The capital of Mitis pulsed with sound. Trumpets blared, banners flapped, and the once-muted stone plazas roared with life. Golems stood polished and proud at every archway, acting as both guardians and spectacles. Children ran between their legs, tossing bits of ribbon skyward. The scent of roasted meat, burnt oil, and perfumes filled the air. Bards sang of the victory over House Zatack—each verse more embellished than the last.
Gorvan Mitis sat upon the high platform constructed in the plaza's center. His armor gleamed under layers of ceremonial lacquer, but his expression was unmoved. Victory never softened him.
Below, nobles raised goblets. Knights posed for portraits. Craftsmen displayed broken Zatack armaments repurposed into commemorative art. Everywhere was cheer. But the man who'd made it all possible was absent from the celebration.
Until now.
A cloaked figure approached the platform's edge, stopping short of the dais. Gorvan didn't need to look twice.
"You are leaving," he said plainly.
Fornos Dag gave a slight nod. He stood without finery—no banners, no companions. Just his travel cloak and the weight of unfinished business.
"I would like to stay, Lord Mitis," Fornos said with the polite smile of a man long-practiced in noble etiquette, "but our agreement doesn't specify public appearances."
Gorvan didn't answer immediately. His eyes swept the celebrating crowd. "You're aware many here believe it was I who orchestrated the war's end."
Fornos stepped closer. "Then let them. They'll sleep easier believing you commanded a traditional campaign."
Gorvan grunted, not in disagreement but approval.
"I already have workers settling in," Fornos continued, voice calm. "The refinery will be operational within the month. Core fusion, alloy separation, and codex etching—all will begin in due time. I've fulfilled my part of the agreement."
A pause.
"I hope you do too, when the time comes."
Gorvan's gaze narrowed, as if weighing him once again. Then he offered the briefest of nods.
Without another word, Fornos turned and walked back into the crowd, unremarked, unnoticed, as if he were just another merchant returning to his caravans.
The carriage rolled slowly through the winding countryside, the sounds of the city fading behind him. Fornos sat alone inside, one leg crossed, gloves resting on his knee. The road was quiet—guarded, but intentionally uneventful.
He wasn't a man for introspection. Philosophy bored him, and sentimentality was a resource he'd long traded away. But now, in the gentle rocking of the carriage and the retreating echoes of celebration, his mind turned inward.
How had he done all this?
He wasn't born for war. He'd never trained with weapons, never studied strategy in some military academy, and had little use for honor duels or grand speeches. His education had been practical—logistics, investment, infrastructure. Trade routes and contract law. And yet…
He'd burned down an entire noble house.
Not with fire, but with leverage. With poisoned food lines and peasant movements. With mercenaries, spies, and fear.
He thought back—5 months ago now—to the Founding of the Ash Company.
The Fifth Continent. A place scholars called "a mistake of geography." Harsh weather, roaming Relicts, broken lands rife with raiders and dead cities. No noble banners dared fly there. No laws. Just scattered scavenger bands, warlords, and drifters.
Fornos had gone there with two golems.
No allies. No map. No backup.
He enslaved the first group he came across. Captured all golems that came near him. Offered others safety in exchange for service. He absorbed marauders, disbanded nests of mercenaries, stole from the wreckage of forgotten wars.
He didn't build a company.
He distilled one.
A force of outcasts and stolen machines loyal to coin and consequence. It wasn't discipline that held the Ash Company together—it was mutually assured ambition.
And then he brought them back to the mainland.
No noble had expected a businessman to bring a private army from the Fifth Continent. Let alone one trained, drilled, and mentally tethered to a single codex language—his.
That force now served as his sword.
The Architects his new dagger, that Mitis had slipped between Zatack's ribs. While Gorvan and his knights waged war at the front, it was the Architects that had prepared the soil: Corrupting supply chains and sending saboteurs behind enemy lines.
But it hadn't begun there.
No.
It began at Nevera.
He could still remember the moment. The crowd of silk-clad nobles, the veiled jabs and layered compliments, and the man who had mocked him with a single sentence.
Lord Gratham Ornes.
A warlord in all but title. One of the most powerful generals of the southern mainland. A noble whose family had controlled generations of siege engines and elite golem knights.
Ornes had scoffed.
"Let that be a lesson. Ambition without station is a crime. The next time you forget your place; I will not be so merciful."
Dismissed & scared like a servant.
Humiliated in front of half the nobility.
That had been the true beginning.
That single insult had forged a new trajectory in Fornos Dag's life. He hadn't crafted a reply or demanded honor satisfaction. He'd simply smiled, bowed, and left.
And started building a sword.
The Ash Company wasn't just a mercenary force. It was a rebuke. A message that even without banners or bloodline, a man with the right mind could outmaneuver whole houses. That Fornos Dag, a merchant's son, could kill a noble line and feed its bones to another.
He looked out the window.
The hills rolled quietly now, green and gold under the fading sun. Somewhere out there, Ornes was still alive. Still safe. Still powerful.
But not forever.
Fornos's fingers tapped slowly on the leather seat, the rhythm faint but deliberate. "Soon," he muttered.
Behind him, the city continued to celebrate. But its future was already being reforged in blackened forges, in captured codices, and inside the mind of a man who had once just wanted to manage trade convoys.
The Ash Company was no longer a secret weapon.
It was a kingdom's shadow.
And its king was riding quietly, further into the dark.