Chapter 22: The Siege of Pyra

The air outside the mountain didn’t just grow cold; it died.

As Mira and Dorian stepped from the cavern’s throat, the absolute silence of the subterranean heights evaporated, replaced by the rhythmic, bowel-shaking thud of a ram against Pyra’s southern gate. The scent followed—the acrid stench of sulfur, scorched pine, and the metallic tang of ten thousand Iron Legion breastplates baking in the valley heat. 

"They're through the outer palisade," Mira said, her voice dropping an octave into a register of pure, molten command. She didn’t look at Dorian; she didn’t need to. The tether of the Accord pulsed between them, a golden thread stitched through her marrow, vibrating with the frantic beat of his heart.

"They won’t touch the threshold," Dorian replied. His breath didn't mist in the air anymore; the air simply crystallized where he stood, frost creeping across the jagged rocks like a living carpet of diamonds.

They didn’t run. They descended the mountain path with the terrifying grace of predators who knew the outcome of the hunt before it began. Below them, the Siege of Pyra was a tapestry of chaos. The Iron Legion—General Vane’s pride—was a silver serpent coiled around the base of the academy’s cliffs. Trebuchets flung casks of alchemist’s fire that bloomed like nightshades against the stone walls.

Mira felt the first strike of the ram in her teeth. *Thud.* The ancient oak of the Pyrian gate groaned, its iron bands screaming under the pressure.

"The gate is timber," Mira noted, her fingers twitching, sparks dancing between her knuckles like frantic fireflies. "Vane thinks he can burn his way into our house."

"Then show him what happens when fire meets a wall that cannot be consumed," Dorian said. He reached out, his hand hovering inches from hers. He didn’t grab her; he anchored her.

Mira closed her eyes for a heartbeat, drawing from the wellspring they had unearthed in the deep dark. She didn't just reach for her own heat; she reached for Dorian’s cold. She felt the way his power acted as a lens, focusing her chaotic flame into a single, needle-thin point of absolute intensity. 

She thrust her hands forward. 

The fire didn’t roar. It hissed, a white-violet streak of heat that bypassed the air entirely. It struck the wooden gates exactly as the ram retreated for another swing. 

"Mira, now," Dorian whispered, his voice the sound of a glacier shifting.

She didn't burn the wood. She crushed it. Using the staggering heat to bridge the atomic gaps, she compressed the carbon of the ancient oak. Under the weight of her will and the stabilizing chill of Dorian’s influence, the wood blackened, shummered, and then went translucent. The massive gates—thirty feet of solid timber—reconstituted into a single, jagged slab of diamond-carbon.

The ram swung forward again. The heavy iron head struck the gate with a sound like a bell being rung by a god. The iron shattered. Shrapnel whistled through the air, flensing the Legionnaires who had been cheering a moment before. The gate didn't have a scratch. It stood clear and indestructible, a defiant jewel in the face of the mud and blood.

"My turn," Dorian said.

He stepped to the edge of the precipice. The Iron Legion’s siege engines were repositioning, their crews scrambling to understand why the gate had turned to glass. Dorian didn't waste time with grand gestures. He simply exhaled.

A wave of absolute zero swept down the slope. It didn't behave like wind; it behaved like a physical weight. The humidity in the valley flash-froze into a blizzard of razor-sharp ice needles. The great wooden catapults groaned as the moisture within their beams expanded instantly, splitting the heavy timbers with the sound of a hundred muskets firing at once. 

Vane’s elite cavalry charged, their horses’ hooves churning the mud, but the ground beneath them turned to a sheet of black ice in a heartbeat. The formation crumpled. Men screamed as they slid into the jagged ruins of their own war machines.

Mira watched a centurion level a crossbow at Dorian. Without a word, she flicked her wrist. A wall of shimmering heat distorted the air around Dorian, turning the bolt to ash before it even crossed the halfway mark.

"We move together," she said, her voice carrying across the battlefield, amplified by the sheer pressure of their combined magic. 

They began the descent into the fray. Every step Mira took turned the scorched earth into a garden of obsidian glass. Every step Dorian took turned the air into a cage of frost. They were no longer two chancellors defending a school; they were a singular force of nature, an equilibrium of destruction that the Iron Legion was never meant to face.

General Vane appeared at the rear of the line, his golden armor reflecting the flickering pyres. He raised his sword, screaming orders that were swallowed by the howling wind Dorian had summoned. 

"He’s mine," Mira muttered, her eyes glowing with a terrifying, incandescent light.

"He is ours," Dorian corrected, his hand finally closing over hers.

The contact sent a jolt of such pure, unadulterated power through Mira that she felt her feet leave the ground. They weren't just fighting anymore. They were rewriting the physics of the valley. 

Vane pointed his sword at them, and for the first time, Mira saw the flicker of realization in the general’s eyes. He wasn't looking at two mages. He was looking at the end of his world.

Mira raised her free hand, and the very air above the Iron Legion began to glow a deep, bruised purple. 

"Let’s show them the Accord," Dorian said.

The sky didn't rain fire, and it didn't rain ice. It rained stars—shards of frozen light that burned with an internal heat, falling with the weight of falling mountains.

The Legion broke. The "indestructible" army turned and fled as the valley floor rose up to meet them in a surge of frozen stone and liquid flame. Through the smoke and the screams, Mira caught Dorian’s gaze. His ice-blue eyes were fierce, reflecting the carnage, but they softened when they landed on her. 

They stood amidst the ruin of an empire, two halves of a whole, watching as the greatest army in the world dissolved into the mist.

"It’s over," Dorian said, though his grip on her hand didn't loosen.

"No," Mira replied, looking toward the gate she had turned to diamond. "Now we actually have to run a school."

Dorian was about to answer when the ground beneath the diamond gate didn’t just shake—it vanished.