The city of Aracina groaned under the weight of war, its once-proud walls now battered and scarred, its streets humming with the grim rhythm of a people preparing for death.
Seventeen days.
Seventeen days of iron and fire, of screams in the night and the ceaseless thud of siege engines pounding against stone. The land beyond the walls had become a graveyard—ladders splintered into kindling, siege towers reduced to smoldering husks, corpses left to bloat under the merciless sun. The stench of rot and burning pitch clung to the air, thick enough to taste.
Inside the city, life had narrowed to the essentials: survival, defiance, and the slow, methodical preparation for the next assault.
The medics worked in shifts, their hands slick with blood as they stitched flesh and set broken bones. They were running low on supplies—clean linen for bandages, even the sharp-smelling salves made from crushed herbs and animal fat.
