged and desperate force standing between the invaders and the heart of the city. Most were barely equipped, some clutching rusted spears or clubs , their tattered armor if they had any offering little protection. Among them were fewer than two dozen archers, each with a dwindling quiver of arrows—just enough, if rationed carefully, to last through the day. They were tired, hungry, and painfully aware of the odds stacked against them.