Dawn came pale and heavy, its light dimmed by the haze of smoke that blanketed the city.

The streets below the inner wall were a charnel pit—piles of bodies half-buried in ash, armor and banners tangled together in death.

Ravens wheeled above the carnage, their cries lost beneath the slow, steady rhythm of Romanus drums echoing through the ruins of a city once so full of life.

The night's victory had broken the stalemate.

By sunrise, Julius's orders had gone out: press the attack.

No respite, no mercy.

The breaches won in blood would not be left to heal.

Siege horns bellowed as the legions surged forward once more, this time in force.

The engineers had labored through the night, repairing bridges and ladders under torchlight while the rest of the army roused from their slumber.

By midmorning, the entire front was alive again—tens of thousands of men pouring into the shattered avenues like a living tide.

The inner wall, once proud and white, now stood cracked and blackened.

Sections had already begun to crumble beneath constant bombardment of stones hurled by Catapults and Trebuchets.

Even as the soldiers advanced, the trebuchets continuously thundered from the outer ramparts, hurling their stones with mechanical precision.

Every impact sent plumes of dust and broken masonry into the air.

Atop the wall, the Francians fought with the desperation of the damned.

They had no ranks now, no order—only scattered knots of men clinging to towers and stairways, hurling whatever they could find: arrows, javelins, stones, even furniture ripped from nearby homes.

Priests stood among them, waving relics and screaming invocations, their robes streaked with blood and soot.

But the Romanus legionnaires were coming, relentless as the tide.

Ladders thudded against stone.

Bridges swung into place from rooftop to parapet.

Across the open ground, shield walls advanced in step, the gleam of bronze and steel cutting through the smoke.

"Forward!" cried Sabellus, his voice booming over the din as his cohort stormed a section already cracked by the night's fighting.

"No hesitation! Strike as one!"

The ladders shook under the weight of climbing men.

Arrows hissed down, finding throats, eyes, and exposed flesh—but for every Romanus man that fell, another took his place.

When the first legionaries reached the parapet, they met a storm of steel.

The Francians fought with the ferocity of beasts.

One knight, his armor dented and blackened, swung a morning star that crushed three helmets before a sword found his belly.

Another hurled himself into the press, tackling a Roman clean off the wall to their mutual deaths.

But the line held—and then it broke.

The breach widened.

Sabellus led his men along the parapet, his gladius rising and falling in brutal rhythm.

Behind him, cohorts poured through the gap, spreading along the wall like wildfire.

Trumpets signaled fresh waves to climb.

Soon, the defenders began to scatter, their morale shattered in the face of this overwhelming might.

Some fled down the inner stairways, trying to regroup around the noble quarter's heart.

Others simply leapt from the battlements, preferring the mercy of the stones below to the Roman blades above.

By midday, the red banners of Romanus flew from five of the wall's towers.

Julius watched from a captured bastion, his eyes cold and unreadable as the legions tightened their grip.

Below, the noble quarter burned.

Villas and gardens—once symbols of Francian grace—were now engulfed in fire and smoke.

Marble fountains ran crimson with blood.

Horses screamed from stables as flames consumed them.

The air itself seemed to tremble with the weight of the empire's advance.

Sabellus approached, his armor blackened, his cheek streaked with dried blood.

He saluted sharply.

"The wall is ours, sire. The northern gate fell an hour ago. The defenders are retreating toward the palace grounds."

"And the losses?" Julius asked.

"Within expectations," Sabellus said grimly. "Ours are far fewer than theirs. The Francians are breaking, and our advantage of numbers is deepening."

Julius gave a slow nod.

"As expected."

He turned his gaze toward the distant palace. Its high towers rose above the smoke, gleaming faintly even under the ash-choked sky.

Around it, a ring of desperate defenders rallied—the last remnant of a once-great army.

"She has not appeared," Julius murmured.

Sabellus followed his gaze. "Saint Joan?"

The emperor's eyes hardened.

"Yes, the girl whose voice rallied this kingdom to lasting this long in a fight with a superior foe, only now she refrains from the battlefield abandoning those she had called up to action. Though its likely not her own doing, the noble lords, and possibly even the royal family see her power a shield with which to protect them personally."

The wind tugged at his cloak, carrying with it the stench of burning flesh.

"It changes nothing," he said at last. "The city is already ours. Let them cower in their palace. They'll starve soon enough. and at that time we can storm the keep, and in doing so reclaim our stolen princess."

By afternoon, organized resistance had collapsed entirely.

The Roman advance slowed only to extinguish remaining pockets of defense.

Streets once lined with merchants and carriages now ran red with blood and bile.

The noble quarter—its marble mansions and gilded balconies—was reduced to a warzone.

Statues of kings lay shattered in courtyards.

Legionaries swept through each district with mechanical precision.

"Clear every house!" the centurions ordered. "No survivors, no ambushes!"

Doors were kicked in.

Anyone found inside—a knight, a servant, a priest clutching religious totem—met the sword.

The cries of the dying mingled with the clash of steel and the groan of collapsing timber.

By the time the sun began to sink, the city's final defenders had fallen back behind the royal gates.

A wall of gilded iron, thirty feet high, barred the way to the castle proper.

The Roman legions halted there.

For the first time in days, Julius ordered a pause.

As dusk fell, the fires painted the city in shades of gold and crimson.

Julius stood before the palace gates, surrounded by his generals.

The streets behind him were choked with Roman banners and soldiers resting where they stood, too weary even to speak.

They had earned the right to revel in the spoils of victory, noble mansions being used as Barracks to house his soldiers.

Wine stores opened to slake the thirst developed by the conquering heroes.

Julius just stood there watching, even now the Francian Royal family continued to hold out, their entire castle at best had a few thousand defenders remaining in the face of overwhelming odds.

"Francia is finished," he said quietly.

He turned from the flames and began the walk back toward camp, his cloak trailing ash.

Behind him, the city burned, and above it all, the imperial banners of Romanus snapped in the smoky wind.

The war was not yet done, but the end was near.

His men would rest a few days, before beginning the final siege upon the palace itself.

Assuming the defenders within had not surrendered themselves to him by then.

It took almost everything he had not to walk up to the palace walls under cover of an armour tetsudo unleashing an Earth Resonance like an earthquake to take the vaunted grand walls down in an instant allowing his men to storm the keep and capture those within.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.