Shafts of pale winter morning light slanted through the tall, stained-glass windows of the third-floor study, painting narrow ribbons of amber and cobalt across the polished surface of the heavy oak desk.
Outside the frost-rimmed panes, the northern wind was still whistling around the castle eaves, yet inside the office, the air was warm and inviting, filled with the rich scent of crackling pine logs and freshly steeped black tea.
Leaning back against the cushioned leather of his high-backed chair, Prince Roland Wimbledon rested his elbows on the armrests and quietly observed the two women seated across from him.
A single night of sleeping on feather mattresses under clean wool blankets—preceded by hot baths and a midnight feast—had already worked wonders for the two newest arrivals from the Impassable Mountain Range.
On the left chair sat Lightning.
Dressed in a freshly laundered linen tunic and a warm sheepskin vest that Anna had borrowed from the castle wardrobe for her, the short-haired blonde girl didn't have an ounce of noble stiffness in her body. Her boots didn't even reach the floor; she was swinging her short legs back and forth beneath the chair in an energetic rhythm, her bright blue eyes darting around the study with insatiable curiosity as she took in everything from the framed territorial maps on the stone walls to the silver inkwells sitting on Roland's blotter.
Beside her, Diana Argus looked as though she belonged in a royal court portrait.
Even though the twenty-four-year-old witch was wearing a plain, unembroidered dress of gray wool provided by the maids the night before, the weeks of grime and starvation from the mountain cave had been washed away. Her honey-brown hair was combed neatly back over her shoulders, her spine was straight without touching the back of the chair, and her hands rested folded in her lap with the effortless grace of a baron's eldest daughter.
Clearing his throat lightly to catch Lightning's wandering attention, Roland leaned forward and slid two freshly written sheets of pale parchment across the oak tabletop, stopping one in front of each woman.
— "As I mentioned briefly at supper last night, things in Border Town are run very differently from the rest of Graycastle," — Roland began, keeping his voice calm, clear, and businesslike. — "Here, we govern by written law and mutual agreement. Neither of you is a prisoner under my roof, nor are you the property of the crown. You are free women, and what I am placing in front of you this morning is an official employment contract."
Diana leaned forward slightly, her brows lifting in surprise as her eyes scanned the neat, structured paragraphs written in Roland's hand.
— "An... employment contract, Your Highness?" — Diana repeated softly, genuine astonishment coloring her voice. — "Written for witches?"
— "Word for word, the exact same terms that Anna and Nana signed when they joined my administration," — Roland replied, lacing his fingers together on the desk. — "The conditions are straightforward. In exchange for your service, my government provides you with private, heated rooms inside the castle, three full meals a day, clean clothing, and absolute military and legal protection against the Church of Hermes or any noble court. On top of that, you will each receive a personal wage of ten silver royals every month to spend or save however you see fit."
Roland tapped a knuckle lightly near the bottom of the parchment.
— "In return, all I ask is that you follow the laws of Border Town and use your magical abilities to assist in the development and defense of this territory," — the prince finished with an encouraging nod. — "Read every line carefully. If the terms are acceptable to you, all you need to do is sign your names at the bottom."
Next to Diana, Lightning stopped swinging her legs, picked up her parchment with both hands, and stared at the ink lines while blinking rapidly.
— "Hold on a second, Your Highness..." — Lightning said, tilting her head to the side as she looked up from the paper. — "Let me get this straight. You're going to give me a feather bed, all the roast pork I can eat, and ten silver coins every single month... just to fly around in the sky? Nobody's going to chase me with pitchforks, and I don't have to hide in a dark hole in the ground anymore?"
Roland couldn't help a genuine, warm smile at the girl's bluntness.
— "Not a single person in my town will ever lay a finger on you, Lightning," — Roland promised. — "And don't sell yourself short. Being able to fly high above the clouds faster than a hawk is a priceless gift. When spring comes and our enemies march toward this valley, you are going to be the eyes of the First Army in the sky."
Lightning's chest puffed out immediately at the title, a huge grin splitting her face from ear to ear.
Right beside her, however, Diana hadn't reached for the quill.
As the former noblewoman read down to the third paragraph of the contract—where the document outlined winter working hours and daily magical practice—her eyes suddenly stopped moving.
The composed, grateful color drained out of Diana's cheeks in a heartbeat, replaced by a deep, ancestral dread that made her fingers tremble against the edge of the parchment.
— "Your Highness... before I can put my name on this page, there is something I must speak of frankly," — Diana said, her voice dropping into a low, shaky register as she looked up at Roland. — "The generosity of this document is something I never dreamed a mortal ruler could offer our kind. Truly, it sounds like heaven. However... we are currently in the middle of the Months of Demons."
At the mention of the winter season, the room grew noticeably quieter.
— "Back in the mountain cavern, Nightingale mentioned something about this, yet I still cannot wrap my mind around how it could be possible," — Diana continued, her hands tightening in her lap. — "During the winter months, the ambient magic in the world surges. For the younger girls like Lightning who have not yet turned eighteen, the Day of Awakening is coming soon—and even for adult witches like myself, if we stay in a mortal town without searching for the Holy Mountain, the magic building up inside our veins will eventually overwhelm our bodies. Do you truly understand what the Demonic Bite does to a witch when she cannot endure the pressure, Your Highness? It tears us apart from the inside out."
Hearing the words Demonic Bite and Day of Awakening, the bright grin vanished from Lightning's face.
The young flyer lowered her parchment back onto the oak desk, her shoulders slumping slightly as she stared down at her boots. Even for a fearless girl who loved the clouds, the eighteenth birthday was the silent monster waiting under every young witch's bed. The priests of Hermes preached that the agony was divine punishment for carrying devil's blood, while Mentor Cara had drilled into their heads for years that the torture was a test only the strong or those who reached the Holy Mountain could survive.
Across the desk, Roland didn't show a single flicker of fear or hesitation.
Instead, the young prince let out a quiet sigh, looking at the two women with the patient, steady eyes of a teacher about to dismantle a centuries-old superstition.
— "Lady Diana, Lightning," — Roland said, his voice firm and resonant in the sunlit study. — "The Church of Hermes has lied to you since the day you were born to keep the commoners afraid of you. And with all due respect to the founder of your Association, Mentor Cara has no idea how the physical laws of magic actually work inside the human body either."
Reaching across the side of his desk, Roland picked up a heavy, clear glass tumbler—one of the new high-temperature silicate glasses Anna had helped bake the previous week—along with a ceramic pitcher filled with fresh drinking water.
Setting the empty glass squarely in the center of the desk between the two contracts, Roland lifted the pitcher and began to pour.
Clear water splashed into the tumbler, rising steadily up the smooth glass walls until the liquid reached the very rim, bulging slightly at the top in a tight meniscus.
— "Picture your physical body as this glass," — Roland said, holding the pitcher poised inches above the brim as both witches watched intently. — "And picture Magical Power as the water inside it. Every day, your body naturally draws in a small stream of energy from the air around you. During the winter Months of Demons, for reasons tied to the environment, that stream turns into a rushing tap, pouring magic into your veins much faster than usual."
Roland locked his gray eyes onto Diana's.
— "Tell me, Lady Diana: what happens right now if I keep pouring water into a glass that is already completely full?"
— "It... it overflows onto the table," — Diana answered immediately, her brow furrowing.
— "Exactly. It overflows," — Roland nodded. — "Now imagine that instead of an open glass, this container is sealed shut at the top—just like a witch who hides her identity in a town and refuses to cast a single spell for fear of the Church's spies. When the water keeps pouring in day after day with nowhere to escape, the pressure inside the glass skyrockets until the walls crack and shatter from the inside out."
Roland set the pitcher down with a soft thud.
— "That internal pressure—magic pressing violently against your nerves, blood vessels, and bones because your body's storage capacity is full—is what you call the Demonic Bite," — Roland explained clearly. — "It isn't a curse from the gods, and it isn't the devil collecting rent on your soul. It is simple, everyday fluid mechanics."
Picking up the full tumbler, Roland tilted it over the mouth of the ceramic pitcher and poured every drop of water back out, setting the empty glass back down on the oak table with a sharp clink.
— "And once you understand the cause, the cure for the nightmare that has been killing witches for four hundred years is almost laughably simple," — Roland said, tapping the empty glass with his index finger. — "All you have to do is empty the glass every day."
Both Diana and Lightning stared at the empty tumbler as if it were a sacred relic.
— "As long as you use your magic regularly while working here in Border Town—draining your internal reserves down until you feel tired before going to bed each night—the pressure inside your veins can never build up to the breaking point," — Roland concluded calmly. — "Not only will your power grow stronger and easier to control over time, but when Lightning's eighteenth birthday arrives, the 'deadly' Day of Awakening won't feel any worse than a mild headache after a long day's run."
For five full seconds, neither witch breathed a word.
Diana's lips parted slightly, her sharp, educated mind racing through the terrifying implications of that simple demonstration.
All the horror stories she had grown up with; all the girls like Airy and Abby who had died convulsing in pools of their own blood on cold cave floors; all the young women who had slit their own wrists at seventeen rather than face their eighteenth birthday... Four hundred years of unimaginable human tragedy came down to nothing more than a full glass of water that nobody had ever told them to pour out because the Church hunted anyone who used magic in public!
If what His Highness says is true, Diana thought, her heart pounding against her ribs as she stared at the contract on the desk, then Border Town isn't merely a hiding place from the winter storm. It is paradise on earth.
Just as Diana raised her eyes from the empty glass, the side door of the study creaked softly open.
Stepping quietly into the room with a leather folder of workshop temperature logs tucked under her arm was Anna.
Dressed in a clean, practical blue wool work dress with her vibrant orange-red hair tied neatly behind her neck, the eighteen-year-old witch radiated a calm, unshakable serenity. The pale, hollow-cheeked girl who had once waited for the hangman's rope was completely gone; even the faint calluses and small burn marks faded on her fingers looked like the proud badges of a master artisan.
Seeing the full pitcher and the empty glass sitting between the two contracts, Anna understood the conversation at a single glance. Walking up beside Roland's desk, she offered Diana and Lightning a gentle, reassuring smile.
— "Every word His Highness just told you is the truth," — Anna said, her soft, clear voice carrying more weight than a thousand theoretical lectures. — "I was the very first witch in Border Town to sign that contract. For the past month, I have used my fire every afternoon to bake cement clinker and melt iron in the yard until my magic was empty. Two weeks ago, my eighteenth birthday came and went while I was working at the furnace. I didn't feel a single stab of pain. The Demonic Bite doesn't exist inside these walls."
Hearing that testimony straight from the mouth of an eighteen-year-old sister standing healthy and glowing right in front of her snapped the last thread of fear inside Diana's chest.
A long, deep sigh escaped Diana's lips, as if a thousand-pound iron chain had just been unlocked from her shoulders and dropped to the floor.
Without another second of hesitation, the former baron's daughter leaned forward, picked up the feathered goose quill from the stand, dipped the nib into the silver inkwell, and signed Diana Argus across the bottom of her contract in a sweeping, elegant noble hand.
— "My turn! Give me that pen!" — Lightning chirped, practically snatching the quill out of Diana's fingers the second she lifted it.
Hunching over her parchment with her tongue sticking out slightly at the corner of her mouth, the young aviator scribbled her name down so fast and hard that the quill tip nearly tore straight through the paper before slapping the sheet back toward Roland with both hands.
— "Signed and sealed, Your Highness! When do I start?!"
Checking both signatures with a satisfied nod, Roland sanded the wet ink and tucked the contracts into his desk drawer, right alongside Anna's and Nana's.
As Diana handed her copy across the blotter, however, her honey-colored eyes lingered on the rolled mechanical sketches stacked beside Roland's elbow, a spark of genuine intellectual eagerness lighting up her refined features.
— "Your Highness... if it is not overstepping my place on my very first morning," — Diana said, her posture straightening with quiet excitement. — "During our journey down the mountain, Nightingale and Lightning told me wonderful things about the machines you are building here. Back in the cave, before Cara destroyed your drawing, I caught a brief glimpse of the blueprint for that iron marvel that runs on boiling water—the one you call a 'Steam Engine'. My father allowed me to study mechanical drafting and architecture in his library when I was a girl, and I have never seen a mechanism of such beauty in my life. Would you permit me to see it with my own eyes?"
Roland's eyebrows lifted in pleasant surprise. In a frontier town where nine out of ten people couldn't even read their own names, discovering that William's unexpected rescue was not only a walking textile monopoly, but also a literate noblewoman who could read engineering blueprints, felt like winning the lottery twice in the same day.
— "Not only can you see it, Lady Diana—once you settle in, we can certainly use another pair of educated hands around the drafting tables," — Roland said warmly, turning his head toward Anna. — "Anna, since you're heading back down to the rear courtyard to preheat the boring mill anyway, why don't you take Diana and Lightning along and give them a close-up look at Version II?"
— "Gladly, Your Highness," — Anna nodded, gesturing politely toward the door for the two newcomers. — "Follow me, Miss Diana, Lightning. Just be careful not to touch the copper intake pipes—they get quite hot once the boiler is running."
Several hours later, as the pale afternoon sun began its slow, melancholic slide toward the jagged white peaks on the western horizon, a quiet tactical calm settled over the upper floors of the castle keep.
Far removed from the rhythmic clanging of the backyard machinery shed and the shouted cadence of Iron Axe drilling the new recruits in the outer yard, Arthur's private library on the third floor was as still as a monastery.
Near the tall oak bookcases lining the inner wall, William stood leaning one broad shoulder against a timber post, holding a steaming porcelain mug of hot herb tea between his calloused palms.
Compared to the hollow-eyed, guilt-crushed man who had dragged his boots up the stairs after the midnight banquet the night before, the Commander of the First Army looked as though he had been reborn.
After nine hours of deep, dreamless sleep—and more importantly, after the quiet, late-night talk with Nightingale on the edge of his bed that had pulled him out of his spiral—the suffocating black cloud hanging over William's head had evaporated completely. His back was straight, the healthy color had returned to his face, and his dark eyes were clear and focused as he blew the steam off his mug.
Clack.
The heavy oak door of the library opened, and Arthur stepped inside, pushing the panel shut behind his back until the brass latch clicked into place.
Walking calmly to the center of the wool rug with his hands clasped behind his dark-gray wool tunic, the strategist stopped five paces away and studied his best friend from head to toe for two seconds.
— "Well, well. Look who rejoined the land of the living," — Arthur remarked dryly, crossing his arms over his chest as a faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. — "Should I assume your brain has finally thawed out enough for a real conversation this afternoon, Will?"
William let out a loose, easy chuckle, taking a slow sip of the hot tea before lowering the mug.
— "Yeah, I'm good now, Art. Better than good, actually," — William admitted honestly, shaking his head at himself. — "Veronica knocked some much-needed sense into my skull last night after I came upstairs. She sees people a lot clearer than I do sometimes. Out there on the mountain, I let my own ego blind me—acting like I was some omnipotent player responsible for forcing every single piece on the board to move according to our book. I got my head screwed back on straight now."
Hearing that calm, grounded answer, the teasing smirk faded from Arthur's face, replaced by the sharp, razor-edged expression of the corporate crisis manager.
— "Good. Because I need your head completely clear for what comes next," — Arthur said, walking over to the long oak table in the center of the library where three detailed topographical maps of Graycastle's northern frontier were weighted down with brass cylinders. — "Bringing back Lightning and Diana Argus was a massive win—bigger than you even realize yet. However, the mountain board isn't finished. There are still nearly sixty witches from the Witch Cooperation Association sitting inside that freezing cave. After watching Anna's fire build our steam engine and seeing what Diana's dye magic can do for our treasury, leaving five dozen magical specialists to rot in the snow isn't an option. With their variety of powers, we can compress fifty years of industrial growth into six months."
Arthur rested both palms on the edge of the map table, looking up at William.
— "We are going to bring the entire Association down to Border Town before the winter ends," — Arthur stated flatly. — "And I already know the exact way to do it."
William's eyebrows pulled together in a sharp frown. Pushing himself off the bookcase, he set his tea mug down on a side shelf and walked over to the table.
— "A way to bring them all here?" — William asked skeptically. — "Art, we literally just walked out of that cave four days ago. You didn't see Cara's eyes in that hall—the woman is a full-blown, foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic! She burned Roland's blueprint without even reading it and tried to shove a white-hot iron poker through Veronica's face! Half the camp is brainwashed, the other half is terrified of her snakes, and after I slammed her into a rock wall, there is zero chance of negotiating with that woman."
— "Who said anything about negotiating?" — Arthur replied, his voice dropping to an icy, clinical register.
Reaching down, Arthur tapped the tip of his index finger squarely against the jagged charcoal lines marking the high peaks of the Impassable Mountain Range.
— "I have no intention of negotiating with Cara," — Arthur said. — "I am going up to the Association's camp myself."
Before William could even open his mouth to bark a protest at that insane statement, the air three feet to the left of the library fireplace suddenly shimmered and split open.
Shhhk.
Stepping straight out of the monochrome distortion of the Mist World into the warm afternoon light, Nightingale materialized with her arms folded tightly across her leather doublet, her wavy blond hair framing a face etched with sharp disbelief.
— "Have you lost your mind too, Arthur?" — Nightingale asked without preamble, her voice laced with a mixture of protective warning and sheer bewilderment as she walked up to the end of the table. — "Why on earth would you march up that mountain now? It's a complete waste of energy! William and I already risked our necks to give them the truth. We held out an open hand, and they chose to stay behind in the dark with Cara. Everything that could be done by talking has already been done! If a mortal man like you walks up to that cliff ledge knocking on the door for a second speech, Cara won't debate you—she'll have twenty combat witches riddle you with crossbow bolts before you take three steps down the tunnel!"
Arthur turned his head slowly toward the assassin, completely unfazed by her sudden appearance or her sharp tone.
— "Tell me, Nightingale," — Arthur said smoothly, a cold, predatory glint igniting behind his dark eyes as he leaned forward over the maps. — "After living under the same roof with me for the past month... do you genuinely think I am the kind of man who would hike three days through a mountain blizzard just to hand out polite pamphlets and give a speech in enemy territory?"
Both Nightingale and William paused, staring at the strategist.
— "To be completely honest with the two of you, I have been planning to swallow the entire Witch Cooperation Association from the very first week we arrived in Border Town—the moment our System showed me the long-term numbers," — Arthur confessed, speaking low enough that not even a guard standing ten feet outside the heavy oak door could hear a syllable. — "However, when His Highness sent the two of you up the mountain last week, I kept my mouth shut and let the diplomatic mission play out. Do you know why?"
William frowned, crossing his arms.
— "Why?"
— "Because I knew from the very first second that polite diplomacy was going to fail," — Arthur said ruthlessly. — "You cannot dismantle a doomsday cult with engineering blueprints, promises of silver coins, and a warm smile. Cara has spent five years using isolation, starvation, and terror of the Church to turn herself into an infallible god in those girls' minds. Yet if I had told Roland—or even you two—that talking was useless before you tried it, neither of you would have accepted it. You needed to see Cara's madness with your own eyes, and Nightingale needed to plant the initial seed of truth about Border Town inside that hall."
— "Okay, fine, the seed is planted and Cara is nuts," — William cut in, leaning across the opposite side of the table as he tried to follow his friend's ten-steps-ahead chess game. — "If you aren't going up there to talk to them, then what's the play, Art?"
Arthur raised a single finger in the quiet air of the library.
— "The play, Will, is the psychology of absolute despair," — Arthur said, his voice quiet and razor-sharp. — "How do you break fifty years of cult brainwashing in five minutes? Not by offering a comfortable alternative while they still feel safe inside their cave. You wait until the roof caves in on their heads. You wait for the exact moment when their 'omnipotent' Mentor Cara is beaten, bleeding, and completely powerless to stop them from being slaughtered—and right as death reaches for their throats, you step out of the storm and annihilate the monsters for them."
Nightingale's blue eyes widened slightly as her sharp mind processed the cold calculation behind his words.
Then, suddenly, her breath hitched in her throat.
Whipping her head sideways to look at William, she remembered a chilling conversation from days earlier—when they had discussed why the northern peaks were truly called a graveyard in the prophetic books.
— "Wait... massacre?" — Nightingale whispered, the color draining slightly from her cheeks as her fingers twitched toward her dagger hilt. — "You aren't talking about ordinary demonic wolves or boars. You mean... those things William warned me about? The ancient 'demons with minds' from beyond the peaks?"
— "Bingo," — Arthur confirmed, a lethal, humorless smile fixing itself onto his face. — "Within the next two to three weeks, when the worst blizzards of the Months of Demons peak across the high ridges, Cara's camp isn't going to be attacked by mindless animals. According to the timeline we know, a scouting pack of genuine Demons—intelligent, heavily armored creatures riding mutated hybrid beasts and wielding spears—will track the magical signatures of the sixty witches straight to that gorge."
Arthur swept his hand flat across the mountain map.
— "Against real Demons wearing magic-suppressing armor and attacking in coordinated military formation, Cara's short-range poison snakes and disorganized cave defenses will tear like wet paper," — Arthur continued evenly. — "In the original history, half the camp was butchered in the snow during that retreat before the survivors ever stumbled down to Border Town. This time, however, we won't wait for the survivors to crawl to our gates. Right when the outer defenses collapse, right when Cara's cult myth shatters into a million pieces in front of the whole camp, Border Town's firepower will arrive at the mouth of that gorge and blow those Demons straight back to hell. When the gunpowder smoke clears, Cara won't be their savior anymore. We will."
For three seconds, the only sound in the library was the sharp pop of a pine knot splitting inside the fireplace.
Listening to that cold-blooded yet undeniably brilliant strategy, William felt the blood in his veins heat up with a sudden rush of fierce anticipation.
Yes, Arthur's timing was ruthless—waiting until the camp was under attack so Cara's grip would break permanently. Yet at the exact same time, it was the only way on earth to save Wendy, Scroll, Leaf, and all the younger girls from getting slaughtered by the Demons without kidnapping them at gunpoint!
— "Damn it, Art... that's ice-cold, man, yet it's a stroke of genius!" — William said, his fist clenching tightly on the edge of the oak table as his protective instincts roared back to life. — "We save Wendy and the whole camp from getting massacred by the Demons, and we break Cara's brainwashing in one move! Tell me what we need to pack. How many of the new rifled muskets and how many kegs of corned black powder do I need to load into my Inventory before we leave? I'm ready to march back up that mountain whenever you say the word!"
Arthur didn't blink. Straightening his spine, he smoothed down the silver-embroidered lapel of his wool tunic and looked straight at his friend.
— "You don't need to pack a single grain of powder, Will. Because you aren't taking a single step out of this town," — Arthur said, his tone cutting through William's excitement like an ice pick. — "I am going up that mountain myself—accompanied only by Lightning."
Dead silence dropped over the library.
William stared at Arthur as if the strategist had just grown a second head.
Now, William didn't doubt for a second that Arthur had a lethal card up his sleeve; he knew his best friend wasn't a helpless scholar anymore. Even with Arthur's physical attributes sitting lower than William's, Arthur's Intelligence 14 combined with precision Telekinesis, custom high-explosive compounds from the chemistry lab, and the System Shop's tactical options made him a walking death trap if he prepared an ambush in advance.
Even so, marching into a sub-zero mountain range against armored Demons and hybrid beasts without a vanguard tank was madness!
Across the table, Nightingale also frowned deeply, uncrossing her arms as she looked back and forth between the two men.
— "Wait a second, Art. Leave me behind?!" — William protested, leaning across the maps. — "Okay, I know you've been cooking up high-explosive shells and practicing that micro-vector Telekinesis trick of yours—you aren't defenseless. Still, why take Lightning and leave me here?! If the problem is hauling heavy explosives up the cliffs and moving fast through the snow, my build is literally made for that! I have ten slots of weightless Inventory space, I have Strength 16 to smash any hybrid beast that gets close, and with Stamina 10, I can chain spatial Teleportation jumps all day without getting winded!"
— "And your Telekinesis burns through your mental stamina ten times faster if you try to move heavy weights in a long fight," — Nightingale added sharply, backing William up even if she didn't know the exact numbers on Arthur's screen. — "If you get surrounded in a blizzard, how do you plan to hold a gorge alone?"
Arthur shook his head slowly, meeting William's frustrated glare with unyielding logic.
— "I am not fighting them in a hand-to-hand brawl, Will—I am setting up a high-explosive kill zone at a narrow choke point before they arrive," — Arthur explained pragmatically. — "As for why I need Lightning: first, she can fly high above the ridges to spot the Demon hunting pack a full day before they reach the cave, giving me the exact window to lay the charges. Second, she is a member of the Association whom Wendy and the sisters already know and trust. When the explosions start outside the tunnel, having Lightning fly inside to tell Wendy to bring the girls out will prevent a blind panic."
Then Arthur pointed a firm finger straight at William's chest.
— "And as for why you are staying right here behind these walls: stop thinking like a lone adventurer and start thinking like the Commander-in-Chief of the First Army," — Arthur said, his voice dropping an octave. — "You just spent an entire week missing in a blizzard. While you were gone, I signed two hundred green recruits into the barracks who don't even know how to hold a rifle yet. More importantly, did you notice the way His Highness looked at the soldiers on the wall yesterday when they called the valley 'Commander William's hunting ground'?"
William paused, his jaw tightening slightly.
— "Roland is a smart ruler, Will, which means he gets nervous when both of his military pillars vanish at the same time—and we are entering the deadliest phase of the Months of Demons," — Arthur pressed on. — "If those intelligent Demons send a scouting prong up the mountain toward the witches, there is a massive chance a second prong—or a wave of driven hybrid beasts—will hit Border Town's southern wall during the exact same week. If both of us are three days away on a mountain peak when an aberrant monster attacks the town gates, who stops it? Carter? Iron Axe? If Border Town falls while we're away rescuing the witches, there won't be a sanctuary left to bring them back to."
William opened his mouth to argue, then slowly shut it.
He hated sitting behind a wall while his best friend walked into a live fire zone. Yet he couldn't poke a single hole in Arthur's math. You didn't leave your home base undefended in the middle of a winter siege just to put two commanders on the same reconnaissance raid.
Letting out a long, heavy breath through his nose, William swallowed his stubborn pride and gave a single, reluctant nod.
— "Fine. You win, Mr. Strategist," — William muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. — "Veronica and I will hold the fort here, whip the new recruits into shape, and make sure nothing touches the Prince or the walls while you're gone. Only you better let me load five crates of grenades onto a sled for Lightning to tow before you leave, or I swear I'll tie you to a chair myself."
— "Deal," — Arthur smiled faintly, appreciating how fast William had put the big picture first.
Turning his sharp gaze toward Nightingale, Arthur shifted immediately to the next item on his checklist.
— "Which brings me to your assignment before I depart next week, Nightingale," — Arthur said. — "If I am going to turn that gorge into a one-sided slaughterhouse and bring sixty witches down the mountain in one piece, I cannot afford a single blind spot. I need a complete written roster of every witch currently living inside Cara's camp—and next to every name, I need a detailed breakdown of her exact magical ability, her effective range, and whether she is a combat witch or a non-combatant."
Nightingale raised a hand and rubbed the back of her neck with a wry sigh.
— "I can give you the names and powers of the twenty older sisters like Wendy, Scroll, Leaf, and Stone without a problem," — Nightingale admitted honestly. — "However, as William found out on the mountain with Lightning, I spent the last five months traveling through the eastern cities hunting for new girls. Almost half the witches huddled around those fires three nights ago joined while I was away. I barely know their faces, let alone the exact rules of their magic."
— "You don't know them—yet the woman sitting two floors down in the backyard workshop right now does," — Arthur countered without missing a beat. — "Diana Argus spent the last several months locked inside that cavern with nothing to do except watch everyone around her. She was educated in a baron's house, she knows how to write, and she has an observant mind. Sit down with her tonight after supper, combine what the two of you know with Lightning's memory, and have the complete dossier on my desk by tomorrow morning."
Nightingale's eyebrows rose slightly at how fast Arthur had already found a use for the woman everyone else had written off as a harmless cloth-dyer. Offering the strategist a crisp, two-finger salute at her temple, she took a half-step backward toward the hearth.
— "Consider it done, Lord Count. You'll have every name and power on your blotter before breakfast," — Nightingale said, the edges of her white cloak already dissolving into the black-and-white ripples of the Mist.
As Nightingale vanished into thin air to head down to the courtyard and William picked up his empty tea mug to head out to the barracks yard, the heavy oak door of the library clicked shut once more.
Left completely alone in the quiet, book-lined room, Arthur walked slowly around the edge of the table and looked down at the charcoal contours of the Impassable Mountain Range.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
His index finger beat a slow, rhythmic cadence against the exact paper ridge where Cara's cavern was hidden.
Hiking into those freezing peaks with only a teenage flyer at his side was going to be grueling, and pushing his body and his System credits to set up that trap in sub-zero weather would test every ounce of his preparation.
Yet as Arthur stared at the map in the fading golden light of the winter sunset, his dark eyes burned with cold, absolute certainty.
By stepping out of the blizzard at the exact moment Cara's fanatical empire collapsed in blood and terror, he wouldn't just rescue Wendy and sixty priceless witches for Border Town's industrial machine—he would forge a bond of gratitude and loyalty that neither the Church of Hermes nor the thrones of the Four Kingdoms could ever break.