When the last echoes of victory faded and the fallen were laid upon rough planks for their final journey home, the battlefield shed its illusion of glory. What remained was something colder—order, necessity, and the harsh arithmetic of survival.
Outside the mine, the blood-soaked ground seemed to grow heavier, the air thick with a suffocating weight.
The first matter was the Kobolds.
Nearly two hundred of them were dragged from the depths of crude cages—pens no better than those used for livestock. They were skeletal, their bodies ravaged by hunger, disease, and long abuse. Their eyes held nothing but emptiness and instinctive fear.
At the sight of the towering Wolf-men, they didn't flee. They couldn't. Instead, they curled inward, trembling, letting out weak, animal-like whimpers.
Laila and a few others stepped forward, offering dried meat and water.
The Kobolds recoiled.
They stared at the food as if it were a trap, something alien and terrifying.
Colin watched in silence.
Then he stepped forward.
The weakest Kobold had been shoved to the ground, scrambling desperately for a scrap. When Colin's shadow fell over it, the creature froze—then broke, screaming, its body betraying it in terror.
Colin said nothing.
He drew his sword.
"Leader…" Laila's voice trembled, caught between confusion and pleading.
He did not respond.
The blade rose.
Then fell.
A soft, wet sound.
Silence.
The Kobold's head rolled across the dirt, its expression frozen in fear. The body collapsed a moment later.
The stillness that followed was suffocating.
"They are already broken," Colin said at last.
His voice was calm—too calm.
"Their bodies are ruined. Their will is gone. They cannot fight. They cannot work. Keeping them wastes the food we paid for with blood."
His gaze swept across the remaining Kobolds—not as people, but as figures to be weighed and measured.
"Better that they give what little remains… to the future of Blackwood Fortress."
He moved.
Step by step, he walked into their midst.
The sword fell again.
And again.
There were no screams. No resistance.
Only dull, lifeless acceptance.
What followed was not battle—but execution.
Even the hardened warriors turned away, unease creeping beneath their skin. It was not the killing that disturbed them—it was the absence of emotion behind it.
Cold. Precise. Absolute.
In minutes, it was over.
The ground was still.
"Burn them with the goblins," Colin said, shaking the blood from his blade as if nothing of note had occurred.
Then he turned away.
Elsewhere, the surviving goblins were being "processed."
Berg and his apprentices worked tirelessly at a makeshift furnace, melting down captured weapons into crude iron. From that molten metal, chains were forged—heavy, rough, but unbreakable.
One by one, shackles were hammered into place.
Each chain bound five or six goblins together, ensuring none could escape without dragging the rest.
The former raiders became prisoners.
Then slaves.
Driven by whips and steel, they were herded into an open clearing near the mine.
Fear filled their eyes—but not submission.
Not yet.
Colin stepped onto a boulder, overlooking them.
He said nothing at first.
He simply watched.
One by one, the goblins lowered their heads under his gaze. What they saw was not anger, nor hatred—
But indifference.
And that frightened them more than anything else.
"Mine," Colin said.
A single word.
"You will be fed. You will live."
Hope flickered—faint, fragile.
"Resist… or slack…"
Steel flashed.
His blade struck the iron ore at his feet.
The boulder split cleanly in two.
The sound echoed like thunder.
Silence followed.
No one spoke. No one breathed.
The message was clear.
"That," Colin finished quietly, "is your fate."
Hope remained.
But defiance died.
Tools were thrown before them—crude pickaxes and shovels, the same tools they once forced into Kobold hands.
Now, they understood.
Under whip and blade, they stumbled forward, seizing tools, pushing, scrambling—driven not by pride, but by hunger.
One by one, they disappeared into the darkness of the mine.
This time, not as masters.
But as labor.
Soon, the mine came alive.
Metal struck stone. Breath came in ragged gasps. Whips cracked sharply through the dark.
Orders barked. Bodies faltered.
The rhythm was crude, brutal—
But steady.
Colin stood at the entrance, listening.
To others, it might have sounded like suffering.
To him, it was something else.
The pulse of industry.
Each strike of stone meant iron.
Each lash meant control.
Each cry meant the system was working.
Blackwood Fortress had taken its first step—not in glory, but in iron and blood.
And this—
Was only the beginning.