The eastern gate held for exactly as long as it took Meryre’s real army to arrive.
Khaemwaset saw them first from the wall above, torches spread wide across the dark ground beyond the palace grounds, too many to count quickly, moving with the grim discipline of trained soldiers rather than hired thugs.
The True Force. Meryre’s real strength has arrived. This is no longer a small strike. This is an attempt to take the palace by force.
"That’s not a raid," Sethnakht said beside him, her voice tight. "That’s an army."
"Where did he get an army?" Khaemwaset asked.
"Mercenaries. Nubian sellswords, maybe some of Amenmose’s own household guard dressed to hide their colors." Sethnakht’s jaw tightened. "It doesn’t matter where. It matters that we don’t have enough men to hold this gate if they push hard."
Hold the Gate. The eastern gate must not fall. If it does, the enemy force reaches the throne room within minutes.
Tiye-Nakht arrived at the wall moments later, her face pale but her voice iron steady as she gave orders to the gathered guard. "Every soldier we have, to this wall. Archers on the towers. If they breach the gate, fall back to the inner courtyard and hold there instead."
Khaemwaset felt the weight of the coming fight settle over him, cold and clear. STATUS PANEL flickered at the edge of his vision, familiar now in a way that still, somehow, felt strange every single time.
STATUS PANEL
Khaemwaset, Level 9
STR 9, AGI 13, VIT 8, INT 14, WIS 11, CHA 8, MAT 62
The first wave hit the gate like a wave hitting stone, ladders slamming against the walls, arrows arcing up from the dark. Khaemwaset ducked behind the parapet as one whistled past his ear, close enough to feel the wind of it.
Survive the Breach. Enemy forces are scaling the walls. Hold your position.
A man came over the wall to his left, blade already swinging. Khaemwaset caught the strike on his own sword, the impact jarring up his arm, and answered with a fast counter that opened the man’s guard just enough.
Skill triggered: First Instinct. Success.
EXP gained: 40
He didn’t have time to feel anything about it. Another man was already climbing over, and another behind him, the wall becoming a chaos of steel and shouting and torchlight flickering wild across desperate faces.
Sethnakht fought beside him like something out of the old war stories his borrowed memory still half remembered, fast and merciless, cutting down anyone who came within reach with an efficiency that made even the enemy soldiers hesitate before closing with her.
Fighting Beside Her. Sethnakht is drawing significant enemy attention. Protect her flank.
He nearly missed it, the man who came at her from the side while she was finishing another opponent, blade already raised for a strike she wouldn’t see coming in time.
"Sethnakht!"
He moved without thinking, Hunted Instinct screaming a half second warning, and threw himself between them, catching the blade on his own sword hard enough to send pain lancing up through his shoulder. The man stumbled from the force of the block, and Sethnakht finished him a heartbeat later, breathing hard, eyes wide.
"You didn’t need to do that," she said.
"I wasn’t going to lose you to watch," he said, and there wasn’t time for anything else, because the gate below them finally gave way with a splintering crash, and the enemy force poured through into the courtyard beyond.
The Gate Has Fallen. Enemy forces are inside the palace grounds. The fight moves to the inner courtyard.
They fell back as ordered, fighting a slow, brutal retreat toward the inner courtyard, and it was there, in the chaos of torchlight and clashing steel, that Khaemwaset finally saw him.
Amenmose, armor gleaming, sword already red, cutting through palace guards with the same trained, confident skill he’d shown in the sparring exhibition weeks ago, except now there was nothing playful about it at all.
Amenmose Revealed. Amenmose is fighting openly on Meryre’s side. His allegiance is no longer deniable.
Their eyes met across the courtyard, and something like relief crossed Amenmose’s face, the relief of a man finally free to stop pretending.
"Garrison prince," he called out, voice carrying over the chaos. "I did wonder when we’d finally settle this properly."
"You could have just told me you were a traitor," Khaemwaset said, moving to meet him. "Would have saved us both a lot of dinner parties."
Amenmose’s laugh was sharp and humorless. "Traitor. Is that what you’ll call it, when Meryre’s the one who actually understands what this kingdom needs? A strong hand, not a boy regent and his careful, indecisive mother."
They came together with a clash of steel, and this time Khaemwaset didn’t hold back at all, didn’t calculate for a watching crowd, didn’t restrain a single ounce of the strength the system had built in him over three brutal months. Amenmose was good, genuinely, formally trained since childhood, but Khaemwaset moved faster now, read his strikes a half second before they landed, and pressed the advantage with a cold, focused intensity that made Amenmose’s confident expression finally begin to crack.
Skill triggered: First Instinct. Success.
Skill triggered: Desert-Born Reflexes. Success.
EXP gained: 90
He disarmed Amenmose with a strike that sent the prince’s sword clattering across the stone, and had his own blade at the other man’s throat before Amenmose could recover.
Amenmose’s Fate. You have defeated Amenmose in open combat. His life is in your hands.
"Go ahead," Amenmose spat, breathing hard, hatred and something close to genuine fear in his eyes. "Kill me. Meryre wins either way. His army is already through the gate."
Khaemwaset hesitated, the cold, strategic part of his mind already calculating the value of a captured prince over a dead one, evidence he could still extract, leverage against Meryre’s faction that a corpse could never provide.
"I’m not killing you," he said finally. "I’m handing you to the Regent to answer for treason in front of the whole court."
Passive skill triggered. Genuine Grief and Inherited Resolve. Choosing justice over vengeance.
He struck Amenmose hard across the head with the flat of his blade instead, dropping the prince unconscious to the stone, and turned back toward the ongoing chaos just in time to hear Sethnakht cry out.
Sethnakht Down. General Sethnakht has been wounded.
He found her a moment later, one hand pressed against a deep gash along her side, still standing, still fighting, but visibly slower now, blood soaking dark through her armor.
"I’m fine," she said through gritted teeth, before he could speak. "Watch your own back."
"You’re not fine."
"I will be, once we survive the next few minutes." She pushed forward anyway, grim determination overriding whatever pain she clearly felt, and Khaemwaset stayed close beside her, covering the openings her wound now left in her defense.
Buying Time. The palace guard is rallying. Hold this position until reinforcements arrive.
They held the inner courtyard through what felt like an eternity of steel and fire and desperate, exhausted fighting, and slowly, gradually, the tide began to turn. Reinforcements poured in from the palace’s western wing, soldiers Tiye-Nakht had held in reserve for exactly this moment, and Meryre’s forces, without their strongest fighters left standing and their surprise advantage spent, began to break and scatter into the night.
New quest complete. The Battle Repelled. Meryre’s assault has failed.
New level reached. Khaemwaset is now Level 10.
The chaos slowly settled into something quieter, exhausted soldiers tending wounds, bodies being counted, torches burning low against the coming dawn. Khaemwaset found himself kneeling beside Sethnakht in the courtyard’s aftermath, pressing a torn strip of cloth against her wound with hands that wouldn’t quite stop shaking.
"We held," she said, wincing as he tightened the makeshift bandage.
"We held," he agreed. "But Meryre’s still out there. He sent an army and lost it, and he’s still free."
Something grim and certain settled into Sethnakht’s exhausted expression. "Then next time, we make sure he doesn’t walk away from it."
Khaemwaset looked around at the courtyard, at the scattered bodies and exhausted survivors, at Amenmose lying unconscious and bound nearby, and felt the full weight of everything that had happened tonight settle heavy in his chest.
They had won. But it hadn’t come free, and something told him, deep and certain, that the price of tonight’s victory wasn’t finished being paid.