The journey back to Oakhaven was a race against a clock that no one could see but everyone could feel. The red pillar of light that Varg had summoned faded slowly from the sky, leaving a bruised afterimage on the retina, a celestial scar marking their location for every Guild agent within a hundred miles. The sleigh horses were frothing, their breath tearing from their lungs in white plumes as the Duke drove them mercilessly over the frozen ruts of the road.
Valeria sat in the back, her crossbow resting on her knees. Beside her lay the paralyzed form of Commander Varg. The Houndmaster was rigid, his eyes wide and unblinking, fixed on the grey sky. He could not move, he could not speak, but the hatred radiating from him was palpable enough to raise the hair on Valeria's arms. She adjusted the heavy fur blanket over him, not out of kindness, but to hide his Guild armor from any prying eyes they might pass.
"We are exposed," Ignis shouted from the saddle of the horse he had unhitched from the dead wagon. He rode alongside the sleigh, his red robes flapping like a warning flag. "The beacon was a Level One signal. That means 'Insurrection'. They will not send a retrieval team. They will send a suppression force."
"Let them come," Kael rumbled from the other side of the sleigh. He was running on foot, keeping pace with the horses effortlessly, his massive tiger legs devouring the snowy terrain. "We have the prize. With Varg in chains, the Guild loses its best tracker. They are blind."
"They are not blind," the Duke corrected grimly, snapping the reins to urge the exhausted team up a rise. "They are enraged. The Guild operates on a reputation of absolute terror. We just captured one of their boogeymen. They have to crush us, or every village in the North will think they can fight back."
Valeria looked down at Varg. The Commander's eyes shifted to her. There was a smugness there, frozen in the paralysis. He knew something they didn't. He knew what was coming.
"Don't look so happy," Valeria whispered to him. "You're going to a tribunal, not a rescue party."
They crested the final ridge. Below them lay the valley of Oakhaven. From this distance, the fortress looked small against the vast whiteness of the landscape. The stone walls, the glowing greenhouse, the smoke rising from the chimneys... it looked fragile. A porcelain house waiting for a hammer.
"Open the gates!" Lucian's voice chirped from the sky. He had flown ahead to alert the garrison.
The heavy timber gates groaned open just as the sleigh skidded into the yard. The horses were spent, trembling as they came to a halt near the water trough. Thorne and the liberated Bear beastmen were already there, weapons drawn, their faces hard.
When Kael hauled Varg's rigid body out of the sleigh and dumped him onto the snow, a low, dangerous sound rippled through the gathered crowd. It wasn't a cheer. It was a growl.
Thorne stepped forward. He recognized the armor. He recognized the face.
" The Houndmaster," Thorne spat, his hand tightening around the handle of his mining pick. "He is the one who took my brother. He hunted us for sport in the Blackwood."
The old Bear looked at the other slaves. "Kill him."
The mob surged forward. Fifty years of torture, slavery, and fear boiled over in a single second. They didn't want justice. They wanted blood. They wanted to tear Varg apart with their bare hands.
"Stand down!" Valeria's voice cracked through the cold air like a whip.
She stepped between the mob and the paralyzed Commander. She didn't draw a weapon. She just stood there, small and human against a wall of angry fur and muscle.
"Move aside, Lady," Thorne growled, his eyes red with rage. "You saved us, and we follow you. But this man... he is a devil. He does not deserve a cage. He deserves the dirt."
"He deserves to hang," Valeria said, holding Thorne's gaze. "But he hangs after he speaks. He is not a man anymore, Thorne. He is a weapon. He is the evidence that will destroy the Guild's legal protection in this entire province."
She pointed a finger at the Duke, who was climbing out of the sleigh.
"The Duke of Ironclad is going to convene a tribunal. Varg will confess. He will name names. He will expose the illegal trafficking, the murders, the bribery. And when he is done, when the Guild is stripped of its charters and its power... then you can watch him swing."
Thorne hesitated. The bloodlust was still there, pulsing in his veins, but the logic pierced through.
"If we kill him now," the Duke added, stepping up beside Valeria, his voice carrying the weight of authority, "he becomes a martyr. A hero who died fighting savages. Let him live, and he dies a criminal. A traitor who broke the Imperial Law."
The Duke looked at the Bears. "Do you want revenge? Or do you want victory?"
Thorne looked at Varg, then at the Duke, and finally at Valeria. He lowered the pick.
"Take him," Thorne rasped. "But put him deep. If he escapes, I will kill him myself. And then I will leave this place."
"He won't escape," Kael promised, grabbing Varg by the collar. "I'm putting him in the root cellar. I'll weld the door shut myself."
As Kael dragged the prisoner away, the tension in the yard broke, replaced by a frantic, nervous energy. The beacon had been seen. The clock was ticking.
"Ignis," Valeria ordered, turning to the Dragon. "I want the Shroud of Mist at maximum output. I want this valley to look like a cloud bank. Lucian, refill the chemical drops. If they come by air, I want them choking before they land."
"And the ground?" Caspian asked, stepping out of the barn where he had been sharpening spears.
Valeria looked at the map in her mind. The valley had only one entrance for an army: the main road.
"We mine it," Valeria said. "We use every ounce of blackpowder we have left. We turn that road into a crater."
"We are out of blackpowder," Ignis reminded her gently. "We used the last of it in the canyon bomb."
Valeria froze. He was right. The tactical victory at the canyon had cost them their strategic reserve. They had no explosives. They had two ballistae, fifty angry but untrained workers, and a stone wall.
"Then we improvise," Valeria said, though her stomach churned.
She walked into the house, heading for the kitchen table where the System Ledger lay open. She needed an edge. She needed a miracle.
[Mission Complete: The Hunter Trapped.]
[Target Captured: Commander Varg (Elite).]
[Reward: 500 Library Points.]
[Bonus Reward: Enemy Equipment Analysis.]
[New Blueprint Unlocked: The Resonance Cannon (Prototype).]
Valeria stared at the blue text floating in the air.
"Resonance Cannon?" she whispered.
She tapped the blueprint. Information flooded her brain. It wasn't a weapon of gunpowder and fire. It was a weapon of sound. It used the principle of acoustic amplification... specifically, the sonic properties of Dragon Roars channeled through Iron-Bark tubes.
"Ignis!" she shouted, running to the door. "Get in here! I know what to do with your voice!"
For the next three hours, Oakhaven was a frenzy of construction. Under Valeria's direction, Kael and the strongest Bears hollowed out a massive log of the Iron-Bark Renard had sold them. It was incredibly hard, requiring Kael to use his Metal Manipulation to shape the interior, but the result was a twenty-foot long, trumpet-shaped cannon mounted on a swivel near the gate.
"The acoustics are theoretical," Ignis said, looking at the strange device nervously. He was drinking a mixture of honey and raw eggs to coat his throat. "If I shout into this, the Iron-Bark should amplify the vibration ten-fold. But if the seal isn't tight, it will simply deafen everyone in the yard."
"It will work," Valeria said, tightening a bronze clamp. "It has to."
"Commander!" Lucian's voice came from the roof. But this time, it wasn't a chirp. It was a scream. "They're here!"
Valeria grabbed her monocle and ran to the wall. The Duke was already there, staring south.
The Guild hadn't sent an army. They had sent a nightmare.
Marching up the snowy road, breaking through the tree line, was a column of heavy infantry. Three hundred men in black plate armor, their shields locked in a tortoise formation. But they were just the escort.
In the center of the column, pulling a massive iron cage on wheels, were two creatures that defied nature.
[Target: War-Behemoth (Chimera Class).]
[Composition: Rhinoceros / Golem Hybrid.]
[Threat Level: A-Rank.]
They were hulking monstrosities of flesh and steel, their skin stitched together with rune-carved staples, their horns replaced with battering rams. And walking behind them, surrounded by a personal guard of mages, was a woman.
She wore a pristine white fur coat over red armor. She carried no weapon, only a fan made of black feathers.
"The Regional Director," the Duke whispered, his face losing all color. "Lady Lysandra. The Widow of the North."
"Is she strong?" Kael asked, gripping his axe.
"She is a Necromancer," the Duke said. "She doesn't tame beasts. She recycles them."
The column stopped five hundred yards from the gate. Just outside ballista range.
Lady Lysandra stepped forward. Her voice was magically amplified, smooth and cold as a glacier sliding into the sea.
"Valeria of Oakhaven," Lysandra's voice echoed through the valley. "You are harboring a fugitive of the Guild. You are in possession of stolen property. And you have kidnapped a Commander."
Valeria stood on the wall. She didn't hide.
"I am harboring a witness!" Valeria shouted back. "And the only stolen property here are the lives you took from these people!"
Lysandra laughed. It was a soft, polite sound.
"Brave. Stupid, but brave. I offer you a trade, little girl. Give me the Duke. Give me the Wolf. And give me Varg. Do this, and I will allow you and the Tiger to leave. I will even let you keep your life."
"And the others?" Valeria asked. "The fifty souls in my care?"
"They are inventory," Lysandra said dismissively. "They will be returned to the mines. To work off their debt."
Valeria looked down at the yard. Thorne and the Bears were looking up at her. They were terrified. The sight of the Necromancer had shaken them more than the Hell-Hounds. They knew what she did to those who died in her service. They didn't rest. They served again.
Valeria looked back at Lysandra.
"No deal," Valeria said.
Lysandra sighed, closing her fan.
"A pity. I do hate wasting fresh material."
She waved her hand.
The two War-Behemoths roared... a sound of grinding gears and wet meat. They began to charge.
They were slow, but they were unstoppable. They churned the snow into mud. The ground shook with every step.
"Ballistae!" Valeria ordered. "Aim for the legs!"
The two siege weapons on the wall thrummed. The bolts flew true. One struck a Behemoth in the shoulder, shattering against the metal plating. The other hit the leg, burying itself deep, but the creature didn't even slow down. It just snapped the bolt shaft as it moved.
"They feel no pain!" the Duke shouted. "They are dead flesh driven by magic!"
"Ignis!" Valeria screamed. " The Cannon!"
Ignis ran to the strange wooden trumpet. He took a deep breath, his chest expanding, his draconic lungs filling with mana. He pressed his face to the leather seal at the narrow end.
"Target the left one!" Valeria directed.
Ignis unleashed a Dragon's Roar.
Inside the tube, the sound wasn't just noise. It was a physical force. The Iron-Bark resonated, compressing the sonic wave, twisting it, amplifying it until the air inside the barrel turned white.
BOOOM.
The sound that exited the cannon was not a roar. It was a shockwave. A visible ripple of distorted air shot across the battlefield like a cannonball.
It hit the left Behemoth.
The effect was horrific. The sonic vibration didn't push the creature; it liquefied it. The metal plates vibrated at a frequency that shattered the bone beneath. The stitches tore open. The massive creature seemed to implode, its internal structure turning to jelly.
It collapsed mid-stride, a heap of scrap metal and wet flesh.
The Guild army faltered. They stopped marching. Even Lysandra took a step back, her fan flaring open in surprise.
"Reload!" Valeria shouted, though she knew there was no 'reloading' Ignis's lungs. The Dragon collapsed against the frame, gasping, his throat raw.
"One shot..." Ignis wheezed. "I only have... one shot..."
"It was enough," Kael said, staring at the decimated monster. "They stopped."
"They didn't stop," the Duke said, pointing. "They are changing tactics."
Lysandra was gesturing to her mages. The infantry began to separate, spacing out to avoid another sonic blast. And from the rear of the column, the mages began to chant.
Green fire formed in the air above them. Not fireballs. Skulls.
"Necrotic Artillery," the Duke cursed. "Get down!"
Valeria dove behind the stone battlement just as the first volley hit.
The green skulls exploded against the wall, splashing acid that hissed and ate through the limestone.
"They aren't trying to breach the gate anymore," Valeria realized, coughing in the acrid smoke. "They are trying to melt us out."
She looked at the ledger. She needed a counter. She needed something to neutralize the acid.
"Caspian!" she yelled over the roar of the magic bombardment. "The water! The pH balance!"
"What?" Caspian shouted back, huddling under his shield.
"Alkaline!" Valeria screamed. "Mix the wood ash from the stove into the water trough! Spray it on the walls! It will neutralize the acid!"
It was a desperate, scientific gamble. Chemistry against Necromancy.
Caspian didn't ask questions. He ran for the ash buckets.
As the siege settled into a rhythm of green fire and hissing steam, Valeria looked at the Duke.
"How long can we hold?" she asked.
The Duke looked at the cracks forming in the wall. He looked at the endless line of Guild soldiers.
"Until sunset," the Duke said. "Maybe less. Unless your friend Renard decides to sell us a miracle."
"Renard is gone," Valeria said. "We are on our own."
But as she said it, a notification chimed in her mind. Not a mission update. A direct message.
[System Alert: Anomaly Detected.]
[The World Tree Sapling senses hostility.]
[Defense Mechanism Activating.]
The ground beneath the fort trembled. Not from the Behemoth this time. From the roots.
In the greenhouse, the silver sapling began to pulse with a violent, blinding light. The spectral rabbits and deer outside stopped their grazing. They turned toward the gate. Their eyes weren't peaceful anymore. They were burning white.
"The spirits," Silas whispered, watching from the yard. "They are angry."
Valeria watched as a spectral stag walked through the solid stone of the gate. It walked out onto the battlefield, standing between the fort and the Guild army.
A Guild soldier laughed and fired a crossbow bolt at it. The bolt passed through the ghost.
The stag lowered its head. It didn't charge. It let out a soundless scream.
And suddenly, the snow around the Guild army began to move.
It wasn't an attack from the fort. It was the land itself waking up. The Sanctuary was defending its borders.
Valeria gripped the cold stone of the wall.
"I didn't order that," she whispered.
"No," Ignis rasped, pulling himself up. "You didn't. You just gave the land a reason to fight back."
The Siege of Oakhaven had begun. But the combatants were no longer just the living and the dead. The Spirit World had joined the chat.