104 dead.

  326 wounded, in different forms—burned, torn, crushed, poisoned, broken in ways that would never fully mend.

  I had expected the numbers to climb. They did not. The worst had passed, or so it seemed. No more souls turned. No more bodies were trampled beneath panicked feet. Death had shown no preference. It had taken the youngest and the oldest, the weak and the strong alike. Fire had claimed some. Bile others. Claws, boots, falling stone—each found its mark.

  Youngest confirmed dead: two years old.

  Oldest: seventy-three.

  A celebration turned battle. We had reached a height no union had ever known—voices raised together, hope carried openly—and from that height we fell. Blood followed. Distrust followed. As it always does.

  The Natives were sent back over the wall again. They did not resist. They sang as they went. They howled. They shrieked, their voices rolling across the fields and hills, fading only with distance, not with intent.

  And still—above their chants, above the murmurs of the wounded and the prayers of the living—the cry of a child in bitter pain rang on, refusing to be drowned.

  Grave had sent riders to them, but they were all turned back. Their lank forms bowed low, immense hands raised in calm refusal, shushing the messengers aside the way a parent guides a child away from danger.

  It seemed they had closed us off. Their intent still carried the shape of peace—if colder now, more distant, edged with something unreadable.

  Bells rang in the bastion, and in the surrounding town of Zeltzerheim. Their toll spread outward, steady and unbroken. Soldiers were set to burial duty—cutting long, oblong ditches to house the dead, laying them side by side in the hope that stillness might follow where violence had passed.

  Our Blemmyes had tried to reach them as well. From the walls we saw it plainly—the hushed exchange at distance, broad arms raised in appeal, gestures slowing, softening, turning uncertain as understanding failed them. Their bodies spoke what words could not. The bond was broken. Whatever thread had once carried voice or meaning no longer held.

  None were allowed close.

  None were to approach the child.

  Not until they were done.

  Mikel coughed behind me. Not subtle, yet deliberate. A sound meant to pull me back into the body I still occupied, away from the wreckage of thought and memory.

  “Factor.”

  I turned.

  He looked like a crude rendering of the day gone awry. His borrowed finery—meant for ceremony—was drowned in ash and streaked with the blood of others. The cut of the cloth still spoke of dignity, but the stains told the truth of what it had been forced to witness.

  “The village representatives, Blemmyes, and Grave are readied for the emergency meeting.”

  I sighed—unbidden, heavy. I did not wish to be there. Too many frightened and angry people, too many Blemmyes speaking in riddles, and one too many commanders who seemed to wish I were counted among the dead.

  “How is the atmosphere of the congregation?”

  “Tense. Uneasy. On edge.” Mikel replied, mirroring my sigh without meaning to. After a short silence, he continued.

  “They strike me as a flock that will not find solutions without a shepherd.” The thinnest of smiles traced his darkened face.

  “And I am invited?”

  He looked at me as if I had asked whether I still possessed three heads, and replied, “I do not see a world where you would need one, Factor.”

  I entered the mess hall, Mikel in tow, and found pandemonium.

  Burghers, civil servants, priests, village elders—bent, crooked as the table they crowded around. Unordered. Shouting. Talking over one another in waves, their voices rowing against each other like oars striking water out of time. It sounded like the storm that had passed outside only a day ago, trapped now within stone and timber.

  I saw Grave and Gelt. They did not stand like men in debate, but like men bracing for a cavalry charge—feet planted, shoulders squared, eyes fixed forward. There was no union here. Whatever fragile peace had once been shaped in quieter days had splintered. What remained was posture and resolve, not accord.

  Guards lined the walls, pikes held upright but without pride. Not ceremony—containment. One cuirassed, bearded face turned toward me. Our eyes met. He said nothing.

  He did not need to.

  End this.

  “I declare ORDER!” I roared—and, finding the word alone insufficient, I slammed my ledger down onto the dust-caked table.

  It landed—mostly. Enough.

  Heads turned. The worst of the shouting collapsed into mutters. The room seemed to spin a fraction less, as if steadied by force rather than sense.

  Grave met my eyes. I met his. His brow was drawn tight, his gaze hot with barely leashed fury.

  That rage fed me.

  Very well, Commander.

  Let me show you what a merchant’s anger looks like.

  “Tragedy has struck, gentlemen,” I said, my voice cutting clean through what remained of the noise. “Death has come and stolen our peace. Our new brethren have turned their backs, and a child is in torment beyond our reach. And yet—here we stand, arguing like wives over stale fish?”

  I let the words settle. Let them sting.

  “I demand order for this meeting,” I continued, voice hardening, “or there shall be none at all—and Grave will show you the way out.”

  “And who are you, Allemand, to lecture us on petty squabbles?” a burgher of considerable size answered. His clothes were clean, his rotund frame untouched by hunger or haste, as though the world had not ended even a month ago.

  “You led us to this deadly farce! Opened the gate to the beasts that killed and maimed so many! Tell me—why should this meeting not instead be about your hanging?”

  Grave looked at me as though he, in truth, shared the sentiment.

  This would not hold.

  “When I arrived,” I said, my voice rising without strain, “I found a bastion prepared to rot. Closed doors. Closed battlements. Its head cut off and waiting to bleed to death—watching the storm crawl closer the way a grandfather waits to go to heaven.”

  I flung out an arm, pointing past the doors behind me, toward the world beyond stone and fear.

  “Twenty thousand souls.”I let the number fill the room before I continued,

  “Hamlets. Gaards. Villages. Trader posts—people we dragged back from the brink simply by reaching out. Simply by saying: we are here, and we are together.”

  I tapped the table and shook my head, forcing the heat out of my breath before it could spill loose. Then I continued.

  “No, my good sir. I will not accept blame for setting in motion actions that have carried that many souls to this bastion.” I leaned forward, the ledger still heavy beneath my palm. “No—I will challenge you instead.”

  I let my eyes rake over him, slow and deliberate. His face was as red as the blood drying outside.

  “What have you brought to this cause? I see comfort. I see means. I see a man of weight and wealth. So tell me—what resources have you laid bare for the good of our fellow man?”

  My voice hardened, each word struck clean.

  “I wager you have not shifted a single bushel of wheat. Not unsealed a barrel of oil. Not bent your back, nor lifted a finger to haul, to mend, to feed, or to drag another soul from the brink.”

  “Free men and officers of Zeltzerheim,” I said, my voice carrying without strain, “I offered action—and you took it, willingly. Do not curse me now for setting foot upon the road to salvation.”

  Murmurs erupted the moment the words left me. A low surge, rolling end to end of the hall. Act one—averting my own death sentence—had been achieved.

  Grave no longer looked at me. His gaze had shifted elsewhere, fixed on some point beyond the room, jaw set hard. Something else had taken hold of him. Shame, perhaps. Or the slow realization that fury, once spent, leaves nothing solid behind.

  “Now,” I continued, not waiting for quiet but forcing it into being, “if you will allow me—I wish to commence the meeting. The emergency council is set. All actors are accounted for.”

  “The danger is plain,” Gelt answered, tapping his cane in time with his words. “The Natives are, once again, unaccounted for. What they intend, they do not speak plainly—and that alone should give us pause.”

  “Gelt is right,” Father Emmerich continued. He had once been the first to stand against the military wing of our newborn order; to hear his voice now fall in step with it was a turn unlike any other.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “They speak of God as though they know Him by His last name, yet they lack even the foundations of our teachings. They took that child with them—called it an act of God—and now hold her beyond our reach.”

  It seemed the Touched were kin to be pitied only when it suited them.

  “And the Blemmyes?” a village elder asked—elder in the truest sense, spine bent by years rather than fear. “Why are they not here to shed light on our situation?”

  “They are still serving as liaison between us and the Natives,” Grave grunted. His voice breaking the silence was a release of its own. “They are of more use as diplomats than as councilors. Do you truly miss their riddles?”

  A dampened chuckle moved through the hall, uneven and cautious. A sign of a new normality settling in, I thought. Miracles turn to humor once enough time has passed.

  “Grave is right. Our Blemmyes are an asset—one that must be directed with care,” I interjected. “The Natives have proven alien to us. The Blemmyes—only mostly. They have the best chance of restoring accord in this situation.”

  “Factor,” Father Emmerich cut in, “tell me of this situation.”

  He leaned forward, palms braced, eyes searching the room. “Where do we stand? Where do we go? What are our aims—once we have shaken the Natives’ hand, or once we have killed each other?” He looked from face to face and found them lit with the same urgency.

  The root laid bare.

  What are we doing?

  “The very heavens have told us plainly that safety is not found in numbers,” he said. “The sky darkens still. The thunder crawls closer. What difference does it make whether two, two hundred, or twenty thousand souls die together or alone? We need action.”

  Action I could name. “Once the Native situation is brought to order, we will continue securing supplies and mending the farms. The search for viable iron veins is already underway, and the riders will continue—”

  “Allemand, you do not heed me!” Emmerich snapped, dragging me out of numbers and ledgers and back into the darkened mess hall. “You came from the storm that seeks to consume us. Is that not so?”

  Memory rose unbidden.

  Purple lightning tearing the sky open. Wind and current pulling at life itself until it split apart. A road that sang, screamed, and cried in a language I could not name. A merchant couple walking into it hand in hand, knowing full well there would be no return.

  “Yes,” I said at last, the word scraped raw by the delay.

  “I did. It is all-consuming. And it is dark.”

  “So,” he asked, his voice sinking to a whisper that carried farther than any shout, “are you content with farming and mining until the moment the Storm finds us as well?”

  The hall fell into absolute silence. Every sound seemed to withdraw at once, as if the room itself had learned restraint. All eyes turned toward me—some searching, some weighing, some already passing judgment.

  Grave’s eyes were empty. He looked at me as the others did, but nothing met me there. No fury. No accord. No meaning at all.

  Again, I was alone.

  “Father,” I said at last, my voice steady despite the weight pressing against it, “I am not content. I simply see no other way. If the lifeblood of our people fades, then the Storm may as well take us sooner rather than later.”

  I drew a breath and forced myself onward.

  “Gathering our strength. Finding the lost. Looking toward a future, however dim—it grants us the means to do something.” I let my gaze move across them, one by one. “Gentlemen, this is all I know.”

  A pause.

  “I am sorry if the words are not sufficient.”

  “Your words are fine, Factor.”

  Grave stepped closer to the table, boots firm against the floor, his presence drawing the room back into alignment. He lifted his gaze and met the gathered souls one by one.

  “He is right. In a situation without solution, without even a clear problem to strike at, survival—and growth—are all that remain.” His voice rose, settling into the cadence I had heard only in courts and parley, the diplomat’s tone he wielded as surely as any blade. It carried the weight of his command, the edge of his will.

  “Would you rather meet the Storm empty-handed?” he pressed. “Alone?”

  Silence held.

  “What more,” Grave finished, “can be asked of us than to make ready?”

  A new kind of silence settled over us. One born of shared burden and uncertain purpose.

  We would live another day. Lift the same weight. But only just.

  A shift had taken hold.

  Yes. A shift had taken hold. For something had changed. Since the massacre, a drone had hung over the bastion—an ever-present proof of collapse.

  The scream.

  Where had it gone?

  “How long has there been silence?” I asked—to myself, to them, to the world.

  The congregation stirred. They noticed it now. Grave tilted his head, peering out the window, listening. Some closed their eyes, straining for the shrill cry that had become part of the air itself.

  Nothing.

  Instead, a new roar erupted.

  The Natives’ roar still sent chills through me. The vibration of a hundred massive spears striking in unison rolled through stone and bone alike, enough to make me stagger.

  “To post! All men to post!” a shrill voice cried from the walls.

  Grief gave way to motion. The masses shifted, bodies turning toward survival as shrieks and cries spread from one end of Zeltzerheim to the other.

  “Have they come to end it, finally?” Grave growled, the words torn from him as his hand moved without hesitation. The pistol came up smooth, practiced, loaded with finality. “They took the child—and now they take us.”

  “Please, Grave,” I said, stepping into the space between thought and action. “Do not hasten to anger just yet. There has been no call to arms.”

  “Of course not!” he snapped. “I make the call to arms.” The steel in his voice matched the steel at his side. “And I am ready to rake them down with every blade and shot we possess, if this infernal siege does not end this instant!”

  The chosen council was spilling through the mess hall doors when a wholly new pressure met them. The flow reversed. Bodies stalled, then recoiled, as if pressed back by a force none of them had prepared to face.

  A wall of flesh entered the hall, parting ragged villager and embroidered burgher alike.

  Sul.

  He stood taller than I had ever seen him—elated, breath deep in his chest, eyes alight with something that set the air around him trembling. Not frenzy. Not fear. Something sharper. Something awake.

  “Grave. Allemand.” His voice carried without effort. “I request your presence at once—for a miracle.”

  Grave pushed past me, closing the distance in two strides, the fury he had just turned on me still coiled tight in his posture.

  “Blemmye, your request is denied,” he barked. “We form on the wall. The cannons are to—”

  Sul met him mid-sentence and caught the pistol.

  It was a fine piece. Wheellock. Ornate. The kind of craftsmanship meant to last generations. It did not matter. Sul’s fingers closed, and the steel gave way with a dry, final crack, crushed into useless ruin in his palm.

  Grave stopped.

  So did I.

  “Commander,” Sul said, not unkindly, “I am sorry. Time is short.”

  And then—without haste, without strain—he lifted Grave as one might lift a child from sleep, cradled him against that immense chest, and turned.

  He was gone.

  The council erupted again, but with a wholly different energy. They scattered to the corners of the hall, chairs scraping, bodies shrinking back. None, it seemed, were keen on being carried away next.

  I did not see where Grave was taken, for another presence forced itself into the room—just as large, just as unavoidable.

  Issak.

  “You must come at once, Factor.” His eyes burned with the same certainty.

  My belly sank. Cold crept up my spine and settled behind my eyes. Whatever instinct might have urged flight failed me entirely.

  “I suppose I must,” I managed—no more than a breath dressed as words.

  Then his arm closed around me. Steel-hard. Final. I was lifted, pressed against the giant’s chest, and borne through the square at such speed that tears were torn from my eyes, the world smearing into motion and noise as Zeltzerheim blurred around us.

  Around us, people scattered—stepping back, leaping aside, throwing themselves clear. A few braver souls dared reach out, even shouted “halt,” but they were forced to yield or be crushed underfoot.

  Issak’s speed was obscene. Cradled in his grasp, I heard the wind tear at my ears, felt the cold slice of passing air. In a heartbeat we were over the drawbridge and out upon the field where hope had once been laid down, before it all came apart.

  Cheers, roars, other noises swelled from the Natives as we closed the distance. Sul was ahead of us, clutching Grave. I could see him kicking, straining, resisting with all he had.

  It did not matter.

  The best would never measure against a Blemmye.

  Some of the massive Other-folk moved to meet us, hands reaching for Grave as Sul closed the distance. Wide mouths split into smiles. Piercing eyes found me as well and did not look away.

  Their arms would reach me soon.

  What followed after that, God alone could decide.

  Two of them broke forward as we approached, their speed and gait equal—perhaps greater—to Issak’s. One was draped in armor fashioned from rope, reeds, and fallen trees, bound and layered into a crude yet deliberate shell. The other carried a tree trunk fitted with a boulder braided carefully into its roots, lifted with ease, ready for war. Both met us with arms outstretched.

  “Come. Come.” The armored one rasped, its voice a low, dragging growl. “Time is short. He will not be long. God is great.”

  He? Who had come?

  The child was a girl. I was certain of that. Had they summoned another—someone to lead, to speak, to force a path forward? A parley. A judgment. Something else entirely.

  I did not know.

  Absolute silence had taken root as Issak set me down.

  Grave and Sul stood before me. Grave was on his knees, his posture rigid, his gaze fixed with absolute intent on something hidden by the mass of bodies ahead.

  A blue hue washed over him.

  No.

  What have they done?

  Who are we meant to face?

  What will I see, when I reach what cannot be avoided?

  Issak released me with care, his hands guiding rather than casting. He did not wish me harm—but it was clear I was meant to see. There was no choice left in that.

  I moved forward.

  Between the legs of the Giants.

  Closer to the kneeling form of Grave.

  Past the living wall that was Sul—

  And I saw.

  There she lay.

  I had seen her before. Once as a black-clad child, pockmarked, her face misshapen by whatever cruelty had first claimed her. Another time as a vessel of pain, light pouring from her as pure as her scream.

  Now—

  Now she was dead. She had to be.

  And yet she moved.

  Every deformity was gone. She was thin—emaciated—as though all softness had been burned away. Pale as a corpse. Teeth bared behind lips cracked and dry. Eyes sunk deep into their sockets. Hair limp, without life.

  And still—

  She looked at me as I approached.

  A faint smile curled at the edge of her lips as I drew nearer. Her eyes found mine and held them, studying me with care, with patience measured and unhurried.

  “There you are, Allemand. I needed to see you.”

  That was not the voice of a dying girl.

  It rolled outward, vast and resonant—deep as a drum struck beneath stormclouds, carrying a weight that pressed against the chest and bent the air itself. Power without strain. And yet, within it, there was kindness. Not warmth. Not mercy. Kindness, precise and deliberate.

  Cold seized me. A cold unlike any I had known—no wind, no frost—only absence, as if something essential had stepped away from my body and left it hollow. I stood nearer to dissolution than I ever had, nearer to surrender than to breath.

  I was speaking to Him.