A single drop of salt water hit the dark red wax of the royal seal, sliding off the broken crest of King's City to stain the parchment underneath.
Tilly Wimbledon stared at the letter on her mahogany desk for three seconds longer, then forced her breathing to steady.
She didn't have the luxury of drowning in grief. Back in the capital, court ladies could drape themselves in black silk and weep behind silk fans for weeks on end while servants brought them warm wine. Out here in Silver City, sitting in the middle of a political viper's nest, crying for too long was a death sentence.
More importantly, she wasn't just the Fifth Princess of Graycastle anymore. Dozens of young women hidden across this estate were counting on her to keep her head. If Tilly hesitated now, her sisters would pay for her tears at the stake.
Father is gone, she thought, the truth settling like a block of ice in her chest. And Timothy won't wait for the body to go cold before he comes for me.
Beside her chair, leather armor creaked softly.
Ashes, the silver-haired witch who had stayed on one knee by her side for the past twenty minutes without moving a muscle, held out a clean linen handkerchief embroidered with the family's tower emblem.
Tilly took it without a word. She dried her cheeks, pressed the cloth briefly to the corners of her gray eyes, and straightened her back against the heavy wooden chair. When she lowered her hand, every trace of the grieving daughter had vanished behind a cool, sharp mask.
Inside her head, her mind kicked into high gear.
Tilly didn't possess a combat power that could cleave stone like Ashes or summon fire like other witches, yet her mental clarity was a weapon all on its own. As she looked up at the massive map of the continent hanging across the office wall, the room seemed to slow down around her.
Distances, road conditions, supply weights, horse stamina, and harbor tides clicked together in her thoughts like the gears of a pocket watch.
Silver City was wealthy, bustling, and full of trade, which made it a wonderful place to hide runaway witches during peacetime. Right now, however, its position on the map was a fatal flaw. It was the closest major city to the capital. With King Wimbledon III dead and Timothy seizing the throne through blood and poison, the trap was already snapping shut.
Within two or three days of hard riding, Timothy's elite Knights of Judgment—or worse, the black-robed hounds of the Church—would thunder through the city gates.
They would claim they were there to escort the Fifth Princess back to the palace for the funeral. And the moment she passed through the capital's gates, she would either bend the knee as a hostage or drink the same slow poison that had stopped her father's heart.
Holding the city by force was out of the question. The local barons would sell her out the second Timothy promised them a tax cut.
Tilly's eyes swept past the central plains, skipping over the mountain passes and the river valleys until they landed on the jagged ink lines at the far edge of the parchment.
— "We're heading out to sea," — Tilly said, her voice steady and clear in the quiet study.
Ashes rose to her feet in one fluid motion, her heavy palm resting on the pommel of her greatsword. The grief in her princess's eyes had fueled a dark, eager readiness in the warrior's chest.
— "We have enough gold in the cellar vaults to charter three merchant galleons tonight, provided we bribe the right harbor captains," — Ashes replied, her mind immediately jumping to the practical details. — "Where do we set our course, Your Highness? Garcia holds the Port of Clearwater down south. If we sail into her waters, she'll use us as shields in her war against Timothy."
— "We aren't going south, and we aren't heading west either," — Tilly said.
She pushed her chair back, walked briskly across the carpet, and tapped a pale fingernail against a tiny cluster of islands surrounded by rough, uncharted waters.
— "We're sailing for Sleeping Island, right in the middle of the Fjord Islands."
Ashes frowned slightly, leaning in to squint at the map.
The Fjords weren't meant for highborn royals. They were a maze of freezing reefs, jagged sea cliffs, and storm-beaten rocks ruled by rowdy sailors, pirates, and deep-sea monsters.
— "Sleeping Island..." — Tilly murmured, her gaze locked on the tiny dot of ink. — "Timothy inherited the largest land army on the continent and the best-trained knights in the realm. On land, nobody can match his numbers. At sea, however, Graycastle's navy is a disorganized mess. The Fjords are neutral territory, broken up into dozens of factions, and the currents around those cliffs will tear heavy warships to pieces if the captains don't know the waters."
She turned her head to look up at the tall warrior beside her, a fierce spark lighting up her gray eyes.
— "To a normal lord, Sleeping Island is a useless piece of rock where wheat won't even grow," — Tilly continued. — "No king would waste soldiers trying to conquer it. Yet with our sisters' magic working together, we can turn that barren island into a fortress nobody can touch. Out there, beyond the reach of the crown and the Church's pyres, we'll finally build a home of our own."
Ashes stared at her for a second before a slow, wolfish grin spread across her face.
— "An entire island just for witches, guarded by the ocean itself," — Ashes said, thumping her fist against her leather breastplate. — "It's a brilliant plan, Tilly. Still, moving everyone is going to be a headache. We have dozens of girls hidden across the district. Buying grain, loading wagons, and boarding three ships at the old docks without tipping off the city guard or Timothy's port spies will take time. The moment your brother's riders show up and realize you've ignored his summons, they'll seal the harbor."
— "Which is why we can't let them realize we've fled until we're already in open water," — Tilly said.
She walked back toward her desk, her steps slowing as she glanced at the closed oak door of the study.
Just twenty minutes ago, old Edgar—the butler who had served her household since she was a little girl—had stepped through that door to set down a tray of hot tea, his lined face full of quiet worry for her.
A cold, heavy knot tightened in Tilly's stomach.
Being a leader means getting your hands dirty, she reminded herself, forcing her heart to stay behind a wall of ice. If I act soft now, everyone dies.
— "Ashes..." — Tilly lowered her voice, her fingers brushing the edge of the silver inkwell on her desk. — "Tonight, before we leave, we need to neutralize Edgar, the stable master, and every civilian maid in this manor."
Ashes froze. The grin vanished from the warrior's face, replaced by a deep, uncomfortable scowl. She had cut down Church mercenaries and corrupt guards without blinking, yet her hand slipped off her sword hilt at those words.
— "Kill them, Your Highness?" — Ashes asked quietly, her voice tight. — "They're ordinary servants. They don't even know what we are, and they've served you loyally for years."
— "Gods, no! Not kill them!" — Tilly snapped, shaking her head sharply at the mere thought. She let out a long breath, rubbing her temples. — "Edgar has guarded my meals and kept my secrets better than any royal knight ever did. That's the exact problem, Ashes. Because they're loyal, ordinary people, they won't survive a single hour in the dungeons when Timothy's inquisitors show up."
Tilly clenched her hands into fists at her sides.
— "Think about what my brother will do when his cavalry arrives tomorrow or the day after and finds me gone," — she said, her voice dropping into a grim, practical register. — "He'll assume the staff helped me escape. He'll have the maids whipped in the courtyard and flay Edgar alive just to make an example of them."
She looked straight into Ashes's eyes.
— "Wait until midnight when the household is asleep. Go from room to room and knock them out cleanly before they can cry out. Tie their wrists and ankles with thick hemp rope, gag them, and lock every single one of them behind the iron door in the deep south wine cellar."
Tilly swallowed hard against the dry ache in her throat.
— "Leave sacks of dry bread, salted meat, and enough barrels of fresh water to last them a full week in the dark," — she ordered. — "When Timothy's hounds finally break down the manor doors and search the basement two or three days from now, they'll find the entire staff bound and bruised. When Edgar tells the knights that masked bandits broke in during the night and knocked everyone unconscious, he won't be lying. Not even a Church torturer can find fault with the truth."
It was a harsh, ugly thing to do to people who cared for her. Locking an old man in a freezing cellar for days made Tilly feel no better than the tyrants she hated.
Yet on the scales of survival, three days of fear and bruised wrists in a dark basement was a small price to pay to keep Edgar's head on his shoulders—and to buy the three days her sisters needed to clear the harbor.
— "Understood, Your Highness. I won't leave a single mark they can't recover from," — Ashes said, her voice softening with fierce devotion as she bowed her head. — "Nobody leaves this house tonight. By sunrise, the Fifth Princess will be a ghost."
Tilly didn't answer right away. She looked down at the tear-stained letter on her desk, picked it up, and held the corner over the candle flame until the fire licked across Timothy's signature.
The sheltered girl who used to spend her afternoons reading history books in the palace gardens had burned away with that paper. In her place stood the ruler of Sleeping Island.
Thousands of miles west of Silver City's quiet harbor, the wind howling down from the Impassable Mountain Range hit like a slap of frozen iron.
Yet as Prince Roland Wimbledon walked along the top of Border Town's twelve-foot concrete wall, the brutal winter siege that had terrified the western frontier for generations felt strangely, impossibly quiet.
Behind him, a squad of militiamen marched in neat two-by-two formation, their heavy boots crunching against the frost on the stone walkway and their flintlock rifles resting firmly against their shoulders.
Down below the ramparts, the snowfield looked like a butcher's yard left out in the freeze. Dozens of blast craters blackened with gunpowder soot pockmarked the white plain, surrounded by dark, frozen puddles of blood and the stiff carcasses of mutated wolves that hadn't been hauled away yet.
Beyond the rows of sharpened wooden stakes, however, the edge of the Misty Forest was dead still.
No glowing red eyes peered out from the pines. No bone-chilling howls echoed across the gorge.
Roland stopped beside one of the timber watchtowers built into the wall, resting his fur-gloved hands on the gray concrete parapet. Standing inside the shelter was Svend, a grizzled former hunter who now wore a strip of dyed blue leather tied around his left arm—the mark of the elite unit handpicked by William and Iron Axe.
— "How does the treeline look this morning, soldier?" — Roland asked, offering the man an easy, approachable smile.
Svend spun around and snapped a crisp salute, his knuckles thudding against his boiled-leather chestpiece.
— "Quiet as a graveyard, Your Highness!" — Svend answered, a wide grin cracking across his windburned face. — "For the past four days, the beasts have practically vanished. It's like the rot up on the peaks just dried up overnight. We spotted two stray boars near the river yesterday afternoon, and the ugly bastards bolted back into the trees before they even got within musket range."
Roland let out a breath of white vapor, genuine relief warming his chest. All those nights spent hunched over kiln blueprints and ammunition ledgers until dawn had paid off.
— "That's what I like to hear, Svend," — Roland said, slapping his palm fondly against the solid gray concrete. — "Between the wall Master Karl built and the rifles in your hands, the worst of this winter is already behind us."
Svend nodded, though the grin on his face shifted into a look of deep, almost fanatical awe that had very little to do with masonry.
Raising his right arm, the veteran pointed past the wooden spike trenches toward a massive, jagged crater thirty yards out in the snow. The ice around that pit was still stained a rusty black—marking the exact spot where William had leaped off the wall on a hemp rope weeks ago to beat a one-ton hybrid bear and an armored buffalo to death with his bare hands.
— "Begging your pardon, Your Highness, the stone wall is a wonder, no doubt about it," — Svend said, his voice dropping into the hushed tone commoners usually reserved for church saints. — "Only, Iron Axe and the older scouts reckon there's another reason the monsters stopped coming down the slope."
Roland's eyebrows twitched slightly.
— "Is that so?" — the prince asked smoothly. — "And what do the scouts think is keeping them away?"
— "Beasts are rabid brutes, Your Highness, driven crazy by the mountain mist," — Svend explained, his chest puffing out with pride as he stared at the distant crater. — "Even so, an animal still knows when it's outmatched. They can smell the blood soaked into that snow. After Commander William jumped down there alone and caved in the skulls of two giant Hybrids with his bare fists, every wolf pack in those woods got the message. Their instincts are screaming at them that a bigger monster owns this valley now. None of them dare set foot in our Lord Commander's hunting ground."
Roland's polite smile didn't slip by even a fraction of an inch, though the muscles along his jaw pulled tight beneath the skin.
— "An interesting way to look at it," — Roland said evenly, giving the soldier's shoulder a brief pat. — "Commander William has certainly bled for this town. Keep your eyes on the trees, Svend. Don't let the quiet make the men sloppy."
— "Yes, Your Highness!"
Roland turned and walked down the rampart toward the stone stair tower, signaling with two fingers for his guard escort to wait at the bottom of the steps.
The instant he stepped inside the enclosed stairwell and out of the militia's sight, the warm smile vanished from his face like a snuffed candle.
His gray eyes were dark, cold, and sharp as steel.
Walking slowly down the frost-slick stone steps alone, Roland couldn't deny the relief of surviving the Months of Demons without losing a single civilian. No previous lord of Border Town had ever pulled off a miracle like this. The granaries were full, the furnaces were roaring day and night, and the town was growing richer by the week.
Yet Svend's words kept ringing against the inside of his skull like an alarm bell.
Our Lord Commander's hunting ground.
Right now, William wasn't even in Border Town. The man was miles away in the freezing peaks of the Impassable Mountain Range alongside Nightingale, hunting for the Witch Cooperation Association's camp. Even in his absence, however, William's shadow stretched across every inch of the defensive line.
Ever since that afternoon when William had smashed through Duke Ryan's traitors in the granary tunnel and then crushed the hybrid beasts in front of the whole army, the mood inside the barracks had shifted.
What the soldiers felt for their commander wasn't normal military respect anymore. It was turning into blind hero worship.
As Cheng Yan—a modern man who had read plenty of history back on Earth—Roland knew one iron rule of politics that never changed across any century or universe: whoever held the hearts and the guns of the army held the throne.
Royal blood meant nothing when the troops loved their general more than their king.
Look at the board right now, Roland thought grimly, pausing beside a narrow arrow slit that overlooked the castle courtyard below. How much of this town do I actually control?
Inside the castle, Arthur sat at the center of every supply line, tax ledger, and workshop schedule. The dark-haired strategist ran the town's economy with a terrifying efficiency that made Assistant Minister Barov look like a confused schoolboy.
Out on the wall, William owned the fierce loyalty of Iron Axe, the elite recruits, and every miner who had picked up a rifle. Even Nightingale—a lethal witch assassin who had crept into Roland's bedroom ready to slit his throat—had trusted William enough to follow him straight into a mountain blizzard.
Worse still, neither Arthur nor William was an ordinary scholar from some distant kingdom. Roland knew for a fact that both men carried strange, unexplained powers under their wool tunics, and that they whispered in private about "systems" and "character builds" as if this entire world were a game board.
What happens if the two of them sit down over a jug of ale one night and decide the Fourth Prince is getting in their way?
A chill ran down Roland's spine that had nothing to do with the draft blowing through the arrow slit.
If Arthur and William decided tomorrow morning to lock Roland in his own dungeon—or quietly snap his neck in his sleep—how many soldiers in the First Army would actually raise a musket to avenge their prince?
Carter Lannis would fight, certainly, and would probably die in under ten seconds against William's fists. As for the militia on the wall? Half of them would probably cheer as their beloved Lord Commander took the seat at the head of the hall.
Roland clenched his gloved fists until the leather creaked.
He wasn't an ungrateful tyrant, and he wasn't stupid enough to pick a fight with the two men who were helping him build an industrial empire in the mud. He needed Arthur's brain, and he needed William's strength.
Still, a ruler who relied entirely on the goodwill of his subordinates wasn't a king—he was a hostage waiting for his usefulness to run out.
Stepping out of the stair tower into the cold courtyard, Roland looked toward the thick black smoke rising from the workshop chimneys where Anna and Arthur were testing the new steam engine.
He needed an equalizer—something that bound the witches, the industry, and the future of Graycastle directly to him alone, before the gears of the machine they were building ground him into dust.
The winter beasts were retreating into the mountains, yet as Roland adjusted his fur cloak against the wind, he knew the real battle for Border Town was only just starting.