Chapter 14 — The Siege of Seoul

The dawn was a bruise above the shattered skyline. From the hills outside the city, artillery shells made the world a shower of dust and iron; each thunder rolled through ruined streets and loosened ash from half-collapsed towers. Jets tore the air apart, releasing trailing fire that struck nests of black things far below—beasts that shrieked as heat crawled through their forms and turned flesh into smoke.

“Keep the airstrike tight!” Eva’s voice snapped over the radio, thin but steady. “Incendiaries on the nests. Burn them out!”

Flamethrower tanks moved like angry beasts themselves, spewing tongues of orange that licked at the bases of ruined complexes. For a moment the plan worked: nests collapsed into cinders, lesser monsters staggered and burned, and the pipelines of fear seemed to cough.

From a distant hill, colossal speakers began to bellow, a mechanical chorus meant to draw the Titan’s attention. The sound was monstrous—the unnatural roar amplified until it hummed in soldiers’ bones.

“It’s working,” a lieutenant breathed, voice small in the belly of the armored column. “They’re coming.”

Something enormous answered. A tremor ran through the earth as a smaller Twin Tyrant—one of the scouts—broke the horizon and crashed into the city with the force of an earthquake. Troops opened up with nitrogen canisters, hosing the thing in blinding white fog to choke its lungs. The beast coughed, glassy saliva snapping in the cold, and the freeze lines spread along its legs.

“Now! Plant the charges!” Kohaku ordered.

Seo Hana’s assault teams moved like a blade—hard, confident. They swarmed the frozen flank and wired C4 to the beast’s joints, laughing at its now-limp struggles as if victory were inevitable. Even Kohaku allowed the shortest of nods.

But Agnes’ tone over the comms cut that small triumph.

“Anomaly detected. Size signature mismatch. Scanning… recalibrating.”

Aalto’s synthetic voice, soft and mechanical, echoed the find in a whisper only Hana could hear as he stood beside her.

“Master Hana—reading does not match… Tyrant larger than initial visual. Multiple signatures present.”

Hana’s jaw tightened. “What do you mean larger?”

Before anyone could answer, the charges detonated—bright, perfect. The smaller Tyrant collapsed in a ruin of steam and shuddering stone. Men cheered, a relief that tasted like rain.

Kohaku was not smiling. He crouched, hand on the earth where soil had been churned by the beast’s steps, and let the warmth and smell of ozone and ash settle.

“This is wrong,” he said quietly. “This was only a sentinel.”

“What are you talking about, Kohaku?” Rika stepped up beside him, sword sheathed, voice tight. “We just destroyed one. Isn’t that—”

“Do you not see?” Kohaku’s voice was a low knife. “We were fed bait.”

Then the world changed. The sky broke like glass as something immense shadowed the air above them. The true Twin Tyrant descended not on feet but on wings—vast, membranous, carrying ruin on its breath. It landed across the ruined avenue like a mountain folding itself into the city. Its two heads turned independently: one horned and bovine, eyes like coals; the other bear-muzzled, teeth long and dripping. When it opened its maw, the air tasted of iron and old storms.

“What the—!” a private shouted, voice gone thin.

Soldiers fired everything they had—artillery, autocannons, nitrogen sprayers—but the sprays hissed uselessly against scales that drank away the cold. Tanks charged and were swallowed; tracks buckled as a tail smashed through a formation like a club. A flamethrower tank screamed as a wing beat it into scrap. The ground turned to chaos: men thrown, cries, the staccato of spent magazines.

“Pull back! Pull back!” Eva shouted, disbelief cracking her command. “Concentrate anti-armor—focus the cannons!”

A barrage tore the air but hardly nicked the beast. It shook itself as if shrugging off a summer breeze. Soldiers went down in piles, their radios choked by static and blood. The stench of burning fuel and something far older filled their lungs.

Rika’s face had gone white. She looked at Kohaku—not with the defiance she’d shown before, but with something raw and exposed.

“What do we do?” she asked.

Kohaku tightened his fingers around his weapon. For a heartbeat the furious noise of war pulled away and it was only him against the monstrous silhouette. He did not shout a grand plan; he gave measured commands like a surgeon’s hand.

“Hold the line where you can. Evacuate the wounded. Concentrate every freeze unit at the legs—if you can slow it, lure it into the kill zone. Infantry—stay behind armor. Wait for my mark.”

His calm steadied a few, but fear ran like a fever. Even Hana, who had bragged for blunt assaults, felt the cold weight of the Tyrant’s presence.

“You think we can do it? This thing—” Eva’s voice was thinner now, threaded with panic. “We’re losing too many!”

There was no answer for comfort. Only the creature’s red eyes bored into them, unblinking, as if measuring resolve and deeming it insufficient.

Agnes materialized at Kohaku’s shoulder, her synthetic face impassive but her processors working at a furious pace.

“Recommendation: deploy ranged incendiary swarms once legs are immobilized. Thermal spike to destabilize regenerative matrix.”

Kohaku nodded once. “Then do it. Rika—coordinate with Hana. Get those siege teams into position.”

Rika scrambled into motion, shouting. Hana barked orders that moved like artillery across the ranks. Men and women, exhausted, frightened, moved with the stubborn grace of those who have no other option.

The Tyrant reared, and for a second—only a fraction—the city held its breath. Kohaku felt it then: close enough that the heat from its body made his visor fog. He tasted the metallic tang of adrenaline and something older—memory, fear, the dead whispering. He steadied himself and listened to Rika’s voice cut across the chaos.

“For the people inside!” she cried, and a crown of soldiers answered, stepping into the storm with grenade belts and steel resolve.

Kohaku closed his eyes for a sliver of time and thought of every life the Tyrant had taken—the children, the mothers, the ones who had been buried under ash and ruin. He opened them and, without flourish, prepared to meet the thing the world had called a god.

The battle had grown sharp and personal; there would be no easy answers. In the roar and the smoke, only one truth seemed certain: tonight would be measured in how many would stand at dawn.

At Kohaku’s shoulder, Agnes whispered a single line that sounded almost like a prayer.

“Prepare, Commander. This will not be like the others.”