The crater where the outer wall had once stood still smoked when the engineers began their work.

It was silent at first…only the groans of the wounded and the dull grind of shovels scraping stone. No birds sang. No orcs shouted. The massive blast that collapsed the wall had momentarily stilled the war. Even the orcs seemed stunned.

But the Threians did not rest.

Captain Braedon oversaw the first rebuilding orders. He walked the edge of the crater with ash in his hair and dried blood on his cheek. Around him, teams of engineers hauled stones, chopped wood, and layered barricades with the remnants of burnt towers and shattered wagons.

Lieutenant Faris barked directions between coughs, his lungs scorched from the blast. “We need a trench barrier here! Get those posts upright…use the dead for reinforcement if you have to!”

No one blinked at that command.

There were enough bodies to line every wall twice over.

****

Inside the command tent, Gresham listened in silence as the reports came in.

“Ninety-three dead,” Marcus read. “Seventy-eight wounded. Fifty-six unaccounted for. No functioning artillery on the eastern side. Most of the Thunder Makers are out of powder.”

“What about the central point?”

“Holding, barely. Odric’s down to a half squad. Agis is out patrolling the eastern fringe. He hasn’t returned.”

Gresham nodded once, then dismissed him.

The map before him was frayed, torn at the edges, and stained with soot. Markers had been reduced to chalk smears. Whole companies erased.

The fortress had collapsed.

Now it needed to be reborn.

He stood.

“Get Braedon,” he told the nearest guard. “And Deramis. I’m sending a counterstrike.”

*****

They met at dusk.

The orcs were stirring again…organizing across the distance, bringing fresh bodies forward. The Threians watched from their makeshift barricades, bloodied and trembling, but still upright.

“They’re massing again,” Deramis said, clutching a sling around his broken arm.

Gresham nodded. “We hit them first.”

Braedon raised an eyebrow. “With what? Shovels?”

“With fire,” Gresham replied. “We send in the last of the northern regiment. Hit their siege line. Destroy as many of their engines. Cripple their advance before it begins.”

“They won’t come back,” Braedon said quietly.

“No,” Gresham agreed. “They won’t.”

*****

That night, under a half moon, the 4th Northern Regiment gathered behind the inner trench wall.

They did not wear ceremonial sashes. They did not march in formation.

They went barefoot, their boots tied around their necks so they could move silently across the broken earth.

Each man and woman carried what they had: broken blades, short spears, oil vials, makeshift shields. They did not expect to return.

Sergeant Ilsan led them…a grizzled officer with one eye and no illusions.

“We are the nail,” he said to them before they departed. “We hold the line. We bite the blade so the rest can draw breath.”

They nodded.

And then they were gone.

*****

The assault began just before dawn.

The orcs were preparing to march when the Threians struck.

Ilsan’s unit hit them in the flank…silent, feral, and with fire in hand. Oil was thrown first, followed by torches. Siege engines ignited. Screams filled the air. The sentries were caught off-guard as none would expect that the Threians would suddenly sally out from their defense line.

But it was chaos.

The 4th didn’t fight to win.

They fought to burn.

Ilsan led the charge into a catapult nest, slaying two handlers before lighting the barrel of oil beside him. It exploded upward in a column of fire.

Every man near him vanished.

The regiment tore through the outer siege lines, killing and dying in equal measure. They lit everything they could, then vanished into the mist again, drawing orc units after them into traps laid with firebombs and sharpened stakes.

By the time the sun rose, only two had returned.

One of them carried Ilsan’s blade.

****

The orcs paused again.

Longer this time.

Long enough for the Threians to rebuild a second line across the crater.

And in that pause, a letter came.

****

It was late.

And unlike the others, it bore no crest.

Only a single word written in fine, black ink on the seal: “Regret.”

Gresham opened it in private.

” Major,

I have delayed long enough, and perhaps too long.

What you endure is known to me. What you sacrifice is not forgotten.

I have not sent men because there are few left to send. My troops are still exhausted from the recent battle. The mages are still recovering. I have no excuse you would accept, only truth you will not care to hear.

But I send this: a promise.

Reinforcements will come. Not soon enough. But they will come.

Hold.”

No signature.

Only the seal.

Regret.

Gresham read the letter twice.

Then folded it.

And threw it into the fire.

*****

That evening, Braedon approached the command tent.

“She replied?”

Gresham nodded.

“And?”

“She’s sorry.”

Braedon spat. “That’ll bring the dead back.”

“No,” Gresham said. “But it might keep us alive one more day.”

*****

By the time the sun climbed above the ruined trench lines, the battlefield had become a graveyard of ambition.

The crater on the outer wall still smoked. The once-proud barricades were no more than scorched splinters and half-sunken sandbags. What passed for fortification now was whatever wood, bone, and flesh could be piled into a wall. Blood…orc and human alike…soaked the ground so thoroughly that the mud no longer bore color, only the stench of rot and fire.

No songs were sung. No horns blared.

Both armies were exhausted.

But neither was retreating.

Captain Braedon leaned against a shattered rampart, too tired to sleep, too numb to think. His armor was cracked and his sword arm bandaged. His breath came shallow, and the only sound that registered to him was the constant moaning of wounded men and the flap of a torn Threian banner overhead.

Lieutenant Deramis sat nearby, his broken arm in a fresh sling, half a biscuit forgotten in his hand. “I don’t think they expected us to last this long.”

“They didn’t,” Braedon replied. “Neither did we.”

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