Hold the last light for nine nights

The watchfires have gone dark and yours is the last beacon in the valley. Each night the host of the dead marches on it: the Restless in their thousands, hounds that find every gap, armored Ironbound, archers that pick off exposed engines, healing heralds and walking ossuary giants. On the ninth night, the Pale King comes for the flame himself.

The dead pile up, and that is the whole game

Every skeleton you destroy falls where it died. The killing corridor fills with bone, and that bone is both your best resource and your worst problem.

• A Bone mill beside the kill zone grinds remains into crowns.

• Marrow-fed ballistae load the same bones as ammunition.

• An Ember spire burns the dead before they can pile up.

• Leave a heap too long and it becomes a ramp the next wave climbs straight over your rampart.

Every pile is a choice between income, firepower and safety.

Draft a fortress, not a deck

Eight siege engines, each with three tiers that change how it looks and fights: ramparts, ballistae, bombards, ember spires, bone mills, quarries, floodgates and the Sunfall mortar. Each dawn brings a choice of relics that rewrite how they work together. Bolts that pierce six bodies and freeze them. Mills that feed the battery. Mortars that lob shells clean over your own walls. Then choose the road: each one sends a different army from a different direction.

Command the siege

The engines fire on their own, but the night is yours to steer. Call Sunfall on a giant raising its mace, Purge a bone ramp before the host climbs it, or Rally to save a wounded wall. Focus every engine on one threat, open a floodgate to change the army's path, or move a veteran engine to cover a new road.

Every expedition teaches the next

Survived nights earn memories in the Book of Remembrance. Spend them on permanent blueprints and on six doctrines that start the watch in different ways: the Warden, the Bonewright, the Ashkeeper, the Vowkeeper, the Bellbreaker and the Cantor. Four battlefields each change the shape of the defence. After your first victory, the Black Litany offers optional vows that make the host harder and pay more for it.