"You've seen it before," Liam said.

"During the last war. We never got this close—our forces were broken before we could attempt an assault on the capital." Her golden eyes were distant with memory. "I watched thousands die trying to breach just the outer wall. By the time we retreated, we'd lost two-thirds of our army and gained nothing."

"We won't retreat," Liam said.

"No," Lilith agreed. "We won't. Because we can't. There's nowhere to retreat to."

She was right. They were a hundred and fifty miles deep in enemy territory with four days of supplies and an exhausted army. Retreat meant slow death by starvation and harassment. The only path was forward.

Victory or extinction.

No middle ground.

"Tell me you have a plan," Lilith said. "Please tell me you have something more sophisticated than 'charge the walls and hope for miracles.'"

"I have something more sophisticated than that," Liam said.

"How much more sophisticated?"

"Enough to maybe work."

"That's not reassuring."

"It's not meant to be." Liam turned to face her fully. "Honestly? I'm making this up as I go. Every strategy, every decision, every moment of false confidence—it's all improvisation based on incomplete information and desperate necessity."

The Synchronization number stayed stable, but Liam felt the admission of uncertainty as a pressure against his synthesis. Lord Azra wasn't supposed to doubt. The Originator of Sin didn't improvise.

Except he did, constantly, because that's what actors did. They took imperfect scripts and made them convincing through sheer force of performance.

"You're scared," Lilith observed.

"Terrified," Liam admitted. "But fear and action aren't mutually exclusive. I can be afraid and still do what needs to be done."

Lilith was quiet for a moment, studying his face in the fading light.

"When this is over," she said carefully, "assuming we survive—what happens to you?"

"I don't know."

"Will you stay? Lead the empire as Lord Azra permanently?"

"I don't know," Liam repeated. "Right now, I'm focused on making sure there's an empire left to lead. Everything after that is abstract."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer I have."

Lilith reached out, and after a moment's hesitation, took his hand. Her skin was warm despite the cold evening air, and the gesture was intimate in a way that transcended their political partnership.

"Let's do something, when this is over" she said quietly.

"What?"

"When this is over, we'll figure out why you keep staring sometimes, and the tension I feel when we are together."

Liam felt something twist in his chest—an emotion he'd thought he'd burned away with everything else. Hope, maybe. Or fear of a different kind.

"We might not survive long enough for that conversation," he said.

"But If we somehow do," Lilith insisted. "We'll be honest about what that is."

She gestured between them, encompassing months of partnership and unspoken tension and moments like this where the professional façade cracked enough to show something real underneath.

Liam met her golden eyes and saw vulnerability there that she rarely showed anyone.

"I promise," he said quietly. "If we survive, we'll figure it out."

"Good." Lilith squeezed his hand once, then released it, professional distance reasserting like armor. "Now tell me your insane plan for breaching the unbreachable."

Liam turned back to Sanctum Lux, his mind already calculating angles of attack and acceptable casualties and the brutal arithmetic of desperate assaults.

"We don't breach all three walls," he said. "We can't—we don't have time or resources for a proper siege. So instead, we create a single point of catastrophic failure and exploit it before they can respond."

"Which means?"

"Which means I'm going to do something very stupid and very dangerous that will either open a path through their defenses or get me killed trying."

Lilith's expression suggested she'd expected exactly that answer.

"Of course you are," she said. "Why would you do anything sensible?"

"Because sensible rarely ever works," Liam said. "Only desperate and insane breaks our doomed future."

He spent the next hour explaining the plan to Lilith, then Koth, then the assembled commanders. With each retelling, the reactions ranged from horrified to grimly accepting to Kael'thra's absolute faith that if Lord Azra commanded it, it would succeed.

The plan was simple in concept, nightmare in execution:

Tomorrow at dawn, the army would assault the eastern wall—the one with structural damage—with overwhelming force. Not to breach it, but to draw defenders and attention.

While that assault raged, Liam would take a small strike force—Fourth Order specialists and elite fighters—and approach from the north. Using Phase Shift to bypass the outer walls and Sovereign's Dominion to break enemy cohesion, they would fight through to the Cathedral itself.

Once there, Liam would use every technique, every skill, every fragment of stolen power to destroy the summoning infrastructure before the heroes could manifest.

It was suicidal.

It was impossible.

It was the only plan that had any chance of working.

"You'll be completely isolated," Commander Torven pointed out. "If you get trapped inside those walls with no support—"

"Then I'll improvise," Liam said simply. "That's what I do."

"Lord Azra will not be trapped," Kael'thra said with absolute certainty. "The Fourth Order will ensure his path remains open. We will die to the last warrior if necessary."

"Let's try to avoid that," Liam said. "I need you alive to cause chaos, not to be martyrs."

But Kael'thra's expression suggested she considered dying for Lord Azra's mission the highest possible honor.

Word of the plan was spreading, and those who heard it were either horrified or inspired.

The ones who were inspired joined the Litany.

The ones who were horrified... well, they'd already left or were coming to terms with following a madman into oblivion.

Liam dismissed the commanders and stood alone on the ridge, staring at Sanctum Lux as full darkness fell. Lights appeared within the city—thousands of them, like stars brought to earth. Somewhere in that constellation of light, the Cathedral was completing its ritual.

Somewhere in there, his destiny waited.

Victory or extinction.

Salvation or annihilation.

The synthesis of Liam Cross and Lord Azra against three thousand years of prophecy.

The number hadn't moved, but Liam felt the weight of tomorrow pressing against his consciousness like a physical force.

In twelve hours, he would either change history or become a footnote in the story of demonkind's extinction.

He was terrified.

He was committed.

He was as ready as he would ever be.

"Tomorrow," he whispered to the distant Cathedral, "we'll see if gods can die."

Then he turned and walked back to camp, where an army waited to follow him into impossible odds.

Because that's what faith demanded.

And Lord Azra, whatever he truly was, had become very good at meeting impossible demands.

The countdown reached its final day.

And morning would bring either breakthrough or oblivion.

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