By the third night, the fear had turned inward.
Rations were low. Fires struggled to stay lit. The walls creaked louder than they should. And more than once, a soldier found doors left open, though none admitted to leaving them so.
Zareena kept herself moving—slow walks through the corridors, checking supplies, speaking to the soldiers by name. Not to give orders, but to remind them she saw them. That someone was watching the watchers.
But something was watching her, too.
It began with the whispers.
Not words—breathing. Low, heavy, dragging breaths just behind her shoulder whenever she walked alone.
The first time, she turned around so fast she dropped the torch.
No one was there.
Then came the window.
It was after midnight. The fortress was locked down, gates barred, patrols silent.
Zareena sat at her desk, rereading the letter in crimson ink, when the candle sputtered.
And from the corner of her eye, she saw a hand press against the glass.
Long fingers. Bone-white. The nails scratched inward.
She didn't scream.
She didn't move.
The hand stayed there for six seconds. Seven.
Then vanished—not pulled away, but as if it had never existed at all.
At dawn, she gathered the officers—what few still trusted themselves to stand tall.
"The fort is being tested," she told them. "Not just from the outside. This thing—whatever it is—it wants us to break from within."
She laid the letter on the table, its ink still sharp as dried blood.
"We fight it the way we've survived everything else. Together."
Some nodded. Some didn't.
But none of them walked away.
That morning, the kitchens found a message carved into the cutting block.
Three words, scratched deep by claw or blade:
"Let her bleed."
No one knew who did it.
But the cook swore the door had been bolted all night.