The end of the first week of the siege began with thunder not from the sky, but from the walls.

Romanus catapults hurled their ceaseless barrage, stones pounding into towers until cracks webbed through their foundations.

Each impact sent tremors through the camps and showers of dust cascading down upon the defenders.

The outer wall of the Francian capital, proud and gleaming once, now bore the scars of relentless punishment.

Its towers leaned like drunkards, its battlements half-collapsed.

In places, the stonework was little more than jagged teeth against the horizon.

And the defenders knew it.

At the northern gate, legionaries pushed their ram once more into position.

The iron-capped head slammed against the doors with a sound like a giant's fist on a drum.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Each strike echoed through the city, shaking the very bones of those inside.

On the parapets above, Francian soldiers flung stones down, or tipped over cauldrons of sand heated until it glowed.

Men screamed as it seared their skin, but the ram did not falter.

Behind the mantlets, legionaries laughed grimly.

One shouted between heaves of the ropes:

"Another few days and we'll be sleeping in their beds!"

Another answered, breathless, "If the walls don't fall first!"

Both laughed, their faces streaked with soot and sweat, the sound half-mad from fatigue.

Elsewhere along the lines, archers traded ceaseless volleys.

Arrows rattled against shields and helmets, embedded in earthworks, or found flesh.

The legionaries grew accustomed to the whistle of shafts overhead, some plucking them from the ground to return fire.

One young archer cursed as his shot glanced off stone.

"By the gods, do they never run out of men up there?"

His optio barked back, "They will. Stone breaks before iron bends. Keep loosing."

The boy obeyed, though his arms ached and his quiver grew lighter with every passing hour.

Within the city, the signs of exhaustion spread like rot.

The defenders' ranks thinned.

Corpses lay piled near the breaches, carted off when they could be, but often left where they fell.

The outer wall's parapets bristled less with spears now, more with nervous commoners clutching farm tools and hunting bows.

At night, the watchfires of the defenders burned fewer and dimmer.

From the Romanus camps, sharp-eyed sentries whispered:

"They're pulling back. You can see it—less noise, less light. They're thinning their posts."

By the next morning, even the most stubborn centurions could see it too.

The Francians were preparing to abandon the outer wall and retreat to their inner defenses.

Julius stood with Sabellus on a ridge overlooking the battered eastern wall.

Catapults groaned behind them, their cords loosed in steady rhythm.

"They'll yield the outer ring soon," Sabellus said. "Too costly to hold. If they wait, the breach will take them all."

Julius's gaze was fixed, his jaw tight.

"They'll give ground, but not hope. Their king will pull them behind the second wall and tell them they've bought time. He'll swear it was part of his plan."

"And the people will believe?"

"For now."

Julius turned, his cloak whipping in the wind.

"But every wall they yield is a wall they'll never take back. By the time we reach the last, their courage will be gone."

Sabellus inclined his head, though his eyes flicked to his emperor with curiosity.

He had seen Julius cold and merciless in war before.

But here… here was something sharper.

Something personal.

~

That night in the southern camp, soldiers sat around their fires, eating hard bread and salted meat, their talk buzzing louder than the crackle of flames.

"They say the emperor means to tear down the whole damned city," one veteran said, gesturing with his crust. "Brick by brick, stone by stone, until he finds her."

"Her?" a younger man asked, frowning.

"Aye, his lost love. Taken by the Francians, hidden somewhere in that rat's nest of a city, a real damsel in distress."

The younger soldier scoffed. "You think an emperor wages a whole war for a woman?"

The veteran spat into the dirt. "You've never been in love then, boy. For a woman worth having, any man would burn the world."

Another chimed in, grinning. "Aye, and she'll be our empress, mark me. Any Roman would do the same for the woman who'll wear the crown at his side, and if he isnt then he's not fit to be emperor."

Laughter rippled around the fire, though some voices held a note of pride, even reverence.

Inside the capital, the retreat began in earnest.

By torchlight, Francian commanders pulled their battered soldiers from the parapets.

Wagons creaked as they hauled supplies into the inner districts.

The gates of the noble quarter yawned wide to receive them, then shut with a groan of iron.

The outer wall was left manned only by the desperate and the doomed—zealots who refused to yield, women and old men who chose to die where they stood rather than retreat, freeing up rations and supplies for those who could make a real difference in the battles to come.

When dawn came, their ragged cries could be heard across the plain, hymns to Joan echoing even as Romanus stones smashed the towers above their heads.

By midday, the first breach opened.

A tower on the eastern wall shuddered under a catapult's strike, its mortar already weakened from days of pounding.

With a groan like thunder, the structure gave way, spilling stone and bodies in a landslide of rubble.

Legionaries roared as the dust cleared, pointing to the gap.

Trumpets sounded.

Cohorts surged forward with shields locked, filling the breach like water rushing through a crack in a dam.

The defenders fought with wild desperation, hurling themselves at the advancing wall of shields.

But the weight of Romanus pressed inexorably forward, blades flashing, pila thrusting.

Sabellus, riding near the front, watched grimly.

"They fight like men who know they're already dead."

Julius, from his watchtower, gave a single nod.

"Then let us show them how empire lives."

By nightfall, the outer wall was lost, and with it the encirclement of the city shrunk, while the commoners living quarters became a contested no-mans land between the opposing armies.

Romanus standards flew from shattered towers, their crimson banners visible even through smoke and fire.

Pockets of resistance still fought in alleys and courtyards, but the wall itself was Romanus now.

From the inner wall, horns blared, summoning the defenders back to their new lines.

The gates of the noble quarter stood closed once more, iron-banded and bristling with spears.

The city had shrunk, its defenses peeled away layer by layer.

But still it stood.

Julius looked upon it, his eyes hard as the stone beneath his boots.

"One wall down. Two to go."

Sabellus inclined his head.

"And each harder than the last to breech."

The emperor did not answer.

His thoughts, though hidden, were clear in the firelight of his gaze: no wall, no army, no kingdom would keep him from what was his.

And as his legions settled in among the ruins of the outer wall, the siege ground on toward its next, bloodier stage.

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