The road to Budavasta's main gate was a procession through a gallery of the damned. The skeletal frames of abandoned farmsteads watched them pass with the hollow eyes of broken windows. The silence was not peaceful; it was a held breath, a waiting. The air, thick with the stench of decay they had smelled for miles, grew cloying, a physical presence that clung to the back of the throat.
When the great wall of the city finally loomed into view, it was not a sight of defense, but of imprisonment. The stone was blackened by more than just age, scarred by fire and violence. And the gate—a massive construct of iron-banded oak that should have stood as a proud barrier—was shut. Not just shut, but barricaded from within by a visible mound of rubble and debris piled high against it. No guards walked the battlements. No curious faces peered from the arrow slits. It was a tomb, sealing its own dead inside.
"By the Divine…" Acrosn breathed, his usual levity extinguished. He stared up at the silent wall, his hand instinctively touching the fletching of an arrow. "They've sealed themselves in."
Gulad spat onto the dusty ground, his face a mask of disgust. "Or been sealed. Rats in a trap. This is not a city; it's a charnel house playing at being one."
Uriel said nothing. He dismounted, his boots hitting the hard-packed earth with a definitive thud. His grey eyes scanned the immense gate, the impassable wall. The ambush on the road had been a warning. This was the declaration of war. The Spur had made their position clear: Budavasta was theirs, and no knight, silver-clad or not, was welcome.
The Masked Knight stood by his horse, his head tilted, the polished silver of his helm reflecting the desolate scene back at itself, a silent, distorted echo of despair.
"There are protocols, Commander," Acrosn said, his voice low. "We could seek a postern gate, or attempt to parley from the walls. To breach the main gate is an act of…"
"An act of what?" Uriel interrupted, his voice quiet but cutting through the still air like a blade. "Salvation? They murdered their would-be saviors on the road. They have barricaded their own people inside to fester. What law do we uphold by respecting the boundaries of lawlessness?" He looked at his squad, his gaze lingering on each of them. "They believe their walls and their defiance can keep us out. They believe the darkness here is absolute."
He walked towards the gate, his stride purposeful. He stopped a few feet from the immense oaken surface, the piled rubble behind it a testament to the city's desperation. He raised his broadsword, holding it horizontally before him, the steel gleaming dully.
"There is no saving grace for this city," Uriel said, his voice dropping to a near whisper, yet carrying an undeniable weight. "There is no light left to rekindle."
Then, his voice rose, clear and sharp, a command that was also a prayer, a summoning of divine wrath.
"Sun Sword."
The change was instantaneous and terrifying. Runes along the blade, previously invisible, flared with the intensity of a captive star. A heat haze shimmered around the steel, and then, with a sound like a roaring furnace, the sword erupted into pure, white flame. It was not fire as men knew it; it was a concentrated, holy incineration, the manifested judgment of a sun-scorched god. The light was so intense that Gulad and Acrosn had to shield their eyes, and even the Masked Knight took a half-step back.
With a roar that was part effort, part release, Uriel brought the flaming sword down in a great, arcing slash against the center of the gate.
There was no scream of splintering wood, no clang of shattered metal. There was only a profound, roaring hiss. Where the Sun Sword touched, the ancient, iron-hard oak did not burn; it vaporized. A searing line of absolute whiteness cut through the barricade, turning wood, stone, and iron to fine, grey ash in the space of a heartbeat. A section of the gate large enough for a man on horseback simply ceased to exist.
A wind, born of the sudden vacuum, whipped through the new opening, carrying the ash outwards in a ghostly plume. Through the gap, the interior of Budavasta was revealed.
The sight that greeted them was a punch to the gut. They had expected resistance, an army of the Spur waiting for them. They found only fear.
A narrow, filth-choked street stretched before them, lined with hovels whose doors and shutters were tightly barred. In the shadows of doorways and behind cracked window panes, pale, gaunt faces stared out, their eyes wide with a terror so profound it was devoid of hope. They did not cheer their liberators. They flinched from the blinding, holy light of Uriel's sword as if it were a new kind of torment.
And in the center of the street, just a dozen paces from the gate, lay the reason for their silence.
A woman's body, or what was left of it, lay sprawled in the refuse. She had not been dead long, but the ravens had been efficient. Their glossy black forms hopped over her, their cruel beaks tearing at the thin, parchment-like skin still clinging to her bones. It was a deliberate display, a message left by the gatekeepers. This was the fate of those who hoped, who waited for salvation.
The last of the white flame flickered and died around Uriel's blade, the steel returning to its normal, cool grey. The silence that rushed back in was heavier than before, broken only by the rustle of wings and the wet, tearing sounds.
Acrosn was the first to move. He slid from his horse, his face pale. He walked towards the body, drawing his cloak from his shoulders. He did not flinch from the ravens; he simply moved with a quiet authority that made them scatter with indignant caws. He knelt, ignoring the filth, and gently laid his fine cloak over the ravaged corpse.
His voice, when he began the Prayer for the Departed, was steady, a thread of pure, clean water flowing through a sewer. "O God, who ordained the return of all dust to its origin, receive this soul, fractured and lost, into your boundless mercy…"
Gulad watched, his jaw working, his earlier bloodlust replaced by a cold, hard fury. "This is their kingdom. This is the order they protect."
Uriel stood over the cloaked form, his shadow falling across it. He looked from the body to the terrified, hidden faces in the shanties, then back to the smoldering, ash-framed hole where the gate had been. Acrosn's prayer ended, the holy words seeming to be swallowed by the oppressive silence of the city.
Uriel turned to his knights, his face a mask of grim finality.
"We go into the city," he said, his voice low and devoid of all warmth. "I wished to do this the other way. With law. With order. With a surgeon's precision to cut out the rot and spare the healthy flesh."
He gestured to the corpse at their feet, then to the cowering citizens. "But there is no healthy flesh. This city is dead. It does not writhe in pain; it festers in its own corruption. There is no light here to save."
He raised his sword, the clean, unburned steel pointing towards the heart of Budavasta.
"So we will not save it. We will burn it. For the Lord. For our King. For the holiness of this nation. We will burn it all to ash, and from that ash, perhaps, something new may one day grow."
He stepped through the gate of his own making, into the darkness, a bringer of purifying fire.