Beyond the northern gate of Feyburn City lay the edge of the Empire's reach.

  Further north was the grey zone — territory no one truly ruled.

  Thirty household knights stood in formation, ready.

  I swung up into the saddle.

  Lilia stood at my side.

  She had exchanged her plain traveling clothes for a light combat robe woven in ocean blue and silver white. Her silver hair fell loose, a sword at her hip. The distant air of a Holy Maiden had softened; in its place was something sharper — the bearing of a soldier. She wasn't accustomed to human military dress, but she made no complaint.

  "Draw."

  Thirty blades left their scabbards as one.

  We faced the white stone monument standing ten feet tall beyond the northern gate.

  Three hundred and thirty-three names were carved into its face.

  Three hundred and thirty-three fallen soldiers of the northern frontier.

  "Salute."

  Sword points angled toward the sky.

  Wind swept across the banners. Steel caught the morning light and ran cold.

  Lilia stilled for just a moment. She had clearly never seen this kind of ceremony. But she saw the silence in my profile — and slowly raised her sword alongside the rest.

  No one spoke.

  Only the wind.

  Then, after a moment —

  "Sheathe."

  The sound of steel settling into scabbards rang out in unison.

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  We turned our horses north and rode.

  Lilia was not a skilled rider.

  The elven people revered the natural order and rarely bound horses with saddle and rein. She could speak to the forest, but she had no feel for the surging stops and starts of a human warhorse.

  In the end, she sat before me in the saddle, and I held the reins from behind.

  Her body was faintly stiff.

  Not from fear — from proximity.

  When the horse moved off, she grabbed instinctively at the mane. The wind lifted her silver hair, and a few strands drifted across my cheek.

  "Still not used to it?" I asked quietly.

  "...A little."

  She was working to keep herself composed.

  "You will be."

  I said nothing more, and kept the pace steady.

  Thirty riders moved forward in silence.

  The treeline fell away behind us. The northern wasteland opened across our field of vision, wide and unhurried.

  Lilia's ability far exceeded the ordinary.

  Holy Maiden of the Sacred Elven Clan was not an honorary title. One was chosen every three hundred years, her mind and magic tempered through a practice not far from asceticism.

  Her primary discipline was water.

  By the Empire's classification, she placed no lower than High Mage.

  In the Wuroster Empire, registered mages numbered over a thousand. Those who had reached Intermediate rank were barely a hundred. High Mages across the entire nation — fewer than thirty.

  The numbers arranged themselves quickly in my mind.

  Ten northern provinces. Combined military strength, approximately ninety thousand. Orcs, two hundred and thirty thousand. Dark elves, two hundred thousand. Sacred elves, roughly two hundred thousand. Five Imperial Legions, one hundred thousand each.

  On the surface, numbers.

  In practice — time. Whoever could bring the decisive strike to bear first was the one who would win.

  "My lord."

  Lilia's voice came quietly, pulling me out of the calculation.

  "You've brought only thirty riders... is that truly enough?"

  I allowed a faint smile.

  "The others are already on their way."

  She turned her head slightly. "Your deployment?"

  "If the enemy could see it, it wouldn't be a deployment."

  She was quiet for a moment, then said softly: "My uncle says you're a sorcerer on the battlefield."

  "He overestimates me."

  "I'm not sure he does."

  There was no flattery in her tone. Only a statement of fact.

  I didn't answer.

  The wind came down from the north.

  The outline of the Silver Leaf Forest emerged in the distance, faint at first, then growing.

  We cut through the woodland on a shortcut path. Three days along this hidden trail would bring us to the edge of the Holy Grounds. Lilia led the way, moving through the terrain with the ease of someone who had never needed to think about it.

  Each night when we made camp, she laid a simple water-boundary ward around the perimeter.

  I watched the rhythm of her casting — her breath, her movements.

  Precise. Steady. Nothing wasted.

  On the evening of the third day, something in the air shifted.

  The wind carried moisture now, and beneath it, the faint suggestion of flowers.

  Lilia eased the horse to a slower pace.

  "My lord — one more hour, and we reach the outer edge of the Holy Grounds."

  "A ward?"

  "Yes. And a zone of toxic flora — please keep your knights close behind me. No one strays."

  I nodded and gave the order to tighten formation.

  Her voice held no trace of wavering now. It was the focus that came over someone returning to their own land.

  And then I saw it —

  Deep within the distant treeline, a transparent ripple moved through the air, so faint it was nearly indistinguishable from the atmosphere itself.

  The elven barrier.

  The first gate of the war.

  I tightened my grip on the reins.

  "Forward."

  This was not a rescue.

  This was a placement of pieces.

  If my read was correct — the entire shape of the northern frontier would be rewritten.

  If I was wrong — all thirty-one of us would be buried here.

  Lilia said softly, "Welcome to the territory of the Sacred Elven Clan."

  I didn't answer.

  I only looked into the depths of that forest, and was still.

  The real game had only just begun.

  The northern front has never been about numbers.It's about timing.

  The board is set.The first move has been made.