The mountain air was a cold blade, thin and sharp, biting into Kael's lungs with every breath. Most of the Empyrean was a vast rainforest of green canopy, but here the land changed abruptly—empty, grey rock and silent stone reaching for the sky. For three weeks, the Fifth Vanguard's march had been a slow crawl along the Spine of Heaven, a mountain pass barely wider than the wagons themselves. To the right, the vertical cliff face scraped against the wooden hubs; to the left, a thousand-foot drop into the clouds waited for the slightest mistake.
Kael sat on the hard wooden bench of the lead wagon, his white-knuckled hands gripping the thick leather reins. Beside him, his apprentice Sara sat huddled, her small frame nearly swallowed by the heavy leather seat. Kael reached into his pack and draped a thick, wool-lined mantle over her shoulders, pulling the deep hood over her head.
"I hate this hood, Kael," she muttered, her voice muffled. "It's too big."
"Keep it up," Kael commanded, his eyes fixed on the razor-thin path. "You keep that heat in, or you won't have fingers left to turn a wrench. Understood?"
The road beneath them turned a brilliant, blinding white—a lingering, pale radiance trapped in the stone from the moment the angels forged it. Kael remembered his father's voice describing how the battles between angels and demons had leveled the peaks during the Great War, grinding the world into the low basins they lived in now. It was a miracle of engineering that survived even the sweltering rot of the equator; without this bridge, the northern provinces would be isolated and defenseless.
The rhythm of the march began to falter as the steady roll turned into a sluggish, heavy drag. Up ahead, Captain Richardson slowed his mount, gesturing for Sir Alden and Sir Jax to pull closer.
"Look at the men," Richardson said quietly. "Half of them are blue in the face. They've never seen a mountain, let alone fought on one."
"I don't understand the General's thinking, Captain," Alden replied. "Why send a lowland unit to resupply the Western Front and take command of Castle Caerlog? We're moving like we're pulling lead!"
"Because this road is the only thing holding the empire together," Richardson sighed. "The dwarves are our only allies left. General Jabari knows that if we lose the Spine, we lose the dwarves. And if we lose them, the Empyrean stands alone."
Suddenly, the lead wagon groaned and died. The wheels locked with a scream of metal on stone.
"Engineer Kael! Status!" the Lieutenant bellowed, galloping up through the freezing mist.
Kael handed the reins to Sara and leaned over the side, peering at the undercarriage where a sickly blue light pulsed from brass-bound canisters. "The Nullifier-Cores are full, Lieutenant! They've hit their limit. These wagons are starting to feel their real weight again. You can't just 'purge' the weight—it's trapped in the crystal until it's properly discharged."
Kael knelt in the slush, using precise strikes of his hammer to force a stubborn iron rim back into alignment while Sara reached into a back crate for a spare core. "Stay on the bench, Sara," Kael warned. "Don't you dare put a foot on that ledge."
"Logistics failure," Kael reported to the Captain as he swapped the blackened, spent crystal. "I've restored the lead wagon, but the others are dead weight. We have to strip the extra gear and carry it."
"Do it," Richardson ordered. "Knights! You're on your feet. Save your breath for the march—I'll not have you bickering over old ghost stories while the West burns."
As the wagon finally lurched forward again, the road revealed a grim obstacle. Kael's eyes widened as they passed the thick, muscular tail of a Frost-Lindworm and two Chasm-Stalkers. The monsters had been dismantled with terrifying, professional precision. One Stalker was pinned to the cliff by a glowing translucent arrow; the Lindworm's neck had been opened by a single, searing heat-cut.
"This was a professional job," Kael whispered, pointing his hammer toward the clean wounds. "Adventurers. A Marksman, a Spell-Slicer, and a heavy Vanguard. They didn't just kill these; they processed the mana-glands while moving at a full run. They were clearing a path."
"They cleared the way... but they left the carcasses," Sara noted. "They were in a hurry."
As they began the final trek, the younger knights looked at the glowing marks on the mountain walls. "The angels carved this path to keep the demons away," Kael explained. "Then came the 'rot'—it changed them. They abandoned the world, and now we're just scavengers."
Lyra, adjusting her crimson cloak, scoffed. "The 'rot' is propaganda, Kael. A lie to justify why they left us to fend for ourselves."
By the time they reached the base of the mountain, the sun was high, but Argentis was draped in shadow. The fortress-city was a sprawling labyrinth of dark stone, built with the geometric precision of the Dwarf kingdom. The army halted several hundred paces from the entrance. The silence was deafening. It was the Solstice, but no banners flew, and no smoke rose from the Great Forge. The massive iron-bound gates were slammed shut.
"Why are we stopping?" Sara whispered.
"It has to be opened from the inside," Kael said. He watched from the lead wagon as the armored doors of the second wagon hissed open just enough for a squad of scouts to drop directly onto the ground (part that on ode in). They scrambled toward the stone and disappeared into the murder-holes.
Kael pointed toward the high towers. "Watch. They'll have to release the counterweights and heave the iron drop-bars into the ceiling pockets before the main gears can turn. It's a two-man job on the levers."
Kael gripped his hammer, noticing the heavy iron hinges were warped outward, as if something immense had pressed against them from within. Finally, the metallic scream of iron bars sliding upward echoed out. The massive doors groaned inward, releasing a heavy, stale rush of air that smelled of ozone and old iron.
As the gap widened, it revealed empty, sun-drenched streets. No people. No monsters. Just a hollow, echoing silence. Argentis was a ghost town, and as an engineer, Kael knew that the silence was far more dangerous than any scream.