The air inside the earthen dome turned icy and electric. Pedro's order hung over everyone like a suspended blade. One minute. Sixty seconds that seemed to both drag and fly. The dominant smell now was the cold sweat of fear mixed with the damp, earthy odor of the walls that protected them—and would soon become their prison or their tomb.

  The regular soldiers, with slightly trembling fingers, performed the automatic motions of loading their muskets. The clinking of wooden powder flasks, the dry sound of the lead ball being rammed down the barrel, the click of hammers being cocked. Each sound was amplified, a macabre ritual in the semi-darkness. Pedro saw their eyes, focused on their weapons, avoiding looking at their companions, avoiding thinking about what was on the other side of the earth.

  On the other side, Tainá and her four earth-sisters formed a tight circle. Their knotted, firm hands still gripped the staffs driven into the ground. Their breaths were synchronized, deep and controlled, but the sweat streaming down their temples and the visible tension in their necks spoke of the colossal effort of maintaining the shield. Tainá kept her eyes closed, her face a mask of absolute concentration.

  "A hundred and twenty... maybe a hundred and fifty heavy footsteps to the east," she whispered, her voice a thread of sound only Pedro, beside her, could hear. "Men with boots. And... something dragging. Metal? Heavy weapons? Can't distinguish well. To the west... the terrain is more uneven, thick roots, the creek blocks a bit. Fewer footsteps. But still there. A line. Like a living fence."

  Pedro nodded, his mind processing the tactical information. The line to the west was their only hope. A fence could be broken.

  "Maintain the connection," he asked in an equally low voice. "The moment we open up, I need you to feel any movement on the path we'll take. A trip, a loose rock, a hole... anything that could slow us down."

  Tainá opened her eyes for an instant. They were a dark brown, almost the color of the earth she commanded.

  "I'll try. But I can't promise clarity. When the barrier falls, it will be... loud. In every sense."

  He understood. The dome wasn't just physical protection; it was a muffler. The moment it fell, they would be flooded with the sound of the outside world: the shouts of the bandeirantes, the barking of dogs, the crackle of torches. The sensory shock would be part of the danger.

  The adepts—a young man with a fire gem set in an iron ring on his thumb, an older woman holding a canteen where the water inside glowed with a soft blue light, and a skinny boy with gloves whose fingertips were made of frozen crystal—grouped near Pedro. Their faces were pale but determined.

  "Remember," Pedro said to them, his firm voice cutting through the tension. "It's not about defeating them. It's about confusing them. Fire: create a curtain of smoke and low flames on the east flank after the musket volley. Water: the moment we attack west, send a strong jet at the ground ahead of us, turn it to mud. Ice..." he looked at the gloved boy and then at his own dagger. "...you and I handle the ground and anything that tries to get too close too fast. Freeze. Lock. Delay."

  The fire adept, a boy who couldn't be more than seventeen, named Léo, swallowed hard.

  "What if they have... those ones that turn into monsters? Like the ones that attacked the Mocambo last time?" His voice came out a bit shrill.

  Pedro put a hand on the boy's shoulder. It was icy but firm.

  "Then we run faster. But today, Léo, they aren't expecting a counterattack. They're expecting scared prey bolting from a burrow. We'll give them a surprise. And speaking of which, as a fire adept, do you have grenades?"

  Léo just nodded. "Managed to get a few before escaping."

  "Then use them to clear the east, and then the west to clear the path."

  Pedro then stepped back and raised the dagger. The frost now covered not only his hand but climbed up his wrist, forming crystalline patterns under his skin. The dagger's blueish light illuminated his face from below, giving him a spectral appearance.

  "THIRTY SECONDS!" his voice echoed against the earthen dome.

  Nzambi, who had stayed beside Arlindo with the regulars, picked up his musket and stepped forward.

  "Pedro!" he called. "When we go out... the arrow. Albuquerque's arrow. It could be out there."

  The silence that followed was colder than Pedro's magic. The memory of that silent, precise death, of the arrow moving with a will of its own, hung over everyone.

  Pedro bit the inside of his cheek. That was a risk that couldn't be mitigated.

  "If it appears..." he said, looking at Nzambi and then at Tainá. "...it means Albuquerque thinks this point is too important. In that case, Tainá, on my shout, close the west exit again, no matter who has already gotten out. And everyone here inside..." his gaze swept over the soldiers. "...you shoot at it. Shoot at anything that flies. You can't aim properly, but a wall of lead might get lucky. Understood?"

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  The nods were silent, laden with the weight of that possibility.

  "TEN SECONDS!"

  Pedro positioned himself in front of the specials group, facing where the west opening would be. Behind him, the regulars crouched, forming an irregular line, musket barrels pointing in the opposite direction, east. The air was so charged it seemed about to crack.

  "TAINá!" Pedro shouted. "WEST OPENING, NOW!"

  Tainá let out a guttural grunt. She and her companions twisted their staffs.

  Pedro's command wasn't a request. It was a trigger.

  Tainá and her four earth-sisters, already at the limit of exhaustion, didn't simply "lower" the wall. They expelled that piece of the dome. With a joint, gut-wrenching effort, they twisted their staffs as if trying to pull their very souls from the ground. The curved wall of earth and roots, facing west, didn't open. It exploded.

  A colossal chunk the size of a cart detached with a deep, dry roar, like thunder born from the soil. It didn't fall; it was hurled with brute magical force toward the attackers clustering to the west. The compacted earth, mixed with stones and roots, turned into a volley of primitive, brutal artillery.

  The impact was horrific and efficient. Men advancing confidently, with machetes and spears raised, were mowed down by the sudden avalanche. Shouts of alert turned into screams of pure agony. The sound of bodies being hit by the main block was a dull, wet thud. The sound of others hit by the shrapnel and rocks flying like grapeshot was a mixture of dry cracks and cut-off screams. A thick, yellowish cloud of dust rose at the impact point, swallowing the attackers and mixing with the immediate smell of blood, churned earth, and sweat suddenly turned to fear.

  For a split second, there was a vacuum of sound on the west side, filled only by the moans of the wounded and the rustle of dust settling on the foliage. The bandeirantes' coordinated attack, which had seemed like a well-oiled machine, jammed violently.

  But only for an instant.

  From the dusty haze and the flanks, the shouts returned, now laden with rage and no longer just with the hunt.

  "They're coming out! Close the ring!"

  "Dogs! Go, get them! Get them!"

  "To the left! To the left!"

  The frenzied barking of hunting dogs, which had been muffled, became strident and close, a chorus of animal fury guided by men. Shadows began to move at the edges of the dust, crouching silhouettes quickly regrouping. The surprise had cost them dearly, but it hadn't broken the attack's backbone. The window of opportunity Pedro had created was closing rapidly.

  It was then that he shouted, taking advantage of the focus still turned to the chaos in the west:

  "TAINá!" His voice was a cut through the air, an impossible order. "EAST OPENING, NOW! REGULARS, PREPARE!"

  Inside the dome, Tainá almost fell. Her nose was bleeding, a bright red trickle contrasting with the soot and dust on her face. Maintaining the rest of the structure was already a miracle. Creating another opening was asking for total collapse. But she saw the logic, the feint within the feint. She exchanged a look with her companions. In their exhausted eyes, she saw the same fierce resignation.

  With one last sigh that seemed to tear something vital from within her, Tainá and the others acted again. This time, there was no strength for a projectile. The east section of the dome simply disintegrated. It didn't fly; it collapsed forward, like a sand door being knocked down. A curtain of loose earth, gravel, and smaller fragments poured over the bandeirantes already preparing to charge the west opening, creating more confusion and a sister cloud of dust.

  In that momentary chaos of two fronts being hit, Arlindo's voice roared from within the gunsmoke now filling the dome:

  "FIRE TO THE EAST!"

  POW! POW! POW! POW!

  The coordinated discharge wasn't from fifteen, but from twenty muskets that could still function. The thunder was even more deafening inside the space now being dismantled. Orange and yellow flames spat from the barrels, illuminating brief, ghostly scenes within the smoke: a soldier with eyes bulging in concentration, another covering an ear with his shoulder, a third staggering from the weapon's kickback. The dense, acrid, hot smoke of burnt gunpowder exploded backward but also gushed through the openings, mixing with the dust clouds. The air became unbreathable, a miasma of sulfur, sweat, dust, and fear.

  After the volley of bullets came the explosion of two grenades thrown by Léo, adding more chaos and death.

  It was perfect chaos. Planned, brutal, and ephemeral.

  "NOW!" Pedro didn't shout. He snarled the word, a guttural sound coming from the depths of his being, loaded with all the urgency and cold of his magic.

  And then, he threw himself forward.

  It wasn't an elegant leap, but a full-body lunge forward, through the original west fissure, into the outside world made of shouts, dust, barking, and the grey, treacherous light of dawn.

  Time, out there, seemed to have dissolved into chaos. Every action—the dome's explosion to the west, the collapse to the east, the musket volley—had happened in such a dizzying succession that they merged into a single roar of violence and confusion. For the attackers, who seconds before saw an impregnable earthen fortress, the sudden eruption on two sides at once was a shock that cut through their certainty.

  The bandeirantes' linear thinking, accustomed to pursuing and surrounding, seized up. "Which side?" The doubt, swift and poisonous, infected their command for one crucial instant. The men advancing west hesitated, looking back toward the noise of the gunfire east. Those to the east instinctively crouched against the hail of earth and then of lead, losing sight of the main target.

  It was one second. Just one. But in the desperate rhythm of escape, one second was an eternity, a breach in the siege's armor.

  And Pedro, with the coldness of one who had already planned the chaos, used that void of enemy certainty not to run, but to forge his own exit.