The golden spires of Caelthar's Ministry of Dominion blazed in the dying light, their grandeur marred by firelight and screaming. The building itself, hewn from white-veined stone hauled from the Thrygond mines, was meant to gleam like purity incarnate, its polished walls reflecting torchlight in soft amber hues. Now, that same light flickered wild across blood-slick marble, shadows dancing like specters down the corridor's length.
Guards clashed steel against steel beneath vaulted ceilings carved with the nation's decrees, the echo of death racing ahead of it. Somewhere, a minister's voice cracked in panic before cutting short. Silk-robed officials ran like rats through the halls, their finery trailing ash and fear, some barefoot, some bloodied, all too late.
The Minister of Accord ran too, robes flapping, sandals slapping tile, his breath ragged, Blood soaked through his robes, leaking from a wound meant to slow, not to kill. He staggered toward the colonnade, hand pressed tight to his gut.
Then he saw him.
Dren Varrick.
Silent as judgment. Black uniform streaked with blood, the torchlight devoured by his approach. His sword hung low in his hand, dripping crimson like it mourned the work it had done.
The minister stumbled back against a marble pillar, his voice shriveling into a single, trembling word.
"Why?"
It came out a whimper, half plea, half death rattle, dragged through blood and disbelief.
Dren stepped forward like the quiet verdict. His shoulders tensed as if carrying an invisible weight, not pride, but inevitability. That man's fate had been decided long before the blade ever left its sheath.
The sword in his grip wept crimson. Each drop struck the marble, soft, like the final gasp of a dying man. His eyes were not just merciless, they were empty, scorched clean by something worse than fire. And in that moment, he was not a man. He was the verdict. The sentence. The end.
"You were wrong. You wouldn't act. I would. So, I did." He spoke slowly.
"We...had...time..." The official gurgled a final protest. He hit the floor with a hollow thud, still clinging to the life slipping from him.
"Time?" Dren's laugh was a flaying knife, stripping away pretense. He crouched, grip fisting in the man's ceremonial sash, silk woven with threads of imperial gold, worth a village's grain stores.
"You! Have time. We don't! Caelthar doesn't. The world doesn't. Vaelorian Empire did not." His blade tapped the Minister's heaving throat. "You mistook patience for permission. You saw opportunity, not warning."
A pause. The last breath rattle between them.
"Rejoice, Minister. Tonight, your death does what your life never could."
The blade fell with butcher's precision. Dren twisted his wrist in a sudden brutal arc, the steel's edge catching the angle of the jaw, shearing through flesh and grinding against bone with a wet crunch. The Minister's final scream choked into a gurgle as the sword carved upward, severing tendons that popped like overtightened strings on a ruined instrument. Only when the tip punched through the spine with a muffled crack did the body finally slacken, the dead weight dragging the blade down in a macabre bow.
Behind him, the faint clink of metal echoed with the symphony of slaughter.
Nyrel Voss came first, tall, broad-shouldered, built like a siege ram with a beard thick as iron brush. He moved with the weight of someone who didn't need finesse, just force. A wall, not a whisper. A guard lunged at him, panic overriding sense. Nyrel caught the man mid-charge, slammed him against the stone with a grunt, then shoved his fingers into the man's eye socket like punching through rotten fruit.
"Run," he growled, voice gravel dragged through frost, "and I'll let your corpse keep one."
The man staggered, screaming until Nyrel's dagger flicked across his throat, neat and final.
Keth Lehman followed, a whipcord of a man. Wiry, sharp, and faster than a lie. His limp didn't slow him; it had rhythm. The click-click-click of his crank-bow kept time like a death march. They'd carved the pain out of him in Caelthar's forbidden chambers, and what remained was all reflex.
A clerk tried to flee, her silk robes catching on her sandals. The first bolt pinned her to the oak door, her scream echoing beneath the Ministry's creed: STRENGTH THROUGH ACCORD.
Keth's lip curled. "Accord this."
The second bolt punched through her skull. Her brain painted the lettering with mockery.
Valera came last, quiet as snowfall, deadly as plague. She was beautiful, almost jarringly so amid the gore, moon-pale skin, eyes like dark glass, hair braided back in the style of old Caelthar priestesses. But there was nothing soft in her.
A guard swung a mace. She ducked low, blade flashing. His hand hit the ground before he understood he'd lost it. She opened him with a single stroke, clean through from hip to sternum. His insides spilled steaming onto the floor like split livestock.
She turned, fingers flickering in tight, fluid signs.
Chamber ahead.
Nyrel's eyes swept the corridor. "Five inside. Three guards, two ministers."
Dren didn't pause. "Kill them all."
He moved down the hall, boots smearing bloody crescents across marble tiles depicting Caelthar's triumphs. Beneath his feet: General Arman Varrick, immortalized in goldleaf mosaic, trampling rebel lords at Veldara Pass. The tiles glistened with polish, not truth. No severed hands. No fires. No children sold to alchemists by Dren's father's command. Just triumph. Sanitized.
The iron-banded doors didn't open. They broke.
Dren's boot cracked through them in a single, splintering kick.
Inside, the Minister of Resources scrambled upright, a grotesque in ermine and jewels, knocking over a table laden with roast peacock and spiced wine. His mouth flapped wide in disbelief.
"Madman!" he shrieked. "This is treason! You, you're the country's own general! Why? They'll flay your…"
Dren's gauntlet cracked across his face. Teeth scattered like thrown dice.
He yanked the man forward by his collar, dragging him across the war table. "You stockpiled grain," he said flatly, "while conscripts ate bark."
The first slam shattered the Minister's face across the parchment map, borders inked in red smearing across his bloated cheek.
"Men died waiting for rations you counted like coin."
Second impact, a molar flew past a burning sconce.
"Soldiers this nation could've used."
Third, the Minister went limp, jaw slack, eyes swimming. Blood pooled in the grooves of Caelthar's gilded provinces.
Across the chamber, the second minister, a rail-thin woman with hawk eyes, drew a pearl-handled dagger with trembling hands.
Nyrel's throwing star sank into her wrist with a wet snap.
He strode over and caught the weapon before it hit the floor, studying it with idle scorn. "Sentimental," he said. "Your little gift. From the man who sold our eastern fleet, wasn't it?"
The dagger punched through her skull in one precise jab, embedded to the hilt. She slid down the wall, trailing blood and brain fluid.
From the shadows, Valera struck, a blur of steel and silence. The last guard's axe flew harmlessly into the ceiling as his body split open, guts coiling out in steaming ropes.
Across the room, Keth raised his crossbow. Click.
A bolt pinned the final minister's sleeve to the wall mid-sprint.
"Wait!" the man cried, eyes wild. "Please! Listen, I'll do whatever you want. I can help you. I can fix this."
Dren stared at him, unreadable. For a moment, the room seemed to still, the flickering torchlight, the cooling blood, the trembling breath of a man who thought he'd found a thread of mercy.
The sword came down.
The sword crashed between neck and shoulder, shearing muscle and bone with a sickening crack. The man's breath hitched, a strangled gurgle escaping before he slumped, pinned by his own velvet sleeve, blood blooming over the Ministry's embroidered seal.
Dren wrenched the sword free and wiped it against the fallen minister's ermine.
"An old dusk fades and a new dawn rises..." he said coldly, turning from the corpse. "But you are a serpent that shuns the light. You don't belong in the new dawn."
They advanced deeper; past libraries where dust-choked books moldered unread, vaults where relief funds lay sealed beneath wax and greed, surveillance scrolls cataloging noblemen's dalliances, while the true rot festered beneath all this: the inhumane experiments, the unauthorized mobilizations, the secret programs they all pretended not to know about.
In the War Room, four faces blanched as Dren entered.
"Varrick?" Grand Tactician Vyn's voice cracked like dry parchment. The medals on his chest clinked with nervous tremors, sounding more like shackles than honor. "By the Seven Hells... you…"
"You were there, Vyn." Dren's voice was low and lethal. He stepped to the war hammer mounted above the hearth and wrenched it free, the iron head screeching against stone. "You stood beside me when Vaelorian empire burned. You saw the cities fall. You saw the sky turn black and the rivers run red. And still…still, you came home and filed reports. Calm, clinical, cowardly."
He raised the hammer high. "We needed a warning bell, and you gave them paperwork."
The hammer fell with a thundercrack. Vyn's ornate breastplate crumpled like pressed tin, ribs imploding inward in a wet, bone-deep crunch. He collapsed, gasping on a froth of blood and splintered lung.
Across the chamber, General Telvra drew steel, but too late. Valera's blade flashed once, then twice. Her sword sang as a severed hand dropped with a dull thud, followed by Telvra's head bouncing under the war table, eyes still wide with disbelief.
Quartermaster Rel stumbled back, his jewel-stitched cloak catching on the cracked mural of the Dominion's founding.
"Monsters!" he screamed, spit flying. "You're leaving us exposed! The treaties are gone! Now…"
"Treaties?" Dren's voice cut like a drawn blade. He seized Rel by the throat and slammed him against the wall beside the arched window. "Doesn't matter now. Does it?"
He twisted the man's head toward the window. Below, the capital sprawled in drunk celebration, oblivious to the rot above and the doom below. "This," he hissed, tightening his grip until blood welled beneath his nails, "is what your cautious politics protected: a nation fattened on delusion, blind to the thing that killed Vaelorian empire."
Rel gasped, clawing at Dren's gauntlet. "But… we have strength. We're free now."
"No." Dren's voice went cold. "You're not free. You're unchained fools chasing conquest while the real enemy sharpens its blade beneath your floorboards."
With a grunt, he hurled the quartermaster through the window. Glass shattered into the night, taking Rel's scream with it.
Silence reigned. Only the distant patter of falling glass and the wet, rhythmic sound of Nyrel wiping his blades on the velvet curtain broke the stillness.
The room reeked of iron and smoke. Blood pooled beneath the war table, staining old maps and soaking through grand strategies no one would read again. Vyn's medals glinted dully in the candlelight, half-submerged in gore. Telvra's head had rolled beneath a bench, mouth frozen mid-command. Rel's scream had long since vanished into the night.
Dren stood still, war hammer slack in his hand, shoulders heaving. The others said nothing at first. Valera sat heavily on a fallen chair, her blade resting across her knees, eyes unfocused. Keth crouched beside a body, frowning, not in regret, but in the quiet confusion of a man who's finished something irreversible and isn't yet sure what comes next.
No one spoke. The flames in the sconces crackled softly. A clock somewhere ticked. For the first time in weeks, there were no orders. No masks. Just silence.
Finally, Nyrel let out a slow breath and leaned against the bloodied table. He looked around at the carnage, not with regret, but with weight.
"They'll call this treason," he said at last, voice low, almost conversational. "Write songs about the day we lost our minds."
Dren didn't answer. He stepped over Vyn's crumpled body and opened the shuttered window wide. Cold air spilled in, heavy with smoke and the tang of distant fires. He stood there a long moment, watching the city, not as a conqueror, not yet, but as a man, as a savior measuring what remained.
He had stood like this once before, at the fall of Vaelorian empire, watching a greater empire die in silence.
"Let them sing," he said at last, voice hard and even. "Let them sing of madness. Of blood. Of betrayal. That's all they ever understand."
He turned back to the room, gaze sweeping over the ruin, the corpses, the blood-drenched sigils of a nation he no longer served. His expression did not change. He said nothing more.
Then he walked out, past the bodies, the broken steel, the friends who watched in silence.
******
Dawn rose like a wound, slow, bloodshot, and raw. Cold morning fog curled around its spires, pale and spectral, veiling white stone that blushed gold beneath the sun.
At the heart of Caelthar's oldest quarter lay Arman's Cross, named for General Arman Varrick, hero of the Eastern Reclamation, father to the man who now haunted the capital. The crossroads marked the meeting of four great lanes, paved in lion-colored stone worn smooth by centuries of boots and hooves.
To the east rose the Ministry Compound, a grand, walled precinct of gardens, white towers, and bureaucratic quiet. At its center stood the Ministry Hall itself: dome-crowned, symmetrical, and serene, its alabaster walls designed to catch morning and evening light with solemn dignity. Atop its highest cupola hung the Bell of Accord, an iron colossus forged in the era of unity, meant to ring only in death or war.
Across the Cross to the west stood the golden tavern, an opulent tavern dressed in carved teak and dark slate. Lanterns still flickered from the night before; their glass panes fogged with the breath of drunks and diplomats alike. It was the favored haunt of Ministry officers, a place for polished boots, quiet whispers, and wine imported from across the borders.
To the north, overshadowing even the Ministry in scale, loomed the Caelthar National Garrison, a vast military compound of barracks, armories, and practice yards. The soldiers stationed there had long served as guardians of the Ministry and enforcers of the state's will. Rows of towers stood watchful along its perimeter, though this morning, none gave orders, and none stood watch.
And to the south, just beyond the fountain where pigeons gathered in ash-grey flocks, spread the Court of Just a colonnaded promenade of advocates, petitioners, and stone benches worn smooth by a thousand waiting men. Justice, or its illusion, was dispensed there in velvet robes and cold ink.
This morning, all stood still.
The bell rang. Once. Deep as a falling sky. It had not sounded since the death of the Minister of Defense three years prior. This time, it rang for no singular name, yet everyone knew what had been lost.
In the market square at Arman's Cross, merchants spilled from their awnings half-dressed and wild-eyed. Children clutched at hems, their fear of the bell instinctual, old as blood. Messengers ran like rats through alleys, breathless, pale. The silence before had been a warning. Now, word bloomed into panic.
The entire Ministry was dead.
Officials, gutted in their own chambers. Guards, found seated in their posts, throats cut so cleanly they looked asleep. War leaders executed with the surgical calm of someone reclaiming stolen time.
On the gates, heads were mounted. On temple doors, scrolls were nailed in neat rows, the parchment clean, the ink a precise red.
THE QUIET VERDICT
And beneath that seal, in letters darker still:
DREN VARRICK
*****
Caelthar had always been a country of closed gates and colder glances. It was said the wind there spoke in riddles, and the snow did not fall, it settled, as if claiming dominion. Not frozen enough to kill, but cold enough to discourage comfort, Caelthar was an easternmost land that wore its austerity like a crown. Summers came briefly and left no warmth behind. The rest of the year was a ritual of layered cloaks, boiled wine, and hushed fires behind frost-glazed windows.
Outsiders knew little beyond the surface: polished stone cities carved into cliff faces, bridges suspended over icy ravines, and towers so tall they pierced the clouds. The country gave away nothing easily, not its warmth, not its maps, and certainly not its intent. To visit was to be observed; to stay was to be studied. And few ever did.
But there had been a time, not long ago, when Caelthar had spoken loudly. A time when its armies moved like the tides, slow, unstoppable, and always reaching farther. For decades, it expanded with ruthless grace, absorbing lesser kingdoms through diplomacy when convenient, and fire when not.
It might have kept going, had it not touched a limit. Had it not threatened the wrong nation.
The Vaelorian Empire, distant, proud, and far older, had watched the encroachments with growing contempt. Though an island realm separated by a veil of sea, Vaelorian still cast a long shadow over the world. It was the one force Caelthar could not quietly outmaneuver, and when it warned that further conquest would bring war, even the locksmiths of Caelthar listened. The treaty of peace was signed beneath banners neither side saluted. There was no celebration. Only the closing of gates.
Since that day, Caelthar had drawn inward. Its hunger had not vanished, only turned inward, into other appetites. Research outposts replaced marching columns. Secret experiments replaced foreign policy. Its military no longer conquered; it scouted, spied, mapped the unspoken. Reconnaissance missions were whispered about in foreign courts, always denied by Caelthar, always suspected to be true.
The borders closed, first in practice, then in principle. Trade trickled in only through carefully selected partners. Envoys arrived in rotating pairs, always with identical smiles, rehearsed pleasantries, and scrolls of policy written in three dialects but saying very little. Even their wine was imported, barrels brought over the mountains to keep the frost from creeping too far inward.
What little the other nations knew was gathered from maps that changed with every printing and reports that contradicted themselves. Cartographers grew frustrated; ambassadors more so. No depiction of Caelthar was ever quite right, as if the land resented being understood.
The country did not fall silent. It whispered.
And its leaders, the ones now dead, dragged into the light by the Quiet Verdict, had ruled not as guardians, but as locksmiths. They secured doors that never should have been opened. They sealed away truths with careful keys. For years, they reigned from behind the frosted glass of their tower ministries, voices heard only in council, decisions made only in corridor shadow.
Even their own people had grown used to the hush.
In Caelthar, silence became a civic language. A bowed head became a gesture of trust. It was not fear that kept the people compliant. It was fatigue. The exhaustion of enduring without clarity. The cold suited such things. Snow dulled sound. And Caelthar had always known how to keep things quiet.
Until now.
Until today.
*****
Inside the bloodied War Room, where velvet drapes once veiled marble pillars and golden tapestries, the scent of blood still clung to the air like smoke. The great table, once host to treaties and coronations, was cracked through its center, the inlaid map split like a fault line. Emblems of every noble house lay in a corner, pried off the walls and heaped like scrap.
Dren stood at the head of the ruin, his gloves streaked with soot, his coat stiff with dried blood. Around him were the survivors: smiths, officers, broken men who had once followed out of fear of punishment. Now, they followed out of something colder.
He spoke only once, voice flat.
"They called me mad when I warned them."
Then he stepped back, giving space. He spoke once again. "But, make no mistake."
Keth, younger than most present, but already iron-worn took the lead. His voice carried not fire, but memory, the raw kind, the kind you can't look at too long.
"You all knew the Empire of Vaeloria. Knew it as distant, proud, invincible. An island nation built of gold and fire, whose ships could cross the world and return without a scratch. You knew it as a legend. The only nation Caelthar feared."
He looked at each of them, eyes dull.
"I was there…when it was destroyed."
A hush fell. No one moved.
"It didn't fall. It didn't collapse. It didn't erode like kingdoms do. It was erased. In a single day. One moment, the towers stood against the sky. The next, they were devouring each other. Soldiers turned on their own officers. Cities burned without orders. Men screamed without knowing why. Their Armada firing at themselves."
His voice dropped.
"They say the sea turned black around the island. That birds didn't fly away, they fell. Whatever destroyed Vaeloria wasn't an army. It was themselves or it was something else. Something unknown."
A pause. Someone swallowed.
"We came back from that. Alone. No one else. We brought warning. Proof. Pleas."
Keth looked to Dren, but Dren didn't speak. Didn't need to.
"The Ministry did nothing. They debated, in their towers, behind their glass, while the end of the world moved closer. Dren begged them. I was there. He showed them what Vaelorian empire had become."
He gestured around them, the shattered table, the silent room.
"They chose to wait. They saw the opportunity of conquest now the Vaelorian empire did not exist. So, Dren chose not to. We chose not to wait."
A long silence settled over the chamber. Then Dren moved, just a step. Just enough.
"This city will not be a throne," he said, quiet. Final.
"It will be a fortress. Fortress for what's coming."
No one cheered. No one dared. But the smiths shifted, and the officers looked to the doors. The work would begin. Blood had paid for silence. Now it would forge iron.
*****
Nyrel stood on the shattered balcony overlooking Arman's Cross, arms folded behind his back. Below, the bodies of the ministers twisted on iron pikes, robes stiff in the wind like forgotten banners. Blood puddled on the stone below, staining the lion-colored paving.
He stared down at the gathering crowd: hungry, stunned, silent.
"They'll break," Nyrel said at last, voice flat. "Or scatter. If we're lucky, they'll pick up arms. If not…" he shrugged slightly "…less mouths to feed."
Beside him, Valera stood still, hood down, face unreadable. Her fingers moved, quick, exact, signs shaped by a language of war, silence, and exile.
They will resist.
Nyrel grunted. "Let them. Their spine's rotted from sitting under gilded laws."
Or they will be made to. Her hands moved like whispers.
Keth Lehman limped up behind them, dragging one leg. A fresh bandage peeked out from under his trousers, crusted with dried blood. He tossed a leather satchel down by the railing, its weight clattered with the sound of scrolls and steel.
"Names," he said, breath clipped. "Killers. Deserters. Bastards with nothing to lose. Some want revenge. Some just want to burn something."
He spat over the edge and watched the crowd below.
"They'll do."
Valera crouched, unrolling one scroll. Her eyes scanned the list, expression unreadable.
Keth leaned against the stone, wincing. "You think this city holds?"
Nyrel didn't answer immediately. His eyes followed two ragged scavengers dragging a noble's corpse by the hair into a sewer grate. Their ribs jutted out like broken shelves. They wore nothing but rag-cloths, and they moved quick, scared, practiced.
"They're not looking for order," he said finally. "They're looking for conviction. Doesn't matter if it bleeds."
Keth let out a dry laugh. "Then let's give them something to believe in."
Nyrel turned, meeting both their gazes. His voice came low, heavy, iron-willed.
"No gods. No oaths. Just fear. That's how these holds."
Valera signed one last word:
Then make them afraid.
*****
In the gutted under levels of the Ministry, once dungeons, now war foundries, fires roared day and night. The Foundry Legion began as shadows: orphans, disgraced soldiers, killers-for-hire.
Valera trained them with brutal precision. Her sword was fast. Silent. Deadly.
She never spoke. She never needed to.
"Watch her hands," Dren told the recruits. "If you can follow her, you might survive. If you can strike her, you belong."
No one ever struck her.
Keth trained his marksmen in the ruins of the old cathedral.
Crossbowmen stood in pews. Stained glass shattered above them with every bolt.
He taught them to load blind, to fire in thunder, to kill from rooftops without pause or warning.
Nyrel built the Net.
A lattice of spies, poisons, and whispered names, woven through taverns, brothels, and beggars' mouths. He used street urchins. Forgotten scribes. Drunken priests too broken to lie. Maps covered his chamber wall to wall, pinned with threats. Every sewer. Every cellar. Every place power might fester.
And above them all, Dren watched.
He did not dine. He did not rest.
When he slept, it was upright, surrounded by blades and black candles. He watched them forge the impossible.
Not an army.
A firestorm.
*****
The Golden Tavern felt like a gilded tomb. Three days prior, its teak-paneled walls had vibrated with the low thrum of power brokers, the clink of crystal goblets filled with Thrygond vintage, the murmur of deals sealed over roast peacock and spiced wine. Now, silence pooled in its corners, thick and cold as the fog outside. Dust motes danced in shafts of weak afternoon light slicing through the fogged glass lanterns. The polished bar, once gleaming under the ministrations of three harried barkeeps, held only a single bottle of harsh Caelthar grain spirits and three mismatched glasses. Plush velvet booths, meticulously maintained for whispered conspiracies, were empty. The scent of expensive perfume and rich food had been utterly vanquished, replaced by the pervasive tang of cold stone, old wood, and fear.
Dren sat at a heavy oak table near the cold hearth, his back to the wall, facing the entrance. He wasn't eating. A simple wooden bowl of grey porridge sat untouched before him. His gaze was fixed not on the bowl, nor on his companions, but on the heavy iron door, as if expecting the ghosts of the ministers to burst through, demanding their usual table.
Keth Lehman sat opposite, meticulously dissecting a tough-looking sausage with a thin knife. His crank-bow leaned against the table leg within easy reach. He chewed slowly, his sharp eyes scanning the empty room with detached amusement. "Place lost its spark," he remarked, his voice dry. "Shame. They did a decent roast boar. Expensive, though. Tasted like guilt." He speared another piece. "Suppose we're the only reservation they've got now. Doubt the chef stayed."
Valera occupied the seat beside Dren. She moved with quiet economy, peeling a small, waxy-skinned apple with a knife that seemed an extension of her hand. The peel came off in a single, unbroken spiral, falling soundlessly onto a scrap of cloth beside her plate. Her dark eyes occasionally flickered towards the shuttered windows, then back to her task.
Nyrel Voss occupied the end of the table, dwarfing the sturdy chair. He shoveled thick stew from a deep bowl with a chunk of dark bread, his movements efficient, powerful. The sound of his chewing was the loudest noise in the cavernous room. He wiped his beard with the back of his hand, leaving a faint smear of broth. "Food's honest now," he grunted. "No frills. No hidden costs." He glanced around at the opulent, deserted space. "Just echoes. And dust."
A tense silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the single, meager fire struggling in the vast hearth and the scrape of Keth's knife. The emptiness pressed in, a stark reminder of the void they'd created, the power they'd shattered, and the terrifying uncertainty they now inhabited.
Dren finally stirred. His voice, when it came, was low, cutting through the quiet like the scrape of a whetstone. "The echoes won't feed the forges. The dust won't hold the walls." He turned his head slightly, his gaze settling on Nyrel. "Time grows thin."
Nyrel paused mid-chew, lowering his bread. He met Dren's stare, understanding dawning in his storm-grey eyes. He swallowed thickly. "The mountains."
Dren gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. "Drokaran. Their iron. Their fire. Their fear. It's a resource. Or a vulnerability."
Keth set his knife down. "Resource? They're as likely to cave your skull in as talk to you, Ny. Remember that 'trade envoy' last year? Came back in pieces. Sent back in a barrel." He tapped the crank-bow. "Much cleaner to just map their passes from a distance. Pick off the sentries. Let the cold do the rest."
"Cold takes time," Valera signed, her fingers flickering briefly over her half-peeled apple. Time we may not have.
Nyrel pushed his empty bowl away. "Fear makes men stupid. Or sharp." He cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing in the hollow room. "So. The message?"
Dren leaned forward slightly, his elbows resting on the scarred wood. "The truth. What happened to Vaelorian. What happened here. What will happen if the rot isn't burned out, root and stem." His voice hardened. "Offer them shelter behind Caelthar's walls. Our grain for their bellies. Our steel for their hands. Our knowledge of the enemy for their survival."
Nyrel's grim smile returned. "And if they laugh? If they think their volcano gods will shield them? Or worse, if they think we're the rot?"
Dren's eyes were chips of obsidian. "Then they are the kindling." He held Nyrel's gaze, unwavering. "Tell them plainly. Dren Varrick builds his fortress against the true storm. He does not waste mortar patching cracks in a neighbor's crumbling wall. If Drokaran chooses blindness..." He paused, the silence heavier than before. "...then Caelthar will ensure the storm breaks first upon their mountains. We will grind their peaks to dust and forge our bulwarks in the fires of their annihilation. Their choice is simple: Stand within the walls... or become the rubble beneath them."
Keth let out a low whistle. "Subtle. They'll love that." He took a swig from his glass, grimacing at the harsh spirit. "Just try to deliver it before they try roasting you, eh Ny? Hard to be threatening when you're basted."
Nyrel stood, the chair groaning in relief. He stretched, his massive frame seeming to fill the space around the table. "Fear speaks louder than axes. Or spits." He looked down at Dren. "Three days. I'll find their War-Chief. Or make one listen." He scooped up a heavy fur-lined cloak draped over a nearby chair, likely looted from a minister's private closet. "Don't bother keeping my seat warm. This won't be a negotiation over wine." He glanced around the dead grandeur of the Golden Tavern, his gaze lingering on the empty tables where power had once feasted. "We offer them a chance. A hand clasped in alliance against the dark."
He fastened the cloak, the thick fur stark against his worn leathers. His voice dropped, gravel grinding on frost, carrying the cold finality of the mountains he was bound for. "But we won't bleed to shelter those who refuse to see the knife at their own throats. If they choose the dark... we'll let them drown in it."
*****