(Vladford POV)
Winter came early.
It did not announce itself with snow, nor with the clean bite of frost against skin. It arrived quietly—in ledgers, in thinning sacks of grain, in the way the cooks stopped offering seconds without saying why.
The war council gathered at dawn.
The tent was crowded, heavy with the smell of damp wool and oil lamps. Maps lay spread across the table, corners weighted down by daggers and stones. Charcoal marks traced reclaimed villages, supply roads, and the narrow passes that still bled imperial patrols.
No one spoke at first.
They waited for me.
I took my place at the head of the table, hands resting flat against the wood. I did not sit. Sitting implied comfort. Authority, perhaps.
There was no comfort left to pretend at.
"Begin," I said.
An older quartermaster cleared his throat. His hair had gone white in the last year alone. Hunger aged faster than time.
