Dawn came reluctantly.
The storm had broken in the night, leaving the fortress wrapped in a damp hush. Water clung to the stone like sweat, seeping into cracks, pooling in grooves along the battlements. Mist curled low over the ramparts, drifting in ribbons that blurred the line between ground and sky. Beyond the walls, the forest was a black silhouette, its spines of pine still dripping with the memory of rain.
Calista stood at the highest terrace, fingers pressed lightly to the lattice sigil at her wrist. The artifact pulsed with a faint warmth — like a second heartbeat, steady, grounding — even as the air shifted. She could feel the pressure before the soldiers did: a tightening of silence, the faintest metallic tang on the tongue, as if dawn itself had been drawn through a sieve.
It began quietly.
A young operative on the eastern wall blinked once, then twice — and when he opened his eyes, he was staring at phantoms. His breath quickened; he raised his spear toward shapes only he could see. Another soldier followed, swearing under her breath as her gaze fixed on nothing, lips trembling in silent argument with a voice that wasn't there. The sorcery slid like smoke into the cracks of loyalty, whispering half-truths, sweet betrayals, promises of reprieve.
Calista's jaw tightened. She had expected Evander's reach, but not so soon, not so insidious.
"Stay sharp," she called, voice low but cutting across the battlements like a blade. "They'll prey on what you already doubt. That's the trick."
Ash stumbled against the parapet, breath fogging in the cool air. His hands clawed at his temples as if he could tear the illusions free by sheer force. "It's— it's not them, Calista. It's me. I can't—"
The boy's voice broke, and for a moment his eyes were glassy with another vision, some private nightmare dredged and dangled before him.
Calista moved swiftly, one hand catching his shoulder, grounding him. "It isn't you," she said, firm, dry, unwilling to let the sorcery rewrite his fear into truth. "It's them. You only give them weight if you believe it."
Still, even she felt the edges of it, pressing at her thoughts: whispers of failure, the seductive suggestion that the fortress would fall faster if she simply let it. Her lips curved in the faintest irony. Evander never lacked audacity.
Then came Kaelen.
He arrived like he always did — not rushing, but with that measured pace that made it seem he was walking through a world no one else quite saw. His eyes, pale and too still, caught hers once, and in that silence she felt the sharp clarity of his presence cut through the fog.
"The net is wide," he said, voice low. "He isn't scattering power aimlessly. Each whisper is targeted."
"Then he's studied us," Calista replied, fingers tightening against the sigil. The lattice flared faintly, light rippling like oil on water. "Which means he thinks he knows our weaknesses."
"Thinks," Kaelen repeated, with the faintest tilt of his mouth.
Together, they moved. Calista let the lattice's warmth spread through her hand, then pressed it outward. The artifact pulsed once, and the air around the terrace shivered. Shadows bent, curling toward her intent, siphoning the sorcery like smoke funneled through a chimney. Operatives gasped as the fog in their eyes cleared, as illusions thinned to tatters.
But still — outside the walls, just beyond the mist, she felt the pull of other presences. Sorcerers, unseen, lacing their power through Evander's net. They didn't break when she countered; they shifted, adaptive, a chessboard rearranging itself in real time.
The first clash wasn't steel, but pressure: the weave of her lattice locking against their threads of illusion, the fortress itself groaning faintly with the weight of it.
And in that invisible struggle, Calista thought:
So this is how he begins.
The mist didn't lift with the sun.
It thickened, silver and gray, curling over the fortress like a living thing reluctant to let the day through. The first light pierced in slanted bars, gilding wet stone, glimmering against water clinging to the battlements, but the weight of it all pressed down — as though dawn had arrived carrying chains instead of hope.
Calista braced against the terrace rail, breath even, palm flat to the lattice sigil. The artifact's pulse had shifted: no longer a steady heartbeat, but a strain, a drag, each thrum heavier than the last. She felt it in her bones, in the tension pulling her shoulders back, in the faint ache gnawing behind her eyes.
Hold. Anchor. Bind.
Not the fortress, not the stones — but the people. Their faith, their fragile loyalty, that flickering trust she could already feel slipping.
Every soldier tethered was another line through her body, another thread burning against her skin. She imagined herself strung like an instrument, each mind a note she had to keep tuned, steady, despite the discord spilling in from Evander's net.
She let her lips curl, dry, even as the ache built. "If he wants me exhausted before breakfast, he'll have to try harder."
A step sounded behind her. Lysander.
His arrival was nothing like Kaelen's — no silence, no uncanny stillness. Lysander came with the scuff of boots on wet stone, with the smell of oil and steel, with the solid presence of someone who had lived too long among soldiers to waste words.
"You're bleeding," he said simply.
Calista blinked, glanced down. A thin line of crimson had slipped from her nose, streaking against her wrist before she even noticed. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
"Occupational hazard."
His eyes narrowed. "At what cost?"
"That depends," she said. "On whether you'd rather have illusions eating your men alive."
He didn't argue. That was his way — never stopping her, only reminding her of the weight she chose to bear. And somehow that was worse than protest.
The lattice pulsed again, stronger now, flaring with heat that licked against her palm. Her threads tightened across the battlements, tethering loyalty like anchor-points hammered into stone. Soldiers steadied. Ash's breathing evened. The faltering whispers stuttered and receded.
And then — a shift.
The mist on the ridge moved differently, parting not with the wind but with will. A silhouette formed against the rising light: tall, deliberate, not hiding but waiting to be seen.
Evander.
He didn't raise his hands, didn't summon fire or shadow. He simply stood there, cloak dragging against damp earth, his posture poised with the kind of control that was its own declaration. Even across the distance, Calista felt the pressure: not an attack, but a gaze, intent sharpened to a knife's edge.
Their eyes met over the wet stone, over the fortress walls, over the stretch of mist. And in that locked moment, the battlefield shrank until it was just the two of them.
"You see him?" Lysander asked, low.
"Oh yes," Calista murmured, tone threaded with dry amusement. "He does love an entrance."
But beneath the wit, her chest tightened. Evander wasn't testing defenses now — he was declaring something else entirely. This wasn't only strategy, wasn't only war.
It was rivalry. It was personal.
The lattice thrummed again, and she pressed harder, keeping her tether steady even as the weight built. Evander didn't move. He didn't need to. His stillness was the promise of escalation, the quiet certainty that this was only his first act.
And Calista, with blood drying against her wrist and the artifact burning against her skin, thought with grim clarity:
He's not here to win today.
He's here to measure me.