The wagon’s heavy wheels groaned to a halt, the wood creaking as it settled into the thick, grey sludge of the camp at Mill-Stone Ridge. The air here was different from Braeburn’s Crossing; it wasn't just the smell of smoke and waste, but the cloying, heavy scent of wet earth and desperation.

  I stepped off the back of the cart, my heels sinking instantly into the freezing muck. It was an absurd design for a war zone, six inches of carbon-fiber heel intended for psychological dominance and urban agility, now struggling against the reality of a muddy trench. I felt the familiar, involuntary roll of my hips as I adjusted my center of gravity. I was a lethal masterpiece of futuristic engineering, an obsidian shadow standing in a world of filth.

  "Move it," a voice barked.

  The Vice Commander of Thorne’s forces was a man who looked like he had been carved out of a rock. He led us through the camp, dodging tents that leaked and soldiers who looked more like ghosts.

  "You’re at the Ridge now," he grunted, not looking back. "Lord Thorne holds the heights, and the Mill. Lord Vance is down in the lowlands, starving. He wants our grain. We want his head. It’s been a stalemate of attrition, but Vance is getting desperate. He’s brought thousands of those 'freed' slaves and refugees with him. They’re eating the very grass they’re standing on."

  We passed the riverbank, the camps source of water, and I paused. The water was sluggish, choked with debris. My HUD flickered as it tagged several large, bloated heat signatures drifting downstream. I recognized the jagged edges of plate armor. They were the knights Eren had portaled into the water at the mansion, drowned, weighted down by their own steel, and finally washing up here to join a different war.

  Barnaby stepped forward, his usual merchant's bravado tempered by the grim surroundings. "Commander, my friends here have wares... though not the kind you find in a crate. They have no coin, but they have utility. Arrange the meeting."

  The Vice Commander eyed my obsidian arms and the long, wrapped shape of the Widow’s Kiss on my back. He spit into the mud. "Thorne is in the command tent. Try not to bleed on the rug."

  Inside, the atmosphere was stifling. Lord Alistair Thorne sat behind a map table, his face gaunt and his eyes burning with a cold, quiet rage that felt sharper than any blade. In the corner, bound and gagged in a wooden cage, sat Earl Thaddeus Braeburn. His hand was a stump of bandages, and his eyes widened in pure, unadulterated terror the moment I stepped into the light.

  "I know who you are," Thorne said, his voice a low, raspy whisper. "The Earl was quite vocal before we silenced him. A massacre in the gardens. A dead heir. A slave revolt. The Holy Inquisitors are already on their way to the Crossing to investigate. By tomorrow, your faces will be on every 'Wanted' parchment in the kingdom."

  I leaned against the central tent pole, the matte-black composite of my shoulder clicking against the wood. "Then it’s lucky for you that we’re looking for a way to make that investigation… disappear," I said. "We offer our services. You keep the Inquisitors at bay and provide us with the resources we need. In exchange, we end this stalemate."

  Thorne looked at the three of them, Joshua, battered and weary; Alan, limping; and Eren, her ears pinned back. He looked at the strange, black metal of the Glock on my hip. "You look like mummers playing at war. I need soldiers, not anomalies with toys I don't recognize."

  I didn't argue. I thought back at what Ivan gave me for a reason, I reached into a small tactical pouch and pulled out the lapel badge I had taken from Ivan Vondstein. I tossed it onto the map. It skittered across the parchment, landing right on the Yara Valley.

  Thorne’s eyes locked onto the badge. He knew the rank. He knew the man. If an S-rank war hero like Vondstein had yielded his mark to us, we weren't weak willed.

  "Fine," Thorne said, his voice turning clinical. "Vance has something I want. It’s not just the valley he’s holding; it’s a silver-encased locked case kept in his primary headquarters at the base of the ridge. My scouts say he guards it more closely than his own life."

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  He stood up, pointing a skeletal finger at the map. "During the main battle, while the lines are engaged, your task is to breach the lowlands, infiltrate Vance's HQ, and bring me that case. Do that, and I’ll ensure the Inquisitors find nothing but empty chairs at Braeburn’s Crossing."

  Alan stood there, he seemed intrigued at the battle map, he then whispers into Lord Thorns ear, his eyes widen and they hurriedly redraw the map.

  I felt the weight of the contract settle in my chest. We were no longer clearing rats. We were the scalpel in a Mourning Lord’s hand. A huge change.

  We left the tent without Alan and were guided to a white pitched tent at the corner of the camp.

  The unused tent smelled of damp canvas and the iron-rich scent of old blood. Outside, the rhythmic clatter-thump of Barnaby and men hauling the fifty stacks of knight armor provided a jagged soundtrack to the heavy silence within.

  Alan entered after a while and limped toward me, his breath hitching as his wounded thigh protested every step. He didn't say a word, but his eyes were fixed on the slight tremor in my right obsidian arm. The garden fight had pushed the body unit's structural integrity to its limit; the recoil of the Widow's Kiss combined with the hydraulic strain of the "tiedup" incident had left my spine feeling like it was being threaded with hot wire.

  "Sit," Alan commanded softly.

  I lowered myself onto a wooden stool, as I leaned forward to give him access. I felt the familiar, involuntary sway of my hips as I settled, a movement the suit forced on me even in exhaustion.

  Alan reached out. He didn't use tools. Instead, a faint, crystalline frost began to coat his fingertips. He pressed his hand against the nape of my neck, right where the obsidian plating met the synthetic skin of my torso.

  I gasped, the sensation of his ice-cold fingers sending a violent, electric shiver down my spine. Because of the suit’s hyper-sensitivity, the touch wasn't just cold; it was intimate, a sharp contrast to the humid heat of the tent. I felt the body unit's internal servos whine in response, the "haptic feedback" translating the cooling magic into a wave of relief that made my toes curl inside my boots.

  "The alignment is out by three millimeters," Alan murmured, his fingers tracing the curve of my vertebrae with surgical precision. The ice magic numbed the inflammation, allowing him to exert a gentle, firm pressure that clicked the internal housing back into place. I leaned into his touch, my platinum hair falling over my shoulder, the vulnerability of the moment blurring the lines of the "one of the boys" dynamic we used to have. For a second, I wasn't an assassin; I was a machine being tuned by a friend who knew exactly where it hurt.

  In the corner, Joshua sat on a low cot, his heavy plate armor removed, leaving him in a sweat-stained tunic. He wasn't looking at us. His eyes were fixed on a spot of mud on the floor, his hands resting limp on his knees. They were still shaking.

  "I don't think I can do it again," Joshua said suddenly. His voice was hollow, stripped of the "Argent Bastion" resonance. "In the garden... I could hear their bones snapping under the shield. I saw their faces when the collars dropped. We’re not clearing dungeons, Taylor. We’re just... we’re just killing for sport, Alan got hurt because of me."

  He looked up, his gaze haunted. "We should stop. If we stay here, if we fight this Lord Vance... we might not make it out. And even if we do, what's left of us?"

  "We can't stop, Josh," Eren said, her voice unusually somber. She was sitting cross-legged on a crate, her cat ears pinned flat against her head. "We’ve already crossed the line. The Braeburn massacre... that wasn't self-defense in the eyes of this world. It was an atrocity."

  She looked at me, then back at Joshua. "Think about the game lore. Remember the Holy Inquisitors? The ones who show up when a a high-level threat breaks the peace? They aren't just guards. They’re strong paladins and silencers. If Thorne doesn't bury those records, and the Inquisitors track us... we can't win that fight. Not in the state we're in."

  The weight of her words settled like lead in the tent. Our crimes outweigh our safety. We were no longer adventurers seeking glory; we were fugitives buying our lives with the blood of Thorne’s enemies.

  "Then we fight," I said, my voice returning to its smoky, yet shakey purr as Alan’s fingers left my skin. The mechanical whine in my arm had ceased, replaced by a cold, efficient silence. I stood up, the suit shifting around my frame with a soft, lustrous sheen. "We do the job, we get the case, and we disappear."

  Joshua didn't answer. He just went back to staring at the mud, the shadow of the man who used to lead our raids. Outside, Barnaby called out a final tally of the armor and a soldier vomits from poisoned water, the sound of trade and survival continuing while we prepared for the meat grinder ahead.