Chương 223: 36. Sacrifice 1

By the time the Harbor Defense Commander refused the retreat order, the sky had already begun to sink. The first wave of non-combatants had only just passed through the North Gate. The streets still bore the scars of an entire day trampled by boots, cart wheels, shouted orders, and cursing.

Dusk clung to the harbor walls, yet the sea itself burned brighter than it had at noon — because out in the outer bay, the massed silhouettes of the Imperial fleet sliced the last of the daylight into ragged fragments, as if someone were carving the horizon apart, inch by inch, with a blade. I first saw the man in the war room on the lower level of Drake Tower. Honestly, even after that night was over, I still didn't know his name. Everyone simply called him the Harbor Defense Commander.

The same way everyone knew which street to seal, which warehouse to burn, which group had to leave first — but nobody had time to spare for the surname of a man who was never coming back. He wasn't particularly tall, nor especially broad. His armor even looked a little worn, like an old soldier who'd stood in sea wind so long that even his plate had learned to endure.

But when he stood there, everyone in the war room unconsciously steered their gaze away from him — not because the man radiated killing intent, but because he carried something far more troublesome. Resolve. Ignicia pushed the latest evacuation map across the table, her voice flat, without a ripple in it.

"The northern civilian route is clear. The second wave of wounded and clerks departs within the quarter-hour. Your men fall back with the second tier — leave only the necessary rearguard — then consolidate at the inner-city line." The Harbor Defense Commander didn't answer right away. He only looked down at the map, his fingers rough enough that they looked like they could scrape burrs off the parchment. After a few breaths, he slowly raised his eyes.

"Your Highness. Forgive my insubordination." No one in the war room made a sound. I'm not exaggerating — for a moment I didn't even dare swallow. Because "insubordination," in a room full of officers, was the kind of word that usually ended up written into military law, hung from a gallows, and used to teach bystanders the value of silence. Ignicia's expression didn't so much as flicker. Not even an eyebrow moved.

"Reason," she said.

"The enemy's numbers are too great." The Harbor Defense Commander's voice stayed steady.

"However orderly our withdrawal, once their dragon warlocks and fast gunboats press fully into the inner harbor, the blockade won't hold. If Drake Tower hasn't completed its final sequence, the evacuation line will still need more time." Lei Lian stood off to the side, arms folded, her dark eyes quieter than the night outside. The Harbor Defense Commander reached out and tapped the outer bay's flank on the map.

"I'll take three hundred small and medium vessels out." Several officers nearby audibly changed their breathing. Three hundred ships. For a commercial port, that wasn't a small number. Against the entirety of the Imperial Second Fleet sitting out there, it was probably just enough to make them blink a few extra times. Ignicia looked at him.

"That isn't an engagement."

"No." He nodded.

"It's a raid." He said it in the same flat tone someone might use to ask whether dinner was fish or meat.

"Load the ships with fire oil and explosives. Kill the lights, strike the colors, take the outer current around their flank. Go for the dragon warlocks' ships first, then the flagship. Burn what we can burn. Break up what formations we can break." He paused, his voice as steady as a mooring line pulled taut long ago.

"It isn't a waste of lives, Your Highness. It's buying time." I looked at him and felt something strange settle over me. Some people speak like they're making a proposal. Some people speak like they're asking permission. This man was neither. He was simply informing us that he intended to take a group of men who, like him, had no intention of coming back, and turn all of them into a single blade. Ignicia was silent for a moment.

"You know the order I just gave was to withdraw."

"I know."

"You also know what I want is a controlled retreat. Not a heroic waste."

"I know."

"And you still dare refuse?" To my surprise, the Harbor Defense Commander smiled. Not the kind of hot-blooded smile you'd print on a recruitment poster — thin, dry, like a man who'd already signed his name on his own coffin lid.

"Because I am the Harbor Defense Commander, Your Highness," he said.

"If even I do nothing but count heads, stare at maps, and walk backward with everyone else, then every ship out there on the sea grew there for nothing." I expected Ignicia to be furious. She wasn't. She only looked at him, her gold-red eyes bright as molten metal under the lamplight. That gaze alone was enough to freeze a man where he stood — but the Harbor Defense Commander didn't shift his shoulders so much as half an inch. At last, Ignicia asked a single question.

"How many are willing to go with you?"

"I didn't force anyone," he said.

"But some are willing." That line hit harder than any battle cry could have. Because true self-sacrifice isn't someone shouting for everyone to charge together — it's knowing, with total clarity, that you're not coming back, and having people quietly step in behind you anyway. I glanced toward the doorway. A handful of fleet officers who'd just been summoned stood there, faces growing grimmer by the second — but not one of them stepped back. Ignicia finally drew her gaze away.

"Approved." The single word pressed down on the whole room like a weight.

"You want time — I'll give you time." Her voice cut like a blade's edge.

"But you're not dying for spectacle. Once you're out there, the outer blockade, the inner withdrawal, and Drake Tower's abandonment sequence will all proceed on every second you buy us." The Harbor Defense Commander came to attention and saluted.

"Yes, Your Highness."

"And," Ignicia added, "don't die for me. Die for the people behind this port who haven't gotten far enough yet." This time, the man didn't smile. He gave a crisp acknowledgment, turned, and walked out. I watched his back disappear through the war room door, and an entirely inappropriate thought surfaced in my mind — if this man lived to see peacetime, he'd probably be the kind of regular who gave tavern owners headaches.

Drank more than a little, talked less than a little, stiff as a plank most days — and when it came time to actually commit, committed harder than anyone else in the room. Unfortunately, war has always had terrible taste. It's always the first to take men like that. By the time full dark fell, the entire harbor district looked as if it had been thrown under one enormous black sheet. Only the observation lights atop Drake Tower and the scattered, still-burning evacuation torches trembled in the night.

I stood at the edge of the mid-level platform, both hands gripping the freezing rail. Between the sea wind and my nerves, my knuckles had gone stiff. Below, the harbor was still moving. Convoys, stretchers, supply wagons, couriers, the wounded, crying, cursing, the grinding of wooden wheels — it had all run without pause since morning, as if the entire city refused to close its eyes. Civilians retreated layer by layer from the inner city; the garrison collapsed inward to match, tier by tier.

Every so often, a point of fire flared in the distance — the signal for another warehouse being torched before abandonment, proof that something else we couldn't carry had been burned by our own hands first. As for the three hundred ships the Harbor Defense Commander had taken out, they had long since vanished into the night. I had no idea where they were. And this wasn't some poetic notion about fate swallowing men into darkness — I genuinely couldn't see a thing.

Out past the harbor mouth, apart from the occasional sweep of a searchlight and the faint scatter of enemy running lights, there was nothing but black. Sea and night had fused into something like a pot of burnt ink. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"You've been standing here this whole time," Jessi's voice came from behind me. I didn't turn around.

"Standing looks more useful than sitting."

"I see." She came up beside me, following my gaze out over the water, her tone maintaining its usual, perfectly calibrated punchable quality.

"Well, right now you look like one of the most useless people in the entire harbor."

"Thank you. Your comfort landed with surgical precision right where I most wanted to be kicked."

"You're welcome. I'm naturally kind." I was about to tell her that her brand of kindness would make fish go on hunger strike — when the outer sea suddenly lit up. Not lightning. Not a signal flare. A single line of fire, thin and almost uncanny, as though an invisible hand had dragged a blade across the surface of the night sea. Jessi and I both straightened at once. A heartbeat later — a second line. A third. A fourth— The whole outer sea looked as if its veins had all caught fire at once.

Fire oil spread wildly across the water, flames rolling with the wind, tearing the darkness open on the spot. It wasn't beautiful. It was vicious. The sea was supposed to swallow fire — but that night, it seemed to be paving a road for it instead. As the flames surged, the silhouettes of the entire outer fleet were dragged into sharp relief, like countless jagged bones hauled up from the ocean floor.

"It's started..." Jessi murmured. Only then did the drums reach us, rolling in from behind the fire. Boom. Boom. Boom. Heavy as a heartbeat. Heavy as a funeral dirge. A moment later, banners rose amid the flames. I couldn't make out the crests — only the frantic way they thrashed between fire and black smoke, as if a crowd of men were deliberately holding their own names up at the mouth of hell, terrified the enemy might not know who to kill first. The spotters atop the tower began shouting, one after another.

"Fire on the flank!"

"Enemy outer line breaking formation!"

"Ship cutting into their center — no, that's ours!"

"Ramming approach — our fleet!" Firelight climbed the tower walls until my own face burned with it. I stared at that stretch of sea, watching explosions bloom between enemy hulls, then bigger fires, then cannon fire — not one or two shots, but a rolling, unbroken chain of thunder, like a guild of blacksmiths had gone collectively mad in hell and decided to use the whole ocean as their anvil.

The boarding cries were too distant to make out clearly, but every so often the wind carried a short, sharp scream — high and sudden, like a throat torn out with a hook.

"Those lunatics..." I muttered.

"Which ones?" Jessi asked.

"All of them." She didn't argue. Probably because she thought the same. As the fire spread, the spotters began calling out more specific details — not because they had godlike eyesight, but because they could read flag colors, deck heights, mast profiles, hull types, and formations.

"Dragon-warlock flags — three columns to starboard!"

"Our fleet's pressing toward them!"

"Enemy van turning — fast gunboats scattering!" That was when I finally understood. The Harbor Defense Commander hadn't gone out there to die alongside them. He was actually fighting. And fighting harder than anyone sitting safely behind a map. With three hundred small and medium ships, he'd set his own life and the whole sea ablaze, driving a wedge straight into the flank of the Imperial Second Fleet.

Not to win — but to drag their most dangerous, most critical ships into the fire, and make sure that on this first night of the invasion, they learned what it meant to hurt. The fire grew larger. Before long I couldn't tell which hulls were ours and which were theirs — only shapes colliding in fire and smoke, some exploding, some losing their masts, some driving straight into enemy bellies at an angle, like a shiver of sharks who knew they wouldn't see morning and had chosen the hardest bones to bite anyway.

The water clock in the tower dripped on. I'd had no sense of time before, but I remember it clearly now, because Lei Lian stood at the command table the entire time, doing only three things: listening to reports, watching the clock, and issuing adjustments. She didn't waste a single extra word.

"North Street's second squad, fall back to Stone Vault Alley."

"Warehouse crossbowmen — half stay, half retreat to the inner wall."

"Pier drawbridge — dismantle the second section early."

"Stop watching the sea. Watch the routes. Follow orders." Every command was another nail, driving the time the Harbor Defense Commander was burying his life to buy, inch by inch, into the evacuation line. One hour. Then twenty-three more minutes. By then, the fire had begun to turn ragged. Not smaller — just no longer holding that early, precise, biting order. The enemy formation still burned, still exploded, but the signals from our own ships grew fewer and fewer, and the drums slowly faded into nothing.

In the end there was only cannon fire, the crackle of burning wood, and a very hollow sea wind. When the spotters called the last positions, their voices had gone hoarse.

"Last friendly flag on the left wing... gone."

"No intact friendly silhouettes left in the outer line."

"Dragon-warlock ships — three sunk, one dismasted, two burning..." He trailed off there, as if he understood there was no point finishing the sentence. Because everyone already knew the Harbor Defense Commander wasn't coming back. I stared at that still-burning sea and realized I didn't even have a name I could silently say for him. It was a strange feeling. If a man has a name, he's still a person even after he dies.

But that man had driven three hundred ships into the flank of the Imperial fleet, had carved out an hour and twenty-three minutes for us, and all I could remember, in the end, was — the Harbor Defense Commander didn't come back. This world really can be a bastard sometimes.

"Cedric." Ignicia's voice came from behind me. When I turned, she'd already come down from the upper observation deck. Firelight lit the side of her face. There were no tears in those gold-red eyes — nothing extra at all. Only a clarity so complete it was almost cruel.

"Get your head together," she said.

"He bought that time for the people we're moving out — not for you to stand here staring." That was a hard thing to hear. But I had to admit — she was always most ruthless exactly when she was most right. I took a long breath and dragged my gaze back from the outer sea. Inside the tower, below it, along the harbor streets — couriers were still running in every direction.

The garrison pulled inward rank by rank: the wounded first, the able-bodied carrying those who couldn't walk, the last of the fighters covering the rear. The pre-set burn points along the harbor line had already been lit, one after another — abandoned warehouses, abandoned bridges, abandoned cranes, all proceeding in sequence, like a cold, methodical surgery performed without flinching. Ignicia took the route board Lei Lian handed her and spoke fast, each word landing like a blade finding a joint.

"South Street's remnants fold into the west line."

"Second inner-harbor blockade activates in the quarter-hour."

"Don't wait on the last two wagon loads in the warehouse district. Burn them."

"Ballistae that can't be moved — smash them. Can't smash them — push them into the sea."

"Any non-combatants still outside the gate — out within the quarter-hour. All of them." She kept issuing orders as she walked out of the tower. I followed, and something became very clear to me. This woman wasn't without feeling. She'd simply crushed it down to nothing and packed it into her commands. Some people grieve by crying. Some people grieve by screaming. When Ignicia grieves, she makes an entire city retreat faster.

The wind at the base of the tower was stronger, carrying the reek of tar, gunpowder, and sea salt all mixed together. The harbor below was cut into patches of light and dark by the scattered fires, like a map that had caught itself on fire from the inside.

"Second-tier defenses, all in position!"

"North Gate convoy clear!"

"Stone Vault Alley barricade complete!"

"Inner harbor chains lowered!" Reports rose and overlapped around us. Ignicia stood in the middle of the tower plaza, her cloak snapping hard in the wind. She raised her head and looked up at Drake Tower. The glance was brief. It still made something drop in my chest. Because I knew exactly what she was looking at. Not its height. Not how long it could hold. She was calculating when she'd have to destroy it with her own hands. Drake Tower was the harbor's most prominent eye, and its most expensive bone.

Observation, signaling, relay, aerial command, high-mounted ballistae — everything ran through this tower. As long as it stood, the enemy would want it desperately. And the moment it fell into their hands, every advantage we'd built today from terrain, sightlines, and relays would belong to them by morning. Ignicia pulled her gaze back.

"Send for the tower's garrison general." A courier took off running. I'd just started wondering where Lei Lian even was, when the night sky answered for me. Far above, the clouds flashed. Not fire from the sea. Not enemy cannon. Blue-white lightning. A heartbeat later, a low dragon's roar tore through the wind, pressing down from above the tower. It didn't carry the overwhelming, knee-buckling weight of a royal dragon's presence — it felt more like a battlefield sound. Clean. Short.

Edged with the restlessness of a coming storm. I looked up. A mid-sized blue dragon dove out of the clouds, wings spread wide, dragging a churning wake of air behind it. Fine threads of electricity danced across its scales, as if the whole creature had been forged from heated blue metal. It flared its wings sharply above the plaza and slammed its talons into the stone — cracks shot outward in a web, lightning snapping along every fissure — and I took half a step back on pure instinct.

Honestly, I'm rather proud of my survival instincts these days. Managing only half a step back in a moment like that easily ranks among my life's top achievements. The rider dropped from the dragon's back. Lei Lian. She patted the dragon once on the neck, sending it a few steps back to wait, then walked straight up to Ignicia and saluted.

"Sea-Quelling Dragoon, Tower Garrison General of the Yinglong Guard, Lei Lian, reporting."

"The night raid at sea has ended," Ignicia said.

"The Harbor Defense Commander has not returned." Lei Lian raised her eyes and looked once at the still-burning bay. Her face barely moved. Only the faintest, briefest pause — as if someone inside her had quietly nodded toward a man who would never walk back through any door.

"Understood," she said. And that was all. No mourning. No sighing. Not even a single "what a shame." Because everyone there knew this wasn't the time to waste words. Ignicia held out the route board.

"Drake Tower enters abandonment sequence." Lei Lian took it, scanning it twice.

"Observation deck first, or the ballista positions?"

"Half the ballistae come down first. The other half keep covering the northern withdrawal," Ignicia answered instantly.

"Strip the signal crystal-lamps. Take down the relay plates. Smash any positioning rings you can't carry. Empty the dragon-saddle vault. Every remaining blast-stone goes up the tower." Lei Lian nodded.

"The heart pillar?"

"Last." Those two words sent a chill down my spine. Drake Tower's heart pillar was the tower's true spine. Once that went up, this high tower — which had watched the sea winds and enemy shadows for who knew how many years — would collapse from the inside. Not the kind of damage you could patch up. The kind that turned into a ruin nobody could ever use again. Lei Lian rolled up the board and tucked it under her arm, glancing once at the blue dragon, still exhaling faint arcs of lightning with every breath.

"I'll reorder the evacuation sequence," she said.

"I'll bring the last spotters down from the top myself."

"You get one chance to light the fuse," Ignicia said. Lei Lian's lips barely moved.

"Once is enough." Standing beside them, I was struck by something absurd. This morning I'd been in the red-light district, checking flower rosters, auditing forged ledgers, and chasing down a Vixenfolk girl. Tonight I was standing here listening to two women decide, in tones calmer than most people use to order dinner, exactly where to blow up a military tower so it would come down cleanest. If my life has an author, I have serious concerns about the nature of his interest in me. Lei Lian turned to leave.

Ignicia called after her.

"Lei Lian." She stopped, turned back. Ignicia looked at her and said only this:"Squeeze every last second out of it." Lei Lian didn't say "yes." She only gave the smallest nod, then strode toward Drake Tower. The blue dragon rumbled low and followed at her heels, lightning flickering along its horns, throwing the cracks in the paving into sharp relief, like some half-woken ward about to stir. The tower doors opened. Squad after squad of garrison troops moved under Lei Lian's direction. Some hauled blast-stones up.

Some carried relay plates down. Some tore the crystal lamps from their frames. Some stripped the ballista mechanisms down to bare parts. Chains dragged across stone steps, metal rang against metal, boots stamped, dragons cried, and distant cannon fire from the sea wove through it all — until Drake Tower looked like a great beast being carefully, deliberately dismantled by its own people. I looked up at that tower and felt something catch in my throat. Not because it was going to fall.

Because from this moment on, it no longer belonged to us. It was still standing. Still tall. Still able to see the sea, the fire, an entire city gritting its teeth through its retreat. But its fate had already been written. Not tomorrow. Not later. Now — this very moment, while we were still standing at its feet — it had been judged as something we had to destroy with our own hands. Wind blew in off the sea, carrying the bitter reek of things still burning.

I watched Lei Lian's silhouette disappear through the tower doors, watched the soldiers stream in and out, watched Ignicia standing in the middle of the plaza like a nail driven between retreat and ruin — and understood, with total clarity: The hour and twenty-three minutes the Harbor Defense Commander had bought us was already being spent, one grain at a time.

And Drake Tower — the tower that had watched the sea, the enemy, and every sunrise and sunset over the Port of Isca Apubra — had officially entered its abandonment sequence.