At dawn, the silence broke.

The drums of the legions thundered in rhythm, and the sky above the Francian capital darkened with the flight of arrows.

Thousands loosed in a single volley, a black storm hissing against the light of morning.

The defenders answered in kind, their shafts clattering off shields and helms, some finding flesh.

The air shrieked with wood and iron.

From the walls came cries — curses, prayers, death-shouts — but the line held.

Romanus shields locked, their archers stepping forward between the gaps to shoot, then retreating again behind the wall of iron.

The discipline of years of conquest met the desperate frenzy of a kingdom's last stand.

On the eastern front, the first catapult stones flew.

Great engines crouched like crouching beasts, their cords straining as engineers loosed them with shouts.

Stones the size of oxen smashed into the walls, sending chips of white masonry raining down.

Dust plumed skyward, mixing with the smoke of the city's chimneys.

The defenders roared in defiance, scrambling to shore up the cracked mortar with timber and sandbags.

But more stones followed, relentless.

Each impact shook the ground, the rumble echoing through the siege camps like thunder.

Sabellus, standing beside one of the great machines, watched as another stone hurtled across the sky, trailing dust.

It smashed into a tower's corner, splintering the parapet.

Francian soldiers tumbled screaming, their cries cut short by the stones below.

He turned to his engineers.

"Faster. Do not let them breathe. Tear the walls down stone by stone until nothing remains."

To the south, fire joined the fray.

Bundles of hay, soaked in pitch, were set ablaze and hurled by catapult.

They arced overhead like fiery comets, slamming into rooftops and courtyards.

Flames licked upward, thick smoke coiling into the sky.

Bells rang frantically within the walls, lines of bucket-bearers rushing to quench the infernos before they could spread.

The defenders retaliated, loosing their own flaming arrows.

One struck a siege ram's rawhide covering, setting it alight.

Legionaries scrambled with buckets of earth and wet hides, smothering the flames before they could consume the whole structure.

From the walls, Francian priests raised relics high, calling on Saint Joan.

The common folk shouted her name as if the sound itself could turn aside Romanus stones.

But the siege engines did not falter.

They roared on, grinding the city down with patient destruction.

At the northern gate, the first rams advanced.

They rolled forward beneath their mantlets — great wooden shelters soaked against fire, their roofs bristling with wet hides.

Inside, dozens of legionaries strained at the ropes, swinging the ram's iron head against the gates.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Each impact echoed through the city like the heartbeat of doom.

From above, the defenders poured boiling pitch, dropped stones, hurled spears.

Men screamed as fire took their flesh, as iron crushed their bones.

Yet more surged forward to replace them, dragging the rams closer still.

One struck true — the gate shuddered, iron bands groaning.

Cracks spread like veins through the wood.

The defenders shouted and shoved back, wedging beams behind the doors, hammering nails, bracing with all they had.

The ram struck again, and again.

The city groaned with the sound of it.

Julius himself watched from a command tower raised on the western side, eyes fixed on the walls through the smoke.

The din of battle rolled across the plain — the screams of men, the crack of stones, the roar of fire.

To any other man, it would have seemed chaos.

To Julius, it was a symphony.

Each section played its part, each note fitting the greater whole.

Sabellus rode up, his armor dusted with white stone chips.

"The eastern tower weakens. Two more days of bombardment and it will fall."

Julius nodded.

"And the gates?"

"Cracked, but not yet broken. Their king spends men like water to hold them."

"He bleeds his strength where it matters least," Julius murmured. "The walls will fail before the gates do. And when they do, his people will know he sacrificed them for pride."

He turned his gaze back to the city, where another flaming stone arced high and slammed into a warehouse.

Fire spread fast, sparks jumping from roof to roof despite the desperate work of bucket lines.

"Let them see their city burn," Julius said. "But not yet their homes. Fear, not fury, will break them."

Within the walls, the defenders struggled on.

In one quarter, women formed chains from wells to rooftops, dousing flames as priests sprinkled holy water. In another, children carried stones up stairwells, handing them to fathers who hurled them down on the rams below.

A nobleman stood atop a tower, shouting promises of salvation if they only held.

His words were cut short when a catapult stone struck, shattering the parapet.

His body vanished into the dust.

Yet still, the people fought.

Hunger gnawed, fear choked, but desperation drove them on.

Joan's zealots sang on the walls, their voices hoarse, hymns rising above the clash.

"Better to die for Francia than kneel to Rome!" they cried, loosing arrows even as their fellows fell around them.

But for each arrow loosed, ten more came back.

For each flame quenched, another kindled.

For every man slain, another legionary stepped forward.

The weight of empire pressed in from all sides.

By dusk, the field was strewn with the dead.

Romanus corpses lay smoldering near the gates, their shields blackened from pitch.

Francian bodies lay broken beneath the walls, some half-buried under rubble.

The rams still struck, the catapults still roared, the archers still loosed.

Neither side yielded an inch.

Julius stood at the center of it all, hands clasped behind his back, eyes unblinking.

To his men, he was unshakable, a rock amid the tide.

To the Francians watching from the walls, he was the shadow that would never retreat.

When night fell, the torches of the camps lit once more, a blazing circle around the city.

The drums rolled low, a heartbeat in the dark.

Within the walls, smoke still rose from the fires of the day, mingling with the cries of the wounded.

The first true day of the siege had ended, but the war for the capital had only just begun.

And in both camps, men knew: tomorrow, the firestorm would rise again.

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