Scamantha dusted her hands off, casual as ever.

  “I expected some problems.” Her grin returned, far too pleased. She patted the treasure chest beneath her like it was a pet. “Now, let’s get some money, shall we?”

  Lunaris’s mismatched eyes lingered on Scamantha, narrowing for a moment as if weighing whether to say something. Then, with a faint shrug of her pauldrons, she let the matter drop. Her gaze swept instead across the bronzies clustered on either side of the cart. They looked uneasy; hands hovering near weapons, shoulders hunched like cornered dogs.

  “So… you are with us?” Her voice was cool, not a threat but not far from one either.

  The bronzies shifted together instinctively, boots scuffing the cobbles as if huddling could make them safer. Their squad leader finally stammered, voice cracking, “W-We are loyal!”

  Lunaris’s stare didn’t soften. She turned then, sword still in hand, and let its tip hover beneath Phèdre’s chin. “And you? With us, or against us?”

  Ian’s breath caught. For a heartbeat he thought Phèdre might push the blade aside again with that mocking finger of hers. But instead she blinked, as if shaking off a stupor.

  “I’m… with you.” Her voice slid back into its teasing cadence, and a smile tugged at her lips. She leaned a little closer to Lunaris’s blade, unfazed by the gleam. “Of course, ma chère. We’re together now, aren’t we?” The word together curled in the air like smoke, her accent turning it into a promise and a taunt all at once. She tilted her head, lashes lowering in a mockery of innocence. “Always together, hm? Even if it means dancing on the edge of your steel, darling.”

  Her gaze flicked to Ian then, and her lip curled into something between a smirk and an invitation. “Why not share, non? We can all have a little fun.”

  Ian’s face went hot, and he snapped his gaze to the lizards’ twitching tails, pretending to busy himself with the harness.

  Behind them, Scamantha had already gotten to work.

  She crouched over the fallen Diamond and Platinum players without any hesitation, taking belts, looting boots, snapping open pouches. Bottles clinked as she tossed things into her sack, humming under her breath like she was shopping in a market instead of stealing from players.

  The acrid tang of burnt leather still hung in the air, and Ian’s stomach churned at how easily she ignored it.

  The bronzies pressed in tighter on each other, whispering nervously, eyes darting between Scamantha’s cheer, Lunaris’s blade, and Phèdre’s dangerous grin.

  While Lunaris was angry at the French woman and Scamantha was still elbow-deep in the dead squads’ gear, a light, hurried set of footsteps echoed down the street. Ian looked up just as Yuki came skidding into view, cheeks flushed, hair a little mussed from running.

  She raised one hand in a sheepish wave. “Sorry to be late, guys!” she blurted, sounding like she’d just missed a lecture. Her expression crumpled into something apologetic as she approached the cart, clutching a satchel to her chest. “There was this really nice scroll—”

  Her words trailed off as her eyes swept over the scene.

  The scorch marks still smoldered on the cobbles, blackened patches where people had been only minutes ago. The bronzies stood huddled like frightened sheep. Phèdre leaned lazily against the cart, Lunaris rigid beside Ian, and Scamantha… Scamantha was humming cheerfully as she stuffed belts, pouches, and whatever hadn’t melted into her growing sack.

  Yuki’s brow furrowed, her voice smaller now. “What… happened? Where are the nice gem guys?”

  Ian winced at the phrase. Nice gem guys. He couldn’t unsee the way Diamond and Platinum had screamed, pinned in their own flames. His throat tightened, and he focused hard on the reins in his lap, pretending to adjust the leather straps again.

  Scamantha glanced up with a grin that was far too wide for the smell still hanging in the air. “Their mom called,” she said sweetly, “so I helped them go home!” She cackled at her own joke and then went back to sorting potions, sniffing one before swapping it with another.

  Finally, she shoved a flask into Yuki’s hands. “They were with the empire,” she added, voice suddenly sharper.

  Yuki clutched the potion awkwardly, blinking between them all, and Ian could see the exact moment the full weight of the atmosphere landed on her shoulders.

  Lunaris groaned and sheathed her sword. “Queen gave us a mission. Let’s go.”

  Some time before the declaration of war, Dmitry was preparing…

  Dmitry took stock of the way he always did: not with awe, not with nerves… just a cold inventory.

  Assets. Liabilities.

  The South Barracks square spread before him like a ledger laid flat, a broad stone expanse that had once fancied itself a parade ground and now played market: two long rows of stalls facing each other across a spine of trodden dust and trampled flowerbeds.

  Colorful awnings sagged under old mismatched fabric that gave the place a patchwork grin. The smell was a bruised blend: iron from the barracks gate, boiled sugar from a kettle vendor, leather oil, a dog from someone’s oversized mount, and that faint Altandai sting that clung to the city rose stones.

  He sat on a low public bench with a rounded back and flaking blue paint, Luminaria pressed close enough that their elbows almost touched.

  Her presence brought a fizz of ozone to the air; not perfume, but something subtler. The bench was scandalously ordinary. He let himself feel the grain of the wood through his glove and decided it was a good disguise: power in plain clothes.

  Llama had been irritating earlier—argumentative, relentless, allergic to compromise—but effective. Annoying and effective often arrived as a pair.

  Dmitry respected results far more than charm.

  He weighed the cloth satchel in his lap, respawn tokens, then tightened his grip. The bag was comfortingly heavy; not like gold, which lied about its usefulness, but like insurance.

  He watched the “crowd” anyway; cluster after cluster of players milling about with feigned interest, the way bad actors milled in cut-rate theater to sell the illusion of a bustling city. Half were pretending to haggle; the other half were genuinely getting fleeced by a stall pushing “blessed sapphires” that were, to his eye, melted bottle glass with glitter frozen inside.

  A thin man in a moth-eaten coat shrieked the deal of the century to a trio of wide-eyed bravos.

  He closed the sale with a wink so greasy Dmitry felt his jaw tighten. The bravos crowed as if they’d discovered fire. Somewhere, an accomplice applauded. A woman in a violet scarf palmed a purse out of a backpack of random Altandai goer with such elegance Dmitry wanted to hire her.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  He let himself scoff; a small sound with no audience.

  If he ran this square, the scams would pay house rent. If he ran this city, the square would be an asset: flagged routes, controlled flows, curated choke points. As it stood, the South Barracks’ facade loomed beyond the stalls, squat granite with teeth of iron spikes, pretending to be impregnable while its side alleys offered three service entries and two gutters wide enough for a child to crawl through. People loved the theater of fortresses. He loved the math of them.

  “The sighing,” Luminaria said. She didn’t look at him when she spoke; she stared ahead, toes tapping an even beat against the bench leg, tapping like a metronome. “I know you don’t like my boyfriend’s plan, Dmitry, but you could at least pretend you care.”

  He weighed the reply and chose the polite version. “There are three of us,” he said. His tone stayed calm, the boardroom register he used when he wanted glass to cut without shattering. “Tramar could take northeast alone. We could have Frozna with us here.”

  “You want a firestorm in a neighborhood of dry thatch?” she murmured. Her lip ticked upward. “Of course you do.”

  A shadow unstitched itself from the shade cast by a spice stall and became a person. NightSwallow. She didn’t arrive so much as occur; there, and then the world rearranged itself around her as if it had always been expected.

  She wore the city like a cloak; he approved.

  “I’ll try to cover you,” she said.

  He let the scoff come, softer this time, then offered her a smile that contained, he hoped, exactly the right amount of respect. “You’re one of the very few capable of taking care of matters,” Dmitry said. He didn’t waste compliments. When he spent one, he wanted the recipient to feel how rare it was.

  “I won’t allow removable gear or breasts larger than the head,” NightSwallow said. The corner of her mouth quirked at the memory of the joke. “Time to summon the army is almost up. I need to take a position… and log off to tell them.” There was no apology in her voice; only logistics. She vanished mid-breath, the air sighing as it closed.

  “This is a mistake,” Dmitry said to the space she left.

  Luminaria answered as if they’d been conversing about the weather. “Enlighten me then. What is the mistake?”

  He rolled his eyes to make the lesson land. “The original plan involved my faking a betrayal.”

  Luminaria grinned, sunlight breaking through the cloud. She was younger than she let herself be, and he sometimes forgot it until she smiled like that. “You don’t have to… Queen said you could just be with us.”

  He flexed his fingers around the satchel’s cords again, then set the bag beside him on the bench with the care one gives a loaded pistol. “Yes,” he said. “I told the Vainqueurs Imbattables we’re joining Charlie. We held a vote.” He gave it just enough self-deprecation to read as human. “I am that generous. It passed. We’re joining.” The truth underneath: he could have made them vote any way he wanted.

  It mattered that they believed the choice was theirs.

  He let the square breathe through him. The scrape of a whetstone. The bark of a vendor. A child’s laugh that didn’t belong here, echoing from an alley like an old memory intruding on a new life. The barracks gates stood shut, but the hinges were bright where fresh oil had been worked in this morning. Most people never noticed how metal confessed its secrets.

  A tremor of mana rolled across the cobbles… a tide that neither sparkled nor sang, but begged.

  Hungry. Needy.

  It slipped under his skin with the insinuating grace of a practiced liar and found the places inside him that recognized its scent. Demons. His flames responded as if woken by their name. A prickling band of heat marched up his forearms.

  The fire in him always wanted a direction; now it pawed at its cage like an animal that smelled meat.

  Her message cut across his vision, sharp and utilitarian. One minute. Enough time to ruin or to arrange. “Time to get the show rolling,” Dmitry said, and rose.

  He slid the satchel strap across his chest, the weight settling centerline.

  The square stretched into a nave, emptying as people unconsciously made room. There was enough space here for thousands… parade ranks, drill blocks, cavalry demonstrations designed to reassure donors.

  Enough space to waste men.

  He didn’t plan to waste his men, but plans were bridges; reality was water. He would not drown because the map had mislabeled the current. He looked at Luminaria. “We’ll need your entrance loud and our follow-through quiet,” he said. “Shock buys us seconds. Seconds buy us ground.”

  Her grin sharpened. “I like loud thunder.”

  “I know,” Dmitry said, and allowed himself a half-smile.

  He let his gaze flip through the square as if scanning columns: awnings, cover, line of sight; tower angles.

  That stack of crates; rotten bottom boards which would collapse under pressure.

  That bored guard on the inner walkway, favoring his left leg; weak knee, probably an old injury.

  That banner rope; frayed, could be dropped to blind a section.

  That gate: not built to be rammed, not tonight.

  But its lock arm was external, a lever hidden under a lattice of ironwork. You could fish for a lever. Most people didn’t think like thieves.

  He did when it paid.

  The barracks itself sprawled: a U of stone with a yard inside, drilled in piety to Order. The south gate faced them like an affront. He loved affronts. They told you where to punch and how hard the owner thought you couldn’t.

  All ten of his currently logged-in guildmates gathered around him. Dmitry rolled his shoulders once, shedding the pleasant constraints he wore when he wanted to be trusted. Tonight he didn’t need trust.

  He needed compliance.

  “Remember,” he said, tone settling into the calm that made subordinates take notes. “We are not here to ‘murder’ a building. We’re here to gain a function. South Barracks is a lever. We take it, we swing it, we move weight elsewhere. Do not get sentimental about bricks.”

  Above them, the sky bled red and then glassed over, demon-light catching like lacquer, until Charlie’s image crowned the city. Her cloak snapped in the projection-wind; her voice rolled across roofs and gutters: clear, defiant, audacious. I declare war.

  Luminaria’s eyes glittered, a private sunrise. “She knows how to show herself.”

  “Good,” Dmitry said, and meant it. “Morale is a resource. Spectacle multiplies it… if she wins the next exchange.” He didn’t stare long; he never did. Attention was capital.

  He spent it where it returned.

  A red flare split the square; NightSwallow’s mark, hot metal shrieking as it clawed skyward. Dmitry’s mouth tugged, the closest thing he allowed to a grin. He slipped the satchel free, snapped the drawcord, and poured the tokens out in front of the bench. They struck stone in a bright, staccato hail… ceramic on granite, a thousand little ledgers opening.

  Others answered from every edge of the nave.

  Rooftops, alleys, the shadows behind awnings. A rain of tokens pattered across the parade ground, bouncing, spinning, coming to rest in ragged constellations until the square wore a second, glowing geometry over its cobbles.

  The first player arrived with a sound like an intake of breath. Then the second, a heartbeat later. Then the cadence shattered and became a flood: dozens, hundreds… banners, mismatched armor, the low roar of people returning to a place they had never been.

  The air cooled with the displacement; it smelled of damp stone and old leather and the faint ozone-fizz that always rode Luminaria’s skin when she primed the storm.

  “The Vainqueurs Imbattables—join positions!” Dmitry’s voice cut cleanly. Columns sorted themselves out of chaos because they had practiced sorting; habits were cheaper than heroics.

  A voice thundered from the sky, oily and pleased with itself: “Count Itzel sends his regards.”

  Two-thirds of the arrivals pivoted as if a single spine had been tugged… imperial standards flipped, shields locked, the clatter of fastened buckles rolling down the square like hail.

  Colors Dmitry had just counted as assets slid across the ledger into liabilities, forming neat enemy ranks between the stalls and the barracks gate. Oil and sweat and iron hit the air; the sound of bodies settling into formation was a low, practiced thunder.

  NightSwallow ghosted in at his shoulder, breath steady, fury banked so deep it read as colder air. “Our own players betrayed us,” she whispered.

  “Indeed,” Dmitry said. His eyes tracked lanes, cover, angles… return on violence. “We’re—”

  “We’re going to send them back,” Luminaria finished, and the word back cracked like a switch.