We left the shores of the Violet Sea and pushed deeper into the absolute, staggering wealth of Vineburg.

  By midday, the vanguard crossed into The County of Highgrape, a sprawling region where the rivers themselves ran a deep, fermented burgundy. We rode along the border where The Knighthood of the Silver Vine met The Barony of Crimson Ridge.

  Nestled right at the intersection was the village of Vinesend.

  It was an idyllic, postcard-perfect settlement. Whitewashed cottages with heavy thatched roofs sat beside a gently turning watermill. The vineyards climbed the hills in perfect, symmetrical terraces. The local Clayborns, dressed in simple, sun-faded linen, stood frozen by the side of the dirt road, clutching their pitchforks and children in sheer terror as our monstrous, Two thousand man-strong army marched past.

  I was riding Coin Biter, staring blankly at my red-flashing HUD, trying to figure out how to mathematically manifest two million gold coins out of thin air.

  I didn't hear the heavy boots approaching. I didn't sense the killing intent.

  Suddenly, the world exploded.

  A massive, spiked iron gauntlet slammed directly into my ribcage and jaw with the force of a runaway siege engine.

  The impact was so violent it lifted me entirely out of the saddle. I flew through the air, crashing brutally into the hard-packed dirt road. I rolled three times, my vision flashing blinding white, then entirely black.

  I gagged, violently spitting a thick mouthful of dark blood into the dirt. My ears were ringing with a high-pitched, deafening whine. I tried to push myself up, but my right arm gave out, sending me collapsing back into the mud.

  "Three days."

  The voice was hollow, scraping, and utterly devoid of life. It sounded like a tombstone grinding against a mausoleum floor.

  I forced my eyes open, blinking through the blood pouring from my split brow.

  Standing over me, blocking out the bright Vineburg sun, was Ser Erebus Crux.

  The Commander of the Gothic Moonclaw Army was a walking monument to depression.Erebus wore jagged, pitch-black plate armor that seemed to physically absorb the light. His face was ghostly pale, his eyes sunken and ringed with exhausted, sleepless purple shadows. He hated the sun. He hated the beautiful vineyards. He hated my sarcastic jokes. He was a man who only found comfort in misery and rot.

  And right now, he was radiating pure, lethal violence.

  "Three days, Bastard," Erebus rasped, drawing a jagged, blackened broadsword from his scabbard. "Three days of marching through this sickening, bright, cheerful paradise. Three days of your arrogant little smiles. And three days since my men have seen a single copper coin."

  He stepped closer, the tip of his blackened sword resting lightly against my throat.

  "I don't care about your ledgers. I don't care about the King's incestuous drama," Erebus whispered, his dead eyes staring a hole through my skull. "The Crown’s stipends have stopped. The army is unfunded. My men are hungry, Merchant. And hungry dogs bite the hand that holds the empty leash."

  The entire march had ground to a halt. The Moonclaw beasts and the Falken infantry watched in tense, breathless silence. No one stepped in to help me. In a mercenary army, gold is the only law. And I had broken it.

  Erebus slowly turned his pale face toward the terrified village of Vinesend.

  "Look at them," Erebus sneered, disgusted by the idyllic cottages. "Fat, happy peasants. We will sack Vinesend. We will tear the gold from their floorboards, slaughter their livestock, and burn their cheerful little mill to ash. Give the order to plunder, Broker. Or I will cut your throat and give it myself."

  I lay in the dirt, the taste of copper thick on my tongue.

  Plunder.

  It was the oldest law of war. To the victor goes the spoils. If an army isn't paid, it pays itself in the blood and property of the conquered. If I ordered the sack of Vinesend, I could scrounge up a few thousand gold. I could feed Erebus's miserable knights for another day.

  I looked past Erebus’s iron boots at the village. A young Clayborn woman was clutching a toddler to her chest, trembling so hard she could barely stand. An old man stood in front of his modest tavern, holding a rusted woodcutter's axe with shaking hands.

  They weren't Dankmar Ironvine. They were just people.

  If I gave the order... if I unleashed Erebus and the Moonclaws on this village... I wasn't a Master of Coin anymore. I wasn't a Lord trying to build an Empire. I was just a warlord. A thief with a sword.

  And from a purely economic standpoint? It was catastrophic stupidity.

  I gripped the hilt of Cinderbrand. I didn't draw the blade. I just used the heavy pommel to leverage myself up, groaning agonizingly as my fractured ribs ground together.

  I stood up, swaying slightly, blood dripping from my chin onto the white lapel of my Shadow-Weave Coat.

  I looked Erebus Crux dead in his miserable, sunken eyes.

  "No," I spat, my voice rattling with blood.

  Erebus’s eyes narrowed. He raised his jagged sword. "Excuse me?"

  "I said no, you gothic idiot," I growled, wiping the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand. "We are not sacking Vinesend."

  "Then you die right here, Broker," Erebus stated coldly.

  "If you kill me, you die poor," I fired back, fully engaging my [Merchant] skill. The air around me grew heavy with the absolute, uncompromising weight of commerce. "Look at this village, Erebus! What do you think you're going to find? A few hidden silver spoons? A couple of copper pennies tucked under a mattress? If you sack Vinesend, you will gain exactly enough coin to buy a cheap ale, and you will destroy the long-term infrastructure of the Duchy I intend to conquer!"

  I stepped forward, pushing the tip of his blackened sword away with my bare, bloody hand.

  "You don't burn the vineyard to drink a single glass of wine!" I roared, my voice carrying over the silent army. "The gold isn't here! The real wealth the deep-mine reserves, the three hundred million solid Anunnaki gold bars is sitting in Dankmar’s capital! If you want your men paid, you march them to the walls of Vintner’s Pride!"

  Erebus stared at me, his pale face an unreadable mask of depression and rage.

  "I am two million gold in debt, Erebus!" I shouted, the raw, brutal truth spilling out. "I am bleeding out financially and physically! But I swear to you, on the black ash of this sword, that if you hold your men together until we breach the capital, I will not just pay your back-wages. I will double them."

  I stepped right into his personal space, ignoring the agony in my chest.

  "You love misery, Ser Crux?" I whispered harshly. "Then wait for the capital. Because what I am going to do to Dankmar's bank accounts is going to be the most depressing, gothic financial ruin you have ever seen. Give me the capital."

  Erebus held my gaze for ten agonizing seconds. He looked at my bloody face, then at the terrified villagers of Vinesend, and finally at the distant horizon where the capital of Vineburg Vintner’s Pride waited.

  Slowly, with a sound like grinding rust, Erebus lowered his sword.

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  "You have until the capital, Bastard," Erebus rasped. "If the vaults are empty... I will skin you alive and wear your Shadow-Weave coat as a cape."

  He turned on his heel, his dark armor clanking, and marched back to his miserable vanguard.

  I stood in the dirt road, my chest heaving, every breath sending a spike of white-hot agony through my ribs. I had saved Vinesend. I had kept my morality, and my infrastructure, intact.

  If we didn't breach the capital soon, Dankmar Ironvine wouldn't have to kill me. My own army would do it for him.

  I was still on my knees in the dirt, clutching my fractured ribs and spitting blood, watching Erebus Crux walk away.I thought Vinesend was safe.

  I was wrong.

  A heavy, guttural sniff echoed near the edge of the road. One of the massive Moonclaw beasts a hulking, mutated infantryman covered in thick fur and iron plates had broken formation. Starving and erratic, it lumbered toward a terrified Clayborn farmer who was trying to hide a small wooden handcart behind his cottage.

  "Hey! Back in line!" a Falken captain shouted.

  The beast ignored him. It swiped its massive claw, shattering the wooden cart into splinters.

  A heavy, metallic CLANG echoed through the quiet village.

  It wasn't potatoes that spilled into the dirt. It wasn't grain.

  It was solid, blindingly bright Anunnaki Gold.

  Dozens of heavy, rectangular bars tumbled out of the broken cart, catching the brilliant Vineburg sun. The light hit the starving army like a physical shockwave.

  Another soldier, a hardened mercenary from the Gothic Mooclaw Army, kicked open the door of a nearby thatched cottage. He dragged an old woman out by her hair. "Look!" he screamed, his voice cracking with manic desperation. He threw a heavy burlap sack onto the road. It burst open, spilling hundreds of gold coins and smaller ingots into the mud.

  My HUD flared violently. The sheer volume of wealth registering in my immediate vicinity was staggering.

  Two million gold. It was exactly what the army needed. It was exactly what I needed to clear my catastrophic debt.

  But it made absolutely no sense. Why would dirt-poor Clayborn farmers have the wealth of a Duchy hidden in their cellars?

  "Where did you get this?!" the mercenary roared, pressing his dagger against the weeping old woman's throat. "Speak, pig!"

  "The Duke!" the village elder sobbed, falling to his knees in the mud. "Duke Dankmar gave it to us yesterday! His carriages came through the night! He told us to hide it! He said the Storm King was coming, and that the Storm only brings ruin!"

  The blood in my veins turned to ice.

  It wasn't a coincidence. It was a psychological masterpiece of absolute, horrifying cruelty.

  Dankmar Ironvine knew his supply lines had starved our army. He knew the mercenaries would be feral for coin. So he took his own treasury and seeded it into the poorest, most defenseless villages on the border. He turned his own people into gilded bait. He wanted us to slaughter innocent farmers. He wanted King Brandan to burn a peaceful village to the ground for gold, proving to the entire Realm that the Crown was nothing but a horde of bloodthirsty, greedy monsters.

  He was forcing us to choose: starve with honor, or survive as butchers.

  And a starving army doesn't choose honor.

  "GOLD!" a Moonclaw beast roared, its eyes rolling back in pure feral greed.

  The mutiny was instantaneous. Hundreds of mercenaries and Moonclaw beasts broke rank, drawing their weapons with manic, starving cheers. They surged forward like a tidal wave of steel and fur, ready to tear the villagers of Vinesend limb from limb to claim the two million gold.

  I tried to stand, reaching for Cinderbrand, but my fractured ribs sent me collapsing back into the dirt. I was helpless.

  But the Kings were not.

  "HOLD THE LINE!"

  The voice tore through the chaos like a crack of thunder.

  Duke Gutrum Falken didn't hesitate. The Wolf of the North sprinted directly into the path of the surging mercenaries. An armor-clad sellsword lunged at the weeping old woman, his sword raised to split her skull.

  Gutrum’s broadsword flashed. CLASH! He parried the heavy strike with flawless precision, twisting his blade and slamming the flat of his sword into the mercenary’s helmet, knocking him out cold.

  "Any man who strikes a defenseless commoner dies by my hand!" Gutrum roared, his gray eyes blazing with absolute, unyielding Northern honor. A Moonclaw beast lunged at him from the side. Gutrum didn't back down; he stepped into the strike, taking a shallow, bloody gash to his bicep to protect the old woman cowering behind him. He didn't even flinch at the pain, his steel a blur as he forced the beasts back.

  On the other side of the square, a family of Clayborns was backed against a stone wall, screaming as a dozen frenzied soldiers closed in.

  A massive wall of dark steel slammed into the earth between the killers and the family.

  Lord Baldur Stormsong stood perfectly straight behind his towering kite shield. He was the unmoving law. Three men charged him at once. Baldur didn't shout. He didn't rage. He stepped forward in perfect, brutal synchronization, bashing the first man's teeth in with his shield rim, sweeping the legs of the second, and disarming the third with a sickening crack of bone.

  "You wear the King's colors," Baldur stated, his voice a freezing, absolute absolute void. "You break the King's peace, you forfeit your lives. Step back."

  But the true heart of the battle was in the center of the road.

  A little boy no older than six, clutching a stuffed woolen sheep had been separated from his mother. He was standing right next to the shattered cart of gold. A massive, heavily armored mercenary from the Mooclaw Army, entirely blinded by the glimmering fortune, raised a heavy halberd, ready to cleave the child in half just to get to the ingots.

  The halberd came down.

  But it didn't hit the boy.

  King Brandan Stormsong threw his massive, armored body over the child.

  SHHNK.

  The heavy steel blade of the halberd bit deep into the unarmored gap under Brandan’s shoulder. Blood bright, royal red blood sprayed across the sun-bleached dirt.

  The entire battlefield seemed to freeze. The King of Kaledon, the Bear of the Storm, had just taken a lethal strike meant for a peasant child.

  Brandan dropped to one knee, wrapping one massive arm securely around the terrified boy, tucking his head against his chest. Slowly, agonizingly, the King grabbed the shaft of the halberd embedded in his shoulder. With a guttural grunt, he ripped the weapon out of his own flesh.

  He looked up at the mercenary who had struck him.

  Brandan’s eyes were completely black with the fury of the Storm.

  "MINE!" Brandan roared.

  It wasn't just a shout. It was a physical force. The King's aura exploded outward, a terrifying wave of dominating, sovereign pressure that knocked the mercenary off his feet. Brandan rose to his full height, blood pouring down his golden armor, his warhammer Thunder-Fall crackling with raw, atmospheric static.

  "THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!" The Bear bellowed, his voice echoing off the Vineburg walls. "I AM THE KING! AND YOU WILL NOT BLEED THEM!"

  The sheer, overwhelming presence of a King willing to die for a dirt-covered child shattered the mutiny. The feral madness in the Moonclaw beasts' eyes faded into absolute, primal fear. The mercenaries dropped their weapons, backing away from the bleeding giant.

  The riot ended as violently as it had begun.

  The village of Vinesend was silent, save for the weeping of the saved farmers. The two million gold lay scattered in the mud, completely untouched by the lords who had defended it.

  I knelt in the dirt, clutching my ribs, my chest heaving. I looked at Gutrum, his arm bleeding as he gently helped the old woman to her feet. I looked at Baldur, standing like an iron sentinel in front of a shivering family. And I looked at Brandan, the King, handing the little boy back to his sobbing mother while clutching his bleeding shoulder.

  They were arrogant. They were stubborn. But Gods above, they were Kings. They were the absolute best of us. Dankmar Ironvine had tried to turn them into monsters, and instead, he had forced them to prove exactly why they deserved to rule the Realm.

  Brandan turned around, tossing his bloody warhammer to a squire. Dr. Fenris was already rushing forward with bandages.

  The King's eyes swept over the silent, resentful army. He knew he had stopped the massacre, but he also knew the cost. The soldiers were looking at the untouched gold, their bellies empty, their eyes filled with a dark, brewing hatred for the Lords who had denied them their plunder.

  Then, Brandan’s eyes found mine.

  I was still sitting in the mud, bleeding from Erebus's punch.

  For a fraction of a second, the cold wall between us vanished. The King looked at me, breathing heavily, and gave me a single, minute nod. It was an unspoken acknowledgment. You were right not to let them sack the town. We hold the line.

  But the moment passed. Brandan’s face hardened back into a mask of cold fury. He was still the King whose brother I had chained in a dragon's cage.

  "Leave the gold in the dirt," Brandan ordered loudly, turning his broad, bleeding back to me. "Any man who touches a single coin of this trap will hang. Master of Coin, get yourself off the ground. We march on the capital."

  He didn't offer me a hand. Gutrum and Baldur walked past me without a word, forming up around the injured King. They maintained the facade of the bitter feud perfectly, keeping their honor intact in front of the watching army.

  I smiled, a bloody, painful grin stretching across my bruised jaw.

  They were freezing me out. But as I watched them bleed for the Clayborns, I had never loved them more.

  I used Cinderbrand to push myself up, ignoring the agonizing pain in my ribs, and limped toward my horse. The two million gold stayed in the mud. We were broke, we were bleeding, and the army was on the verge of treason.

  But we were still human. And Dankmar Ironvine was going to pay for every drop of blood we had shed today.