Snow fell heavy on the high roads of Zatack territory, muffling footsteps and cloaking the land in a blanket of indifferent white. Beneath that snow, iron marched.
Five hundred Zatack golems, their bodies lacquered in obsidian frost-armor, stood at key junctions along the eastern trade artery—once a lifeline for the surrounding city-states, now severed. Merchant caravans were turned away or detained. Civilian traders were conscripted or cast into dungeons. Every cart was inspected. Every wheel measured. Every crate opened.
House Zatack had chosen to choke the enemy slowly.
"Let them starve," said Lord Varyn Zatack, standing on a raised platform of stone overlooking a valley checkpoint. His cloak billowed in the alpine wind, rich with the blood-red trim of his house colors. "We'll see how long Mitis keeps its boots moving when their joints rust and their bellies shrink."
A scribe beside him bowed. "All primary arteries are now under lockdown. Our field commanders report no breaches. The Mitis lines should begin collapsing within the fortnight."
"Good," Varyn nodded. "Keep the pressure steady. Don't let them breathe."
But far to the west—beneath the frost, beneath the mountains—Mitis was not gasping.
It was breathing deeply.
Fornos stood in a repurposed rail node, buried under layers of rock and ice. Cracked sigils pulsed along the ancient floor, leftover from a forgotten golem relay that once served frontier cities. His presence was marked not by authority, but by orchestration. He didn't command legions—he wove threads, and those threads moved mountains.
The Architects were already in motion.
"Relay Cache Four has been activated," murmured a woman wrapped in dark travel leathers, her voice calm despite the urgency. "They've confirmed the second tunnel bypass under Skarn Ridge. No signs of Zatack scouts."
Fornos scanned the updated route map, noting changes with a small charcoal pencil. The network was no longer theory—it had come alive. Old smuggler routes, collapsed ore shafts, even decommissioned golem train lines—he had turned forgotten infrastructure into veins of supply, all feeding the forward momentum of House Mitis.
"Push the next convoy through cache six," he said. "Make sure they double-check the mana cores before leaving. We're near the stormbelt—the pulses get unstable this deep."
Another Architect leaned in. "Shall we deploy false convoys again to mislead the outer scouts?"
Fornos considered this. "No. Zatack thinks their blockade is working. Let them think so longer. No movement on the surface. None. We are ghosts."
Beneath the surface, crates of spare golem limbs, mana cores, food, and part replacements moved by sleds, winches, and compact crawler units—primitive, durable constructs operated by the Architects. There were no grand supply trains. No banners. No noise. Every movement was measured, timed, and invisible.
A week passed.
Zatack's blockades stood firm.
But something was wrong.
A patrol commander returned to Varyn with troubling reports. "Mitis formations haven't slowed. In fact… they've begun pushing past perimeter zones. They're not scavenging. Their golems are repaired, their stockpiles are replenished. Our forward scouts saw warm food being served from moving carts."
Varyn's lip curled. "Impossible. They're cut off."
"They were," the officer insisted. "But someone is feeding them. We've found no trails. No merchant flags. Nothing crosses our zones."
Varyn dismissed him with a wave and turned to his war-master. "Underground?"
The man grunted. "Maybe. But those tunnels were sealed generations ago. Most of them collapsed. Only rats and ghosts could get through."
Varyn narrowed his eyes. "Then someone's breeding clever rats."
Meanwhile, the supply rhythm Fornos established had begun bearing fruit.
Lord Gorvan Mitis rode with his second company, flanked by two elite melee golems—both sleek, lean constructs built for winter maneuvering. At a waystation hidden beneath a crag of ice and soot-covered rock, his troops gathered around steaming vats of barley broth and mana-cooked root stew. Spare limbs were swapped out of wagons with mechanical grace.
"They're moving like they've never been cut off," remarked one of Gorvan's captains. "The blockade's done nothing."
"It was never going to," Gorvan replied with a small smirk. "Not when he's in charge of the flow."
The captain raised a brow. "Fornos?"
Gorvan nodded once. "He's not a general. He's something worse. He fights with equations instead of blades. And every step Zatack takes, he's already measured it."
The men around them murmured in agreement. Fornos' logistics had removed hesitation from their campaign. Momentum, in war, was more valuable than firepower. Mitis golems could fight. But more importantly—they could keep fighting.
Deep below, Fornos watched as a sled carrying reinforced mana shards creaked its way down an incline into another vault.
"Zatack will grow desperate," he said to the Architect beside him. "Eventually, they'll send diggers. They'll try to trace the flow. When that happens, I want every secondary tunnel laced with collapses and false paths. If they try to map the web, it must strangle them."
"Understood."
Fornos stood and looked at the ceiling—just layers of earth between him and the snow-choked world above.
"They think war is just swords and numbers," he muttered. "But war is movement. War is timing. And right now… we move."
At Zatack's northern blockade point, confusion reigned. Supply scouts were now reporting less and less activity, not more. No desperate Mitis merchants. No smugglers. Just silence.
And yet the Mitis warfront had grown more aggressive.
The commander at that junction began to worry.
"Sir," his second-in-command said, "if they're not breaking through our lines, and they're not resupplying through our trade cities—then where the hell are they getting it from?"
The commander looked toward the mountains. The wind howled, but there was no answer.
Back underground, Fornos marked three more caches as active and drew a long red line connecting the furthest tunnel to the next staging area for Gorvan's strike.
"Begin phase two," he said.
The Architects bowed. In the next twelve hours, five more routes would open. Each unseen. Each unstoppable.
The Invisible Lifeline had become the war's true engine.
And Zatack… was starting to feel it.