The golems marched back east—silent, ponderous shapes glinting in the sunlight, their blockade mission abruptly abandoned. These were Zatack's trade-crushing war machines, nearly five hundred in total, pulled from mountain passes and valley roads to reinforce the increasingly fragile front lines.
What had once been a solid plan—choking off Mitis trade with brute logistics—had failed. Fornos's Ghost Roads made the blockade irrelevant, and Zatack's food crisis now demanded aggressive retaliation. Their generals, desperate to stabilize, wanted steel at the border, not guarding empty paths.
But their retreat would not be simple.
Deep beneath the neutral city of Caelvet, in a hidden chamber carved into an abandoned salt mine, Fornos placed a finger on a map pinned to a wide blackwood table. Around him, Mitis generals stood in cautious silence, eyeing the strange red lines drawn like veins across the parchment.
"These," Fornos said, "are the routes Zatack's golems will take to reach their front line at Gab."
He tapped three intersections—valleys, narrow paths, and old roads now clogged with displaced people. "And these are the rivers of flesh we've already begun to divert."
General Vass Nerril of Mitis frowned. "You're using civilians to slow a military column?"
"No," Fornos said. "I'm allowing them to survive—by walking directly into Zatack's logistical arteries. Think of them not as sheep. Think of them as—"
"Obstacles," finished Vass grimly.
Fornos only nodded.
The plan was elegantly cruel.
Zatack's shock troops and golems were meant to redeploy rapidly. But Mitis forces had begun guiding tens of thousands of civilians—peasants, laborers, and merchants fleeing razed villages—directly into those projected golem paths.
These weren't forced movements. Quite the opposite. Mitis soldiers escorted the refugees with food and fake promises: "There's shelter ahead.""You'll be safe in the eastern valleys.""Avoid the plague in the west."
By the time these civilians saw the marching columns of steel and banners bearing Zatack's crest, they were too far in to turn back. And Zatack's forces couldn't mow them down—not without sparking rebellion among their own allies and vassals.
The first clash of confusion occurred in the Gharnel Pass.
A convoy of 38 Zatack golems, escorted by two battalions, was forced to halt for six hours when nearly 2,000 civilians appeared ahead of them—mothers dragging carts, barefoot children sobbing in the mud, elders coughing in wagons. Some cried out in recognition, believing Zatack was there to protect them.
The commander, a man named Captain Eltor Rann, was caught between choices.
"Hold ranks," he ordered. "Do not engage."
But the people didn't stop. They swarmed the soldiers begging for food, water, medicine—some even clung to golem legs, slowing their movements.
Rann tried to route around them, but the valley was narrow and the terrain steep. Reorganizing a golem column without advance scouts took precious hours.
By nightfall, the convoy had moved only five miles.
Similar scenes played out across four other major routes.
In the Brevin Hollow, an entire bridge was collapsed under the weight of peasants trying to flee what they believed was a plague in the west—an illness entirely fabricated by Mitis whisper-networks.
Near Lake Moril, Zatack golems were forced to use their own rations to feed a desperate crowd lest they spark violence.
In Tollmere Ridge, two Zatack knights were dragged from their mounts when trying to push civilians back. Their screams echoed for miles.
Fornos received these reports with quiet satisfaction. "It's not blood we need to spill. It's order we must erode."
But it wasn't just confusion.
It was demoralization.
Zatack's soldiers, trained for clean marches and brutal combat, were now caught in the stench of the desperate. They saw gaunt faces, starving infants, rotting wounds. They were not fighting men. They were herding ghosts, and it wore down their morale like acid.
Some commanders ordered their men to abandon formation entirely to help the civilians—offloading food or water from supply wagons. Others grew cruel, screaming at the weak, threatening beatings just to get the march moving again.
Both types of responses led to the same outcome: disorganization.
Fornos took note of every failed column. Every commander who lost his nerve. Every soldier who hesitated before stepping past a crying child.
And then he plotted where Mitis should strike next.
Back in the command center, Gorvan Mitis reviewed a map updated with peasant flow lines.
"These people," he said, voice quiet. "They're suffering."
"They were already suffering," Fornos replied. "We've simply given their suffering a direction. Zatack created this crisis when they lit our villages and strangled our borders. I am merely turning their cruelty into a blade."
Gorvan did not argue further. He knew war.
Three days later, a major Zatack golem detachment finally arrived near Gab's western ridge—eighteen hours late, short on supplies, and several units missing entirely. Their captain was furious, accusing his scouts of sabotage, his vassals of betrayal.
He found no traitors.
Just thousands of exhausted, terrified peasants camped along the ridges and roads, their bodies forming a wall of unintended resistance.
The final insult came when his messenger reported:
Mitis troops were already digging in south of the ridge. They had been waiting.
Zatack's great reinforcement push had been stolen by traffic.
In Mitis territory, Fornos sat alone in a candlelit chamber, sketching new diagrams.
He called this one: "Frictional Attrition."
It wasn't about casualties.
It was about time lost, morale frayed, and momentum denied.
He traced a slow spiral along the edge of the map. "The more force Zatack applies," he murmured, "the more resistance we build... from the weakest stones."
The wolves among sheep wore no armor. But they conquered just the same.