The Great Hall of Blackwood was not a place for feasting. It was a tomb where the living waited to die.

  Casimir pushed open the heavy iron-bound doors, the hinges screaming in protest against years of rust and neglect. The sound echoed like a dying animal, reverberating into the darkness beyond. He stepped inside, expecting the damp, mildewed rot of a neglected outpost—the smell of wet straw and rat droppings.

  Instead, he walked into a cathedral of silence.

  The hall was vast, carved directly into the living granite of the mountain outcrop the keep sat upon. The ceiling vaulted high into the darkness, lost in shadow, supported by pillars of black stone so thick three men couldn't link hands around them. There were no tapestries to soften the walls, no banners of the King to claim the space. No rushes on the floor to catch the cold. Just stone—cold, absolute, and silent.

  The air here was different. It didn't smell of rot. It smelled of ozone, dry dust, and the metallic tang of a thunderstorm that hadn't broken yet. It was the smell of static electricity waiting for a spark.

  Casimir walked forward, his boots clicking sharply on the obsidian-like floor. He felt small here. The architecture wasn't built for human comfort; it was built for giants, or perhaps for gods who didn't feel the chill of winter. The scale was oppressive, designed to make any occupant feel transient and insignificant.

  He stopped at the nearest pillar.

  It wasn't smooth. The surface was etched with intricate, jagged geometric patterns—runes that seemed to writhe and vibrate if you stared at them too long. They spiraled from the floor to the ceiling, interlocking in ways that defied the natural grain of the rock. They weren't carved into the stone; it looked as if the stone had grown around the intent of the carver, fusing geology with sorcery.

  "This isn't a village hall," Casimir whispered, his breath pluming in the freezing air. He reached out, his glove hovering inches from the surface. He could feel a faint resistance, like pushing two magnets together.

  "It is a pre-Unification garrison," a voice answered from the shadows, dry and precise.

  Casimir turned, his hand dropping to his sword hilt.

  Roza was already there. She had commandeered a massive stone table near the cold hearth, a slab of granite that looked more like a sacrificial altar than a dining surface. She had lit a single oil lantern, the pool of yellow light illuminating a chaotic pile of rotting scrolls, leather-bound ledgers, and crumbling maps she must have scavenged from the archives deep within the keep.

  She didn't look up as he approached. She was scrubbing a layer of centuries-old grime off a brass plaque set into the table's surface with the sleeve of her tunic, her face a mask of intense concentration.

  "I found the construction date," Roza said, her voice echoing strangely in the vast space, distorted by the peculiar acoustics of the room. "Or rather, the dedication. It predates the Kovac line by three hundred years. It predates the Kingdom itself."

  Casimir walked to the table. He ran a gloved hand over the stone surface. It felt unnaturally cold, buzzing faintly against his fingertips like a trapped insect. The sensation traveled up his arm, settling as a dull ache in his shoulder.

  "My father's reports called this a 'Class 4 Rural Settlement'," Casimir said, picking up a crumbling scroll. It disintegrated in his fingers, turning to dust. "Mud huts. Subsistence farming. No strategic value. Just a tax write-off."

  "Your father’s reports are fantasies," Roza said, finally looking up. Her face was pale, the stark lighting making her eyes look like hollows bruised with exhaustion. "Or perhaps, deliberate lies. Look at this map, Casimir."

  She spun a large, heavy piece of vellum toward him. It was cracked with age, the ink faded to a rusty brown, but the lines were still sharp.

  "This is the North-Reach as it was marked before the founding of our kingdom," she explained, tracing a faded line with her quill. "The Frost-Gate didn't exist yet. The border wasn't the mountains. It was here."

  She tapped Blackwood.

  "This wasn't a village," Casimir realized, leaning in. The map showed a network of lines radiating out from the keep, connecting to other, smaller forts that no longer existed. It was the hub of a wheel, a central command point. "It was the First Shield."

  "Exactly," Roza said, her eyes gleaming with the thrill of discovery. "Before they built the wall to seal the North away, they built these holdfasts to fight it. Blackwood wasn't built to house farmers. It was built to break the teeth of an army. The walls are twelve feet thick at the base. The cellar is a labyrinth. And the acoustics..."

  She gestured to the vaulted ceiling.

  "Casimir, this entire room is an amplifier. If you whisper in the corner, I can hear you clearly here. It’s designed to carry sound."

  SLAM.

  The heavy double doors at the far end of the hall crashed open, hitting the stone walls with a violence that shook dust from the ceiling. A draft of freezing wind swirled through the hall, extinguishing Roza’s lantern for a heartbeat before it flickered back to life, the flame dancing wildly.

  Kasia stood in the doorway.

  She had shed her heavy bearskin cloak, revealing the battered, mismatched scale armor beneath. Her axe was gone, replaced by a long, serrated dagger at her hip and a short sword strapped across her back. She didn't walk; she stalked. Her boots struck the stone floor with the heavy, rhythmic cadence of an executioner marching to the block.

  She marched straight for them, flanked by two of her guards—women with eyes like flint, their hands resting on the hilts of curved skinning knives.

  "You make yourselves at home quickly, Southerners," Kasia spat, her voice bouncing off the vaulted ceiling, harsh and grating. "Digging through our trash like rats in a larder."

  Casimir didn't flinch. He straightened up, leaning against the stone table and crossing his arms over his chest. He met her gaze, refusing to be cowed by the sheer physical menace she projected.

  "We are looking for answers, Kasia. Answers you didn't give us at the gate."

  Kasia stopped at the other end of the table. She looked at the map Roza was studying, and for a second, a flicker of something ancient and sad crossed her eyes—recognition, perhaps, or regret.

  Then she slammed a heavy iron gauntlet onto the parchment, cracking the vellum.

  "Answers?" Kasia sneered. "You want answers, little Lord? Here is the only answer that matters: We are out of grain. We are out of oil. We are burning our furniture to keep the frostbite from taking our toes. And tonight, the moon is full, which means the Red-Hand will come to bang on the doors."

  "Why do they bang?" Casimir asked calmly, his voice level. "Why don't they breach? You said the walls are rotting. You said you are weak."

  "Because they are playing with us!" Kasia roared, leaning over the table. Her breath smelled of stale wine and old blood. "Do you think war is a game of chess, little Lord? Do you think they move pieces on a board?"

  She grabbed the collar of his tunic and yanked him forward. Casimir’s hand flew to his dagger, but he didn't draw. He let her pull him in until he could see the burst capillaries in her eyes.

  "They are not soldiers," Kasia hissed, her spittle hitting his face. "They are farmers."

  Casimir frowned, twisting his shoulder to pull himself free of her grip. He smoothed his tunic, his face impassive, though his heart hammered against his ribs. "Explain."

  "They don't hunt us for sport," Kasia said, pacing around the table like a caged tiger. "They farm us. They realized two years ago that if they attacked the walls in force, they would lose too many warriors to our archers. So they stopped attacking. They started pruning."

  She held up a hand, ticking off fingers.

  "First, they killed the officers. Snipers in the trees. Anyone wearing a crest or shouting orders took an arrow to the throat. They decapitated our leadership in a week."

  She lowered a finger.

  "Then, they killed the builders. The men who repaired the walls. They waited until a breach happened, then swarmed the repair crew. They let the walls rot. They let the cold get in."

  One finger left.

  "Then, they took the breeding stock."

  Casimir felt a chill that had nothing to do with the drafty hall. It was a cold that settled deep in his gut.

  "The men," Casimir whispered.

  "The protectors," Kasia corrected, her voice dropping to a whisper. "They stripped Blackwood of its fangs. They left the women because they don't fear us. They think we are soft. They think we are waiting to be harvested."

  She stopped pacing and looked at Casimir with eyes that were ancient and exhausted.

  "They want breeders, little Lord. They want to take us back to their caves and break us until we birth their abominations. They want to turn Blackwood into a brood-farm. That is why there are no men. And that is why we will not let you play commander here. You are just more meat for the grinder. You will die, and then they will come for us."

  Casimir looked at her. He saw the trauma etched into every line of her face. She wasn't leading; she was surviving. And she was doing a terrible job of it. She was waiting to die.

  But beneath his pity, a cold, hard knot of realization tightened in Casimir’s stomach. The chill he felt wasn't from the drafty hall; it was from the implication of her words.

  He stepped back, his mind racing through every text, every lecture, every tactical report he had studied at the Academy in Malbork.

  Orcs do not farm.

  "Kasia," Casimir said, his voice steady but carrying a new, sharp edge. "What you are describing... it’s impossible."

  Kasia let out a bitter, cracking laugh. "Impossible? Walk to the bone-pit outside the wall, Lord. Count the skulls. Then tell me what is impossible."

  "I don't mean the death," Casimir said, holding up a hand to silence her. "I mean the method. Orcs are creatures of impulse. They are biological engines of conquest. They swarm, they consume, and they move on. They are driven by bloodlust and hunger."

  He looked at Roza. The Auditor was staring at the map, her face pale. She had realized it too.

  "To farm..." Casimir continued, turning back to Kasia. "To 'prune' a population... that requires patience. It requires delayed gratification. It requires a fundamental understanding of resource management and psychological warfare."

  He walked closer to the table, his eyes locking onto hers.

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  "Orcs do not understand mercy, even the cruel mercy of letting a victim live to breed. If they are leaving the women alive, it’s not because they are ignoring you. It’s because they are disciplined."

  Casimir slammed his hand on the table.

  "Who is leading them, Kasia?"

  Kasia blinked, taken aback by the sudden shift in his intensity. "The Red-Hand tribe. The Chieftain..."

  "No," Casimir cut her off. "A tribal Chieftain raids for glory. He burns the village to show his strength. He doesn't set up a two-year blockade. He doesn't use snipers to decapitate the chain of command. That is siege doctrine. That is human military strategy."

  He grabbed the edge of the map, his knuckles white.

  "Someone taught them how to do this," Casimir said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Someone took a horde of monsters and turned them into an army. Who is he?"

  Kasia stared at him, her mouth slightly open. The question seemed to hang in the freezing air, alien and absurd.

  "There is no 'he'," Kasia stammered, her anger faltering for the first time. "It is the Red-Hand. They are beasts. They don't have teachers."

  "Every army has a doctrine," Casimir snapped. He pulled a fresh sheet of vellum from Roza’s pile and dipped a quill in ink. "And I am going to reconstruct theirs. Sit down."

  It wasn't a request.

  Kasia bristled, her hand twitching toward her dagger, but something in Casimir’s eyes—a cold, frantic intelligence—stopped her. She didn't sit, but she leaned heavily against the pillar, crossing her arms.

  "Humor me," Casimir said, his pen hovering over the paper. "You said they don't attack the walls. But they threaten to. How? Standard Orcs use timber rams or ladders. What does the Red-Hand use?"

  Kasia looked at the floor, a muscle jumping in her jaw. "They don't use ladders. They bring the Breakers."

  "Breakers?"

  "Trolls," Kasia spat. "Cave-trolls. Massive, blind things from the deep roots of the mountains. Their skin can’t be pierced by arrows."

  Casimir wrote it down. Heavy Siege Infantry.

  "Do they run loose?" Casimir asked. "Do they frenzy?"

  "No," Kasia whispered, a shiver running through her. "They are... armored. Rough iron plates bolted directly into their hide. And they are chained. The Orc handlers steer them with hooks. They bring them to the gate, let them hammer once or twice to shake the foundations, and then pull them back."

  "Controlled aggression," Roza murmured from the table, her face pale. "They are testing the structural integrity without committing the asset."

  "Exactly," Casimir said. He looked back at Kasia. "But the orc handles are easy targets. If they walk up to the gate, your archers would turn them into pincushions. How do they cover the approach?"

  "They don't use shields," Kasia said, her voice dropping. "They use the Mist-Walkers."

  "Mist-Walkers?"

  "Shamans," Kasia spat the word like a curse. "They are smaller than the warriors. They wear cloaks of flayed skin. They stand at the edge of the tree line and chant. A white fog rolls out of the ground... it smells of sulfur and old graves. It burns the eyes. It muffles sound."

  Casimir wrote again. Specialized Support Units. Chemical/Magical Warfare.

  He looked up at the rune-carved pillar, then back to Kasia.

  "Trolls for heavy impact. Shamans for cover and counter-intelligence. Snipers for officer assassination. And a logistics strategy of starvation and selective breeding."

  Casimir stood up. He looked at the map of Blackwood, now looking less like a village and more like a chessboard.

  "This is combined-arms warfare, Kasia. This isn't instinct. This is a curriculum."

  He focused on Kasia.

  "Think back," he commanded. "Before the siege began. Before they killed the last of the men."

  He stepped into her personal space, his voice dropping to a clinical interrogation tone.

  "How did the Red-Hand fight before? When Blackwood held strong."

  Kasia blinked, the question catching her off guard. She looked past him, into the shadows of the hall.

  "Like beasts," she whispered. "They screamed. They threw themselves at the walls until the moats were filled with their dead. They burned the crops just to watch the fire. They were loud. Stupid. Lethal, but stupid."

  "Chaos," Casimir nodded. "Rage. Attrition. That is the baseline. That is natural Orc behavior."

  He gestured to the map, to the neat lines of the siege perimeter.

  "But now? They don't scream. They don't burn the crops; they blockade them. They don't waste lives on the walls; they send Trolls to test the mortar. They shifted from a mob to a machine."

  He looked at her, his eyes intense.

  "Evolution takes generations, Kasia. But this happened in a single season. That isn't evolution. That is instruction."

  He leaned in.

  "So when did the screaming stop? What changed? Did a new Chieftain rise? Did a new banner appear?"

  Kasia closed her eyes. Her face twisted, fighting a memory she had buried deep under layers of grief and survival.

  "The day everything changed," she whispered. "It was the first attack of the new way. It was... precise. They didn't charge in a frenzy. They moved in lines. Shield walls."

  She opened her eyes. They were wet, but the fear in them was sharp and fresh.

  "I was on the wall. I saw... something."

  "What?" Casimir pressed.

  "At the edge of the tree line," Kasia said softly. "Behind the Orcs. Standing in the shadow of the pines."

  "An Orc?"

  "No," Kasia shook her head slowly. "It was too small. Too... still. It wore armor, but not scrap metal. It was a full suit of plate, blackened to swallow the light. And it was pale. Not gray like the dead, but white like the moon."

  "A man?" Roza asked.

  "I don't know," Kasia said. "It didn't move. It didn't fight. It just stood there, watching the slaughter. It watched the Orcs breach the outer perimeter like a man watching a play. And then..."

  "Then?"

  "Then it turned and walked back into the dark," Kasia said. "I haven't seen it since. Not once in two years. Just that day. The day the world changed."

  Casimir looked at Roza. The Auditor had stopped writing. She looked sick.

  "A consultant," Casimir murmured. "Or an architect."

  He paced away from her, his mind reeling.

  "He came here," Casimir theorized, speaking to the empty air. "He organized the tribes. He gave them a strategy. He taught them how to break you slowly. And then... he left? Or he went into hiding to watch the experiment run its course."

  "Does it matter?" Kasia snapped, pushing off the pillar. "Ghost or man, he isn't here tonight. Tonight, it’s just the Red-Hand and their Trolls. And if we don't hold the breach, knowing his favorite color won't save us."

  "It matters," Casimir said grimly. "Because if he taught them how to fight like men... then we can kill them like men."

  He looked back at the pillar, his eyes tracing the jagged runes.

  "And if they are using Shamans," Casimir said, "it means they are afraid of something."

  "Afraid?" Kasia scoffed.

  Casimir looked at Kasia. "Did the walls ever hum?"

  Kasia blinked, thrown off by the shift. "What?"

  "The stone," Casimir pressed. "Did the old women ever talk about the stone singing?"

  Kasia hesitated. The anger drained out of her face, replaced by a flickering memory. She looked up at the vaulted ceiling.

  "My grandmother," she whispered. "She said... when she was a girl, the keep would sing during storms. A low sound, like a hive of bees. She said it kept the cold out. It kept the Whispers away. She said the stone was alive."

  "But it stopped," Casimir said.

  "Decades ago," Kasia said. "The song died. Now it’s just cold stone."

  "The Shamans know, or better yet, this man leading them," Casimir said.

  "They are killing us!" Kasia roared, slamming her fist on the table again. "I don't care about songs or runes! I care that tonight, they will hit the East Wall, and I don't have enough arrows to stop them!"

  "The East Wall?" Casimir asked, snapping back to the tactical reality. "Why there?"

  "Because the pylons are rotting," Kasia snapped. "It sags. The river damp has eaten the wood. They test it every night. They send a runner to bang on the timber. Tonight, they might send a Troll."

  "Good," Casimir said.

  Kasia stared at him. "Good?"

  "If we know where they will hit, we can welcome them."

  Casimir walked over to the map. He picked up a piece of charcoal and drew a circle around the East Wall.

  "We weaken it," Casimir said.

  "Are you mad?" Kasia hissed. "We spend every day shoring it up! We lost three women last week trying to reinforce the bracing!"

  "We pull the supports," Casimir said, his voice hard. "We make it look like a structural failure. We create a breach. A hole big enough for a Troll. Big enough for a raiding party."

  "You want to let them in?" Kasia’s voice rose to a scream. "Into the settlement? With the women? The children?"

  "I want to put them in a kill-box," Casimir said. "We evacuate the cabins near the wall. We line the breach with the mining explosives. We fill the alleyways with oil. We turn the East Quarter into a furnace."

  He looked at Kasia, his blue eyes cold and unyielding.

  "You have been fighting a defensive war, Kasia. You are trying to keep them out. I say we invite them in. We burn the Troll. We burn the raiders. And if a Shaman shows his face..."

  Casimir looked at the rune-carved pillar.

  "...we see if the fire wakes up the stone."

  Kasia stared at him. She looked at the map. She looked at the crazy desperation in his plan. It was suicide. It was madness.

  But it was violence. And she understood violence.

  "If you are wrong," Kasia said, her voice low and dangerous, "they will pour through that breach and butcher every living thing in this valley."

  "If I am wrong," Casimir said, "I will be the first one they eat. Do we have an accord, Commander?"

  He held out his hand.

  Kasia looked at it. She didn't shake it. Instead, she turned to the door.

  "Show me," she commanded. "Show me the rot. Show me where you want to plant your bombs. And if I think for one second you don't know what you're doing, I'll throw you off the wall myself."

  The walk to the East Wall was a grim procession.

  The wind had picked up, howling through the canyon and whipping snow into their faces, stinging exposed skin like needles. Casimir walked alongside Kasia, with Kaelen and Boras trailing a few steps behind, their hands resting on their pommels.

  The settlement was eerie in the fading light. This wasn't a village settling in for the night; it was a prison locking down.

  As they passed the rows of identical sod-roofed cabins, Casimir saw the faces. Women watched them from darkened windows—hollow, fearful eyes peering out from behind cracked shutters. There were no children playing in the snow. No laughter. No music. The silence was absolute, broken only by the crunch of boots and the wind.

  "They watch you," Kasia noted, seeing Casimir glance at a cabin where a young woman with a scarred lip was staring at him with open hostility. "They are wondering if you are a savior or a curse."

  "Most likely a curse," Casimir muttered. "Saviors usually bring food, not explosives."

  "Hope is a dangerous thing here," Kasia said. "It kills faster than the cold. They learned to stop hoping a long time ago."

  They reached the East Wall. It was in even worse shape than Casimir had imagined from the map.

  The timber here was black with mold, spongy to the touch where the bark had peeled away. The river, which flowed just outside the palisade, had undercut the bank, causing the entire section to list dangerously outward. The women of Blackwood had tried to shore it up with scrap lumber, rope, and desperation, but it was a bandage on a severed limb.

  "Here," Kasia pointed to a section where the logs had separated, leaving a gap wide enough for a hand to pass through. The wood groaned under the wind's pressure. "They bang here. Every night. Thud. Thud. Thud. Just to let us know they can. Just to let us know they're listening."

  Casimir inspected the ground. It was frozen mud, packed hard by years of patrol boots.

  "Kaelen," Casimir called. "If we pull those three support beams, will the section hold?"

  Kaelen squinted at the structure, chewing on his lip. He kicked the base of the central pylon. "It’ll hold against the wind, my Lord. But if a Troll hits it? It’ll crumble like a dry biscuit. The rot goes all the way through."

  "Perfect," Casimir said. "We plant the charges here. In the mud. We cover them with straw. We rig the tripwire across the breach."

  "And the oil?" Kasia asked.

  "On the roofs," Casimir pointed to the empty cabins facing the wall. "We put archers up there with fire arrows. When the breach happens, they wait. They let the first wave enter. Then... they drop the sky on them."

  Kasia looked at the cabins. These were homes. People lived here. There were drying clothes on a line, frozen stiff. A child's doll lay abandoned in the snow.

  "I have to move three families," she said, her voice tight. "Widow Maja just had a baby. She’s weak."

  "Move them to the Keep, and all those who can’t fight," Casimir said. "Tonight. No exceptions. If this wall falls, this street becomes a furnace."

  Kasia walked over to the rotting wood. She placed her hand on it, feeling the cold seep through. She looked out through the gap, toward the dark tree line of the Pine-Barrens.

  "The Mist-Walkers," she said softly. "If they summon the fog, your archers won't be able to see the signal. If we can't see the breach, we can't close it."

  "That is why I need you," Casimir said. "You and your best hunters. You know the terrain. You know the sounds. If the mist comes, I need you to find the Shaman."

  Kasia turned to him. "You want me to go out there? Into the mist?"

  "I want you to hunt," Casimir said. "You said they pruned you. Tonight, you prune them. Find the voice in the fog and silence it."

  He looked at her. “Do you know the greatest sin for any warrior or leader?” he asked, then answered without waiting for a reply. “Arrogance. And these Orcs have had two years of feasting on arrogance. Which means they won’t expect weak women to hunt them.”

  A slow, cruel smile spread across Kasia’s face. It made the scar stretch and pale, transforming her expression from weary to predatory.

  "I like that," she whispered. "I like that very much."

  She reached into her belt and pulled out a heavy iron key. She tossed it to Casimir.

  "The armory," she said. "Take what you need. But if you blow up my wall and don't kill the Troll... don't bother running. I'm faster."