Rain fell on Dreistel like ash from a dying empire.
The village hall — once a baron's storage barn — had been cleared, scrubbed, and filled with rough benches. Men and women sat shoulder to shoulder, soot still on their clothes. There were no banners, no horns, no cheers. Only wet coats, quiet murmurs, and the smell of burned oil.
Emil stood before them with Bran and Vargen behind him. His coat was damp. His boots were caked in river mud.
He didn't speak like a general.He spoke like one of them.
"I didn't come here to make you fight for me," Emil began, voice steady.
"I didn't come to name myself king, or marshal, or father of some broken banner."
He paused, locking eyes with a farmboy who could barely grow a beard.
"I came to ask a question. The same question that haunts every plough in the field, every hearth without wood, every hand that bleeds for coin it never holds."
He held up a small, hand-drawn flintlock.
"Do we deserve this?"
A murmur. He waited.
"Do we deserve to be born to the lash? To beg the lords for rain, and bury our sons because their games need soldiers?"
Silence.
"You don't have to follow me. You don't even have to agree. But you need to know that this—" he tapped the flintlock "—was not made to kill."
"It was made… to choose."
He stepped aside.
Vargen placed a small bundle on the table: rolled paper, sealed wax, ink-soaked stamps.
A flag was unfurled. No crest. No crown.Just a red background and a black gear in its center.
The room did not erupt in cheers.It held its breath.
Until, slowly, a man stood. Then another. And another.No oaths. No handshakes. Just a quiet understanding between workers.
The Union was no longer a whisper.
It was a flag.
But peace never lingers.
They came the next morning — five riders in heavy coats, gold-trimmed and frowning.
At their center rode a baron's knight. Steel breastplate. Fine horse. Cold eyes.
He dismounted before Emil's workshop and spat in the dirt.
"We are looking for one Enforcer Captain Lurtz," the knight said loudly. "Sent to this area two weeks past. Did not report."
Behind him, one of the soldiers eyed the building — caught sight of a stack of musket barrels barely hidden under sacks of grain.
The knight narrowed his gaze. "You… aren't from this land, are you?"
Emil stepped forward calmly, hands behind his back.
"No, I'm not. But I work this land."
"Then answer plainly, peasant. What happened to Captain Lurtz?"
Before Emil could reply, the serious village guard — Kerran — stepped forward.
"Left. Said he had business east. We've heard nothing since."
The knight stared at them all, then dismounted. Walked toward the shed. Bran tensed.
The knight peeled back a tarp.
Nothing but wood.
He turned slowly.
"I'll be back," he said coldly. "And I suggest you all learn to bow again before then."
They rode off.
But they'd be back with steel.
And Emil knew: words would soon no longer be enough.