The dawn after the fall of the outer wall was not greeted with silence, but with the rasp of blades sliding from scabbards and the thunder of boots upon broken stone.

The legions did not rest.

Julius had given no such order.

Instead, the whole army was loosed into the contested ring of ruins, tasked with stripping it bare and scouring it clean.

Cohorts marched down smoke-stained avenues, shields raised, pila braced, hunting pockets of resistance left behind.

A squad of Francian zealots leapt from a collapsed stable, screaming Saint Joan's name as they swung axes and sickles.

They cut one legionary down before the shield wall closed around them.

Then the pila thrust, stabbing with practiced rhythm until the zealots lay in pieces on the cobbles.

Further on, a centurion's men dragged three youths from the wreck of a bakery.

They had bows slung over their shoulders, arrows hidden in flour sacks.

The centurion studied them a moment, then gave the order.

Steel flashed, and the bodies were left cooling by the ovens.

"Spies, saboteurs, zealots—it matters little," he told his men. "Every throat cut here is one less at the second wall, and another brother saved for our own."

So the cleansing went, street by street, house by house.

At the same time, the army turned to plunder, normally this was restricted by Julius, however the siege was a long one, and even with supplies coming in, every little bit helps.

So after forgoing a little casual looting, the food, and metal stores that could not be moved in time deeper into the city came under new ownership as the encampment graneries filled up, and the mobile smithies were overjoyed a fresh material from which to continue patching up damaged gear and weapons.

Stores of grain were seized from cellars, amphorae of wine rolled into the streets, tools and iron nails bundled for the engineers.

Wagons creaked under the weight of supplies carted back to the Romanus camps.

Legionaries gorged themselves when they could—hard bread swapped for stolen cheese, stale rations replaced with fresh meat butchered from abandoned herds.

But even with this, wanton destruction was not permitted, nor was abuse of the population.

Most of the city had fled before the siege, or killed as traitors by the Royalists, with thousands more now living uncomfortably in their new mass graves, but even with these horrors of war, Julius and his top generals prevented cases of arson, rape, and enslavement.

The city would not be reduced to ashes, homes could be used during the siege to allow his own men to rest and recover, while the city itself was strategically placed to be a future provincial captial, as for any inhabitants who still resided within the city.

Death was their judgement, if they hadnt fled before the siege even after numerous warnings provided, Julius had no tears left to shed for these ignorant people.

In the whole of the city one one life would be spared, if he could help it.

The men grumbled, as soldiers always did when denied easy spoils, but none dared defy him.

In the shadow of the captured wall, a volunteer corps gathered.

These were not the veterans of the line, but the rougher sort—auxilia, eager recruits, men seeking glory or a faster path to citizenship.

Their orders were grim: to go deep into the commoner quarter and dismantle it.

Axes bit into timber frames, pry-bars tore down walls, roofs collapsed in clouds of dust.

Homes became rubble, gardens became open ground.

A centurion directing the work explained it plainly: "Every house is a shield for them. Every alley a trap. Clear the ground, make it a battlefield, and we'll drag our towers and rams to their gates."

The men of course argued it was polar to the emperors own commands, only to find that this was not wholesale destruction, but strategic planning.

With the layout of the city, Julius's siege engines could not advance into the city itself, even ladders would find a hard time being raised from the city streets, and the building rooftops would leave the men far to exposed to counter attacks if they tried to setup ladders from there.

Soon, whole streets stood flattened, wide lanes carved straight toward the looming inner wall.

And then branching out creating an entire open rubble field from which the main romanus assaults would come.

~

Meanwhile, on the captured battlements, the engineers began their next great labor.

The catapults, though deadly, had reached their limits.

Their stones could not arc far enough to reach deep into the noble quarter.

And so the order had come: build trebuchets.

The work was immense.

Timber stripped from the countryside was hauled atop the ruined wall.

Oxen strained, sweat soaking their hides, as beams thicker than a man's chest were raised into place.

Ropes were wound, counterweights created from carted away rubble thanks to the strategic demolition.

Day and night the hammers rang, engineers shouting orders as scaffolds rose higher and higher.

From the inner wall, Francian archers loosed shafts, hoping to cut down the builders.

But Romanus shields closed above them, a living roof, while slingers from Achaea peppered the battlements to keep the defenders' heads low.

By the third day, the first trebuchet stood complete.

A monster of timber and sinew, its arm looming over the battlefield like the limb of a titan.

The honor of the first shot fell to the engineers themselves.

With a great heave, they cranked the arm down, loading a boulder scavenged from the rubble of the fallen tower.

The signal was given.

The arm loosed.

With a groan of wood and a thunderous snap of rope, the stone hurled skyward, sailing high over the open district before crashing into the noble quarter with a deafening impact.

A plume of dust rose where a townhouse once stood.

The legionaries roared approval, their cheers echoing along the ruined wall.

The trebuchets began their rhythm then, each release a thunderclap, each impact a hammer-blow against Francian pride.

And soon, it was not only stone they hurled.

Corpses, swollen and blackened, were dragged from the alleys of the commoner ring.

Bodies slain in days gone by but only discovered now, heaped together without care.

Their bodies were loaded into slings, lashed with ropes, and hurled across the walls.

They struck courtyards, plazas, rooftops.

Heads burst, entrails scattered.

Disease was loosed alongside fear.

From within the city, bells tolled again, priests crying out against such desecration.

Incense filled the streets, relics paraded, prayers rising against the tide of filth.

But prayers could not stop the stones, nor silence the drumbeat of corpses falling from the sky.

Amid the noise and chaos, Julius walked the captured wall, Sabellus at his side.

"The outer ring is secure," Sabellus reported. "Our men sweep every hour. Resistance is broken here."

Julius nodded, though his gaze was fixed on the looming second wall.

"Then we turn their sanctuary into a grave. Every breath they take will remind them that Rome surrounds them."

Sabellus hesitated, then asked the question that weighed on many lips.

"And when the inner wall falls… when the noble quarter burns… what then?"

Julius's eyes narrowed.

"Then we reach the heart. And I will tear it apart until she is found."

There was no need to name her.

Sabellus bowed his head.

That night, the camps glowed with firelight.

Legionaries sharpened blades, fletched arrows, mended armor.

Engineers oiled ropes and counterweights.

In the streets below, the volunteer corps labored still, tearing down the city one stone at a time.

And from the noble quarter, horns sounded, warning of what was to come.

The second wall loomed now as the true barrier, its towers bristling with fresh defenders, its gates locked tight.

But the outer ring was gone, its streets stripped bare, its towers turned into Romanus war machines.

The jaws of the siege had closed tighter.

And every man on both sides knew—the next clash would drown the noble quarter in fire and blood.

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