The mist crawled over the damp grass, thick enough to be cut with a knife.
The air was stagnant and dead.
The silence in the village wasn't one of peace; it was the vacuum that precedes the implosion of a bomb.
In the center of the camp, the heavy canvas of the command tent swayed weakly.
Inside, the heat from the torches barely kept the cold at bay. The war map was spread across an irregular stone table, once again.
At its center, a single rock of red quartz marked our target: Elfhing Castle.
Around the stone, dozens of charcoal lines represented walls, guard posts, and the blood we were about to spill.
Sillys rested both hands on the edge of the table.
The deep bags under her pale eyes showed she hadn't slept properly in days.
"The capital has just received reinforcements," she announced.
Her voice didn't tremble, but her tone was like lead.
"My mother has called upon elven mages, conjurers, and the northern troops. She knows we are coming."
Tension swallowed the tent.
Laura was the first to move.
She leaned her hip against the table, a sadistic, sharp smile tearing across her face.
But the sound of her silver claws slowly scraping against the stone revealed what the smile tried to hide.
There was a feverish, almost desperate gleam in her crimson eyes.
"Great," Laura purred.
"Let her clog the corridors with them, it won't be a problem. We will tear through the main gate and paint the walls with whatever is left."
The sharp thud of Sillys's silver shaft striking the stone floor cut through the assassin's delusion.
"No," Sillys's voice echoed through the tent, cold and unyielding, making the temperature drop.
"Nobody is painting any walls, Laura."
Laura narrowed her red eyes.
Her predatory smile faltered, and the sound of her claws scraping the stone stopped abruptly.
Sillys leaned over the map, resting her hands on the edge of the table and pinning her gaze directly on the girl.
"Most of the soldiers and mages left in the castle do not fight out of loyalty to my mother," Sillys explained, her tone heavy with the burden of someone who knows her own people.
"They fight out of pure terror. They are hostages holding swords. If we go in there massacring every elf that crosses our path, what difference is there between us and the Queen?"
Sillys looked from Laura to Arthur, and then to me.
"I need to tear her from the throne, but I cannot rule a graveyard. If I pave my path with the corpses of their brothers and children, the fear merely changes masters, and hatred takes root. I will never earn their respect."
Laura scoffed, rolling her eyes like a predator who just had her prey stolen.
"A war without carnage isn't a war, princess," Laura shot back, her tone acidic.
"Do you want us to say 'excuse me' while they hurl fireballs at our heads?"
"I didn't say not to spill blood," Sillys countered, the goddess's gaze taking on a frigid ferocity.
"Strip them of their weapons. Break their knees. If a guard is stubborn enough to keep swinging his sword at you, sever his arm. Mutilation is an acceptable price. But I want them to keep breathing. Disable, do not execute."
Laura licked her lips, twirling her claws in the air.
The lethal smile slowly returned to her face.
"Leave them alive... but missing pieces," the assassin murmured, seeming to savor the idea.
"It's harder. But acceptable."
Arthur, who hadn't even blinked up until this point, finally intervened.
"To immobilize without killing, the fight requires precision," Arthur's baritone sounded clinical and unwavering.
"The outer defenses will have to fall; we have enough brute force for that. But if the Queen has organized a line of conjurers in the inner courtyard and we need to spare them, that gate will turn into a slaughter funnel. We need to break their formation fast. If the fight drags on and we waste time sparing lives, we die of fatigue."
I remained quiet, leaning near the tent's entrance.
I closed my eyes and let my hearing expand.
The wind outside wasn't blowing; it was trembling.
It carried the scent of ozone, churned earth, and the cold sweat of thousands of warriors awaiting the march signal.
I opened my eyes, meeting Sillys's gaze across the table.
The deadline was sealed.
The news spread like wildfire; even before night fell, the village transformed into a living war machine.
The constant sound of hammers in the forges stopped, replaced by the heavy rhythm of marching drums and the clinking of blades being sheathed.
Elemental elves walked among the rows of warriors, painting glowing emerald runes on oak wood shields.
The scent of crushed healing herbs floated in the air, strong and minty.
I watched the army from atop a gigantic tree root.
There were more than a thousand of them.
Wounded, exiled, and traumatized elves, now forged into a lethal legion.
It was then that I felt the shift in air pressure behind me.
Sillys stopped beside me.
She had abandoned the mantle of commander for a second; her shoulders were slightly slumped, and she gripped her spear so tightly her knuckles were white.
"You don't wear that expression when you're down there with the troops," I said quietly, without looking directly at her.
Sillys let out a trembling sigh.
The sound was so human, so vulnerable, that it made me turn my head immediately.
"I owe my life to you all," she murmured, her eyes fixed on the crowd below.
"The victory against the Taranpus... this army, none of this would exist if you had left, or if you hadn't accepted my request to follow me the first time I saw you."
"But I have an even greater debt to you, Suki."
I frowned, feeling an uncomfortable chill on the back of my neck.
"Where are you going with this, Sillys?"
She turned her face to me. Her gaze carried an ancient terror, something I had never seen the goddess of the wind display before.
"There is a man inside that castle," her voice dropped to an almost ragged whisper, so tense that the very air around us seemed to suddenly freeze.
The leaves on the trees stopped rustling.
"A half-breed and exiled elf, the Queen's personal shield."
I swallowed hard.
Just the shift in her posture made my stomach drop.
"Lucas."
The name escaped her lips as if it were made of poison and broken glass.
"He didn't just teach us how to fight, Suki, he forged me and Sallys. Everything you saw of sadistic brutality in my sister, everything you've experienced of absolute technique in me... they are merely fragmented crumbs of what he is capable of."
My white marks blinked beneath my skin, tearing through the dark for a millisecond.
It was my power reacting out of pure survival instinct; a knot of ice formed in my throat.
*Why did she never tell me about this?* I thought.
Sallys had nearly torn me in half, and Sillys split the air with a mere flick of her wrist.
And the monster that had created those two killing machines would be waiting for us.
"Being a half-breed in the court of Elfhing is an instant death sentence," Sillys continued, her pale eyes locked on mine, gleaming with an ancient terror.
"But he became the Queen's personal bodyguard because, in three centuries, nobody, absolutely no living being on this continent, has managed to slit his throat. He is a force of nature disguised as an elf. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, the strongest warrior in all the elven realms."
The image of that invisible monolith hovered over us; his power level wasn't just superior—it bordered on the absurd.
"He will not descend into the carnage of the front lines," she said, her voice trembling slightly, begging me to understand the scale of the danger.
"He will be guarding the dome of the castle, which is where I intend to enter, and he won't step back a single millimeter, even if the walls crumble on his own head."
The puzzle finally clicked into place in my mind.
And the final picture sent chills that raised the hairs on my arms.
"You want me to fight him," I said. My voice sounded drier than sand.
"I am asking you for the impossible," Sillys took a step forward, grabbing my shoulders.
Her touch was frigid, and the goddess's fingers gripped my tunic almost in desperation.
"I know exactly what I'm asking, Suki. I know I might be sending you to your own grave. But our target isn't just the throne. It is the Bell of Truth."
My eyes widened.
"It's an artifact forged in the primordial age of the elves, when my mother was still a good person," she explained quickly, urgency bleeding through her words like blood from an open cut.
"It was created specifically to spiritually connect every existing elf, so that messages and orders could be transmitted to everyone, anywhere."
"It rests in the highest tower of Elfhing, at the very top of the castle, as a symbol of power."
"And where will you be while I face an elven god of war and try to climb this tower?" I asked.
"Facing the Queen."
All vulnerability vanished from Sillys's eyes at once, replaced by the frigid, suicidal determination of a general.
"As soon as she realizes where you are heading, she will abandon the entire war and her own army just to try and stop you. I will be the wall between her and the tower, whatever the cost."
"But you will have to get through Lucas, and you will have to make that bell chime."
The weight of what she asked felt capable of cracking the ground beneath my boots.
It was a one-way mission, with no guarantee of return.
I felt the air current embrace my body—light, soft, alive.
It was as if the wind itself were telling me that there was no barrier it couldn't bypass.
My breathing, which had hitched in my chest, slowed down. The fear that had been there began to dissipate; the weeks of physical and spiritual torture had not been in vain.
I opened my eyes and let a smile surface.
A small, restrained, but unshakably real smile.
"I've already died and come back a few times," I replied, lifting my chin to meet her eyes.
"Leave it to me, Sillys. I will make the wind sing for all of us."
The biting cold of dawn scratched my lungs, yanking me abruptly from sleep.
I opened my eyes to the faint, dying glow of our small campfire.
The flames had vanished hours ago, leaving behind only reddish embers fighting against the morning frost.
I tried to move, but a double weight pinned my legs to the ground.
Laura was curled up on my left side, using my thigh as a pillow, her calm breathing masking the predator she was.
On the right side, Sillys rested in the same manner, the silken strands of her white hair spread across my lap.
On the other side of the ashes, Arthur's immense silhouette remained motionless; he slept sitting up, arms crossed over his chest, looking like a stone golem forgotten in the forest.
I blinked, feeling cold sweat on the back of my neck.
The echo of the name *Lucas* still buzzed in my ears.
My mind had tortured me during the night, replaying every detail of the previous day like a lucid nightmare.
The stone map with the planning.
Sillys's frigid and suicidal request.
The knot in my stomach tightened, heavy as lead. It was no longer a plan floating in the air, much less a mere dream.
The day of execution had arrived.
I lightly touched the elven princess's shoulder.
Unlike a mortal, Sillys didn't stretch or blink in confusion against the light.
Her pale eyes snapped open—sharp, frigid, and perfectly awake.
She rose with silent fluidity, without a single muscle popping.
Instead of looking up at the hidden sky, she simply lifted her chin and closed her eyes again.
Sillys let a faint breeze brush against her face.
She didn't need a clock or the sun; she was reading the atmospheric pressure, feeling the rotation of the air currents and the moisture rising from the earth.
"Wake the two of them," she whispered, her low voice cutting through the silence of the clearing without shattering it.
"I'm going to put the army into formation."
She turned her back, walking toward the village. The camp was completely swallowed by a wall of dense, ghostly mist, hiding the thousands of souls waiting for war.
A few steps away from being consumed by the white fog, Sillys stopped and looked over her shoulder.
The goddess's gaze met mine.
"I'll meet you at the tip of the spear."
And then, she vanished into the mist.
I let out a long, heavy sigh, watching the vapor of my own breath dissolve in the freezing air.
The reality of the probable death waiting for me at the top of that castle descended upon my shoulders all at once.
I swallowed dryly and looked down.
Waking Laura was like defusing a bomb. She hated being pulled from sleep abruptly, and startling an assassin whose claws sprang from her knuckles purely by lethal reflex was usually a one-way ticket to a fatal hemorrhage.
With extreme caution, I kept my movements slow and perfectly predictable.
I carefully slid my hand to avoid brushing against any hidden knives she might have in her clothes, lightly touching the top of her head.
"Laura," I murmured, my voice deep and soft, so as not to startle her.
"Time to wake up."
The army organized itself at the edge of the Black Forest in deadly silence, divided into the tactical formation Sillys had designed.
On the left, the warriors dressed in light leather gathered around Laura and Kanzo.
It was the **Vanguard**. Fierce and silent, their mission was to dive into the enchanted forests and flank the defenses, breaking the enemy's spine through speed and terror.
In the center, a massive wall of steel and oak shields formed the:
**Middle Guard**
Arthur and Odássio stood at their front.
They would be the anvil; they would take the magical shockwaves and protect the healers.
And on the front line, at the absolute point of collision, was the:
**Central Spear**
Sillys, Vandashi, and I, along with several other soldiers.
We would be the first to see the castle.
The tension among the thousands of warriors was crushing.
But they still laughed, talked among themselves, hugged their friends and families. A wave of nervous laughter tore through the ranks.
Morale ignited like a powder keg, even knowing that half of the people laughing there would not return home.
Sillys raised her wind spear, her white hair dancing wildly behind her back.
She turned her face to me, the mask of a general now perfectly welded into place.
"Are you afraid, Suki?" she asked, her voice fading into the rising howl of the storm beginning to form around us.
I opened my hands.
I felt the space between my fingers.
The white marks bloomed on my skin, illuminating the twilight of the forest with the cold glow of a star.
Gravity unraveled beneath my feet.
"No," I said, my voice vibrating with the atmosphere itself.
"We will leave there with your crown."
Sillys spun the spear over her head.
The blade reflected the first opaque beam of light of the day.
"Then let's dance."
Thousands of black cloaks advanced at the same time through the mist, like a tide swallowing the forest.
And for the first time in centuries…
Elfhing heard war coming to its gates.