Lukas's viewpoint.
I called an emergency council session within the hour, the coalition's key leaders gathering in Kaldrath's war room despite the early hour, weighing Malakar's warning with the same careful strategic urgency the news demanded.
"Can we trust this?" Kael Drenmoor asked bluntly, once I'd laid out the full warning. "An enemy lieutenant, walking freely into our territory to warn us about his own master's plans? Forgive me, Lukas, but that sounds like exactly the kind of misdirection a patient, methodical enemy might use to draw our attention away from his actual target."
It was a fair concern, and one I'd already turned over carefully during the walk back from that garden meeting. "I've considered that," I said. "But everything Malakar has told me so far has proven accurate — the tournament attack's warning signs, the shift in Vessyl's strategy toward smaller, less defended targets, all of it lined up with what he warned me about before it happened. I don't think this is misdirection. I think it's exactly what it appears to be: someone genuinely, dangerously questioning his own loyalty."
"Even if that's true," Seraphine said carefully, "we can't act as though his information is complete. He doesn't know the specific target. We need to prepare defensively across every plausible location rather than betting everything on his partial warning alone."
It was sound strategic thinking, and we spent the following hours methodically reviewing every settlement, messenger waypoint, and naval position that might plausibly match Vessyl's stated criteria — symbolic value, connection to key coalition figures, vulnerability to a coordinated strike.
Valoria topped every version of that list we constructed, and I felt the familiar, cold weight of responsibility settle over me at the realization.
"I need to go there," I said. "Personally. If Valoria is the target, or even a plausible target, I won't risk it being caught unprepared while I'm here coordinating a broader defense."
"That's exactly the kind of predictable response Vessyl might be counting on," Kai pointed out carefully. "If they know you'll rush to defend Valoria personally, drawing you away from the coalition's broader coordination effort might be part of the actual plan, regardless of whether Valoria itself is the real target."
It was, uncomfortably, a valid point, and one that left me caught between two equally plausible strategic readings of the same fragmentary warning.
"Then we split our response," Aria said, having returned to Kaldrath only the day before from her ongoing work implementing the early-warning framework, and immediately grasping the strategic dilemma with her usual practical clarity. "Lukas coordinates the broader coalition defense here, where his presence actually matters most for managing a multi-front crisis. I go to Valoria personally, along with whatever additional coalition reinforcements we can spare, and make sure the village's own considerable defenses are fully prepared regardless of whether it's the actual target."
I wanted, desperately, to argue that I should be the one physically present at Valoria — old instinct, old fear for a place that had become genuinely important to me, pushing hard against the careful strategic logic Aria and Kai had both laid out. But I recognized, forcing myself to think clearly rather than reactively, that they were right. A multi-front crisis required coordinated response, not a single point of overwhelming strength deployed reactively to whichever location fear directed it toward first.
"Alright," I said finally, the decision costing me more than I let show. "Aria, take whatever reinforcements Ironhold and Sylvaris can spare on short notice. Kai, I want you coordinating naval defense with Maren directly — if Vessyl's targeting the fleet, we need eyes on every major dock within striking range. Seraphine, Kael — help me manage the messenger network specifically. If that's genuinely one of Vessyl's targets, we need redundant communication in place before the assault actually launches."
The room moved into focused, urgent action, each piece of our carefully built coalition mobilizing to meet a threat we still couldn't fully predict, armed with nothing more than a defector's partial warning and the hard-won trust that warning had somehow, improbably, managed to earn.