The first granary burned under moonlight. A gout of blue fire climbed into the sky, visible from ten miles away, curling above the treeline like a signal from hell. The flames had been fed powdered brim-oil, smuggled in clay pots disguised as soap jars by Fornos's Architects weeks prior.
It was only the beginning.
In his underground command center, Fornos stared at a fresh parchment—a complete list of Zatack's known granaries, storehouses, and food depots. It had come via a secure courier: a red-wax sealed envelope bearing Lord Gorvan Mitis's personal sigil. The ink was spare, the message blunt.
"Confirmed assets. Proceed."
Fornos set the paper down, eyes sharpening in the mana-lamp's glow. He tapped the table once, and the Architects—hooded minds of Dag's hidden logistics guild—leaned forward. "Begin spread. Assign target clusters. Balance risk. Prioritize granaries within thirty leagues of transit hubs."
One of them, a thin man named Relen, smiled. "And the blades?"
"They arrive tonight."
By the next day, twenty-four mercenaries arrived at the mountain fork pass where Fornos had arranged a hidden waystation. They were a ragged collection of arsonists, poisoners, and former siege-breakers—castoffs of the last merchant war. Some bore old noble insignia burned off their armor. Others wore mismatched gear or no gear at all.
But every one of them knew how to kill without honor, and that's exactly what Fornos wanted.
Gorvan had selected them personally. "You'll find them crude," the note had warned. "But they finish what they start."
Fornos didn't flinch. War was not an art of beauty—it was a trade in consequences.
He assigned each mercenary cell to an Architect, pairing blades with maps and shadow-routes only Dag's network had memorized. These Architects were more than couriers; they were invisible quartermasters, each responsible for maneuvering the tools of ruin precisely where needed.
The campaign began.
Five days later, the westernmost fire ignited—a village storehouse in Talveren territory, stuffed with a winter's worth of grain. Two saboteurs had slipped in during a rainstorm, posing as wandering workers seeking shelter. They had soaked the rafters in alcohol and powder, then vanished hours before the spark caught.
The explosion shattered three nearby homes. By morning, two hundred families had no food. A local priest called it a curse. The baron blamed a faulty lantern. The panic, however, spread without needing truth.
On the second night, four more stockpiles were hit across different territories:
One poisoned with ironroot extract.
One drained into a dry well.
Two burned, leaving only scorched black teeth of stone walls.
Zatack's outer vassals began sending panicked ravens back to the capital. "No food in the west."
"Granaries lost. Was it rebels? Cultists?"
"Requesting martial golems for internal security."
House Zatack's leadership, however, was still stuck searching for the Ghost Roads, blind to the parallel war now underway—a war not of sieges and thunder, but of hunger and dread.
But not every mission went as planned.
A saboteur was captured in the southern province of Kavelmoor, caught placing flamevine powder near a mill. The local militia interrogated him—his tongue was cut out, but he managed to carve a symbol into the wood floor before he bled out: the dag-shard, a fractured triangle used only by Fornos's inner network.
Elsewhere, a failed arson turned into a massacre. One mercenary tried to ignite a warehouse too close to the barracks. He was discovered mid-act. In the chaos, the building collapsed, killing six innocent laborers. The locals rallied and hunted him down with pitchforks, hanging him from a grain-sifter.
War was rarely clean. Fornos knew this. He accounted for failure. But he studied it, too.
Inside his chambers beneath the Ash Spine Ridge, Fornos drafted something new—a ledger unlike any he'd built before. He called it: "Morale Descent Index."
On a series of lined parchments, he tracked:
Time between first fire and civilian panic.
Ratio of noise to unrest (how many explosions before rumors of invasion spread).
Visibility of smoke versus troop redirection.
Frequency of market disruptions due to food hysteria.
It was not about numbers of dead. It was about psychological collapse—how the illusion of control shattered, and how swiftly chaos filled the cracks.
He noticed something remarkable: Noise caused confusion.
Fire triggered fear.
Smoke traveled faster than fact.
Even a small blaze, if visible across a village, could cause rumors of rebellion, famine, or invasion—none of which needed to be true.
By the time House Zatack issued decrees ensuring their grain stores were "secure," it was too late.
The people didn't believe them.
In Zatack's high court, Lord Belvian Zatack was red-faced, slamming a steel goblet onto the war table. "I want names," he barked. "How are they feeding an army? How are they lighting our stores while we're watching the skies?"
His advisors were silent. The marshal cleared his throat. "With respect, my lord… We trained our scouts for battle logistics. Not… shadow wars."
Belvian scowled. "Then train them again. I want every warehouse guarded. Any tunnel leading toward a granary collapsed. Anyone transporting salt, vinegar, or flint outside protocol is to be hanged."
It was fear speaking. And fear was what Fornos wanted.
Fornos didn't need Zatack's cities to fall. Not yet.
He just needed their vassals to distrust their masters.
Already, there were signs. A border province sent a missive declaring emergency autonomy. Another had begun trade talks with House Mitis—quietly, of course, through merchant intermediaries.
Food wasn't just supply.
It was loyalty.
It was power.
Burning it didn't just starve an army. It softened a kingdom.
Days later, Fornos received a coded scroll from an Architect embedded in the south.
"Smoke reached Silverfen. Locals riot over flour prices. Zatack guard beaten in open market. Incident blamed on Mitis saboteurs. They fear shadows now."
He smiled.
"They should."