Dawn Walker

His expression was controlled. That was never a comforting sign. It meant something chaotic.

Stephen bowed.

"Young master."

Mihos looked at him. "Speak."

Stephen did.

Not dramatically. Not slowly. Not with excuses wrapped around facts to make them easier on the ear. He delivered the report in the clean sequence that real butlers used when the truth was too ugly to decorate.

The two people Mihos had sent to Iron House were dead.

Iron House’s lower business had been destroyed during the night.

The smaller shops were gone.

The side warehouses were gone.

The hired guards and hired blades tied to those locations were either dead or captured.

Many of Iron House’s own guards had died with them.

Multiple lower routes had collapsed.

Dickoff had made no report.

At all.

Stephen spoke every part of it with the same tone.

That made it worse.

Mihos did not react during the first few lines.

He only listened.

Then Stephen continued.

The enemy had not merely defended.

They had counterattacked with full control.

The city had seen it.

Witnesses were already speaking.

Iron House, as a business body below the main estate, was finished.

That was the line that broke the room.

Mihos lost control so quickly that even Stephen, who had expected anger, felt the air change before the first object moved.

The cup in Mihos’s hand hit the far wall hard enough to shatter across the stone.

Then the table was struck.

Then a brass lamp stand went over.

Then the stack of sealed reports beside it was swept to the floor with one furious motion of his arm.

He did not shout at first.

That made it worse.

His breathing changed. His face hardened. Then the anger came all at once, sharp and ugly and too long held.

"They died?"

Stephen remained still. "Yes, young master."

"And Dickoff sent nothing?"

"Yes."

That answer made Mihos slam his hand down on the table so hard the wood cracked.

For the first time in days, the polish around him broke completely.

He had thought this would be easy.

That was the real wound.

Not Iron House.

Not Dickoff.

Not even the two strong subordinates he had sent.

This had been supposed to be entertaining.

A lower branch problem. A bastard with temporary luck. A dirty little war game to occupy a corner of his attention before he chose whether to crush it directly or enjoy the shape of the struggle first.

Instead, Sekhmet had ruined the pleasure of it.

He had won the first round.

Then he had gone further and broken the rest of the board.

Not only the hired trash.

Not only the guards.

Not only the routes and merchants and shop fronts.

Everything.

All the lower working parts of Iron House had been torn out in one night.

Mihos snatched a metal paperweight from the side desk and hurled it across the pavilion. It struck a carved support post and left a deep dent before dropping into the rugs below.

"Useless," he said.

The word came out like poison.

Stephen did not ask whether he meant Dickoff, Iron House, the dead subordinates, or the men who had failed to stop any of this.

It likely meant all of them.

Mihos turned and struck the side chest next. The lid split. Ink bottles toppled from the upper shelf. A clerk outside the inner curtain flinched so hard that the sound carried through the canvas.

"I gave him a game," Mihos said, voice low and furious now. "A simple game."

Stephen remained silent.

That was the correct choice.

Mihos looked toward the open side of the pavilion where the darkness of the camp stood beyond lamplight and guards. His expression had gone past anger now into something tighter.

He did not enjoy losing.

More than that, he did not enjoy being made to look foolish while intending to be amused.

Sekhmet had done both.

The bastard had taken the first round, then turned the field, then destroyed the lower business body of the house under Mihos’s hand while Mihos was still treating it like entertainment.

That was not a tactical loss anymore.

That was an insult.

Stephen spoke only when the silence had settled enough that words might not be punished for existing.

"The main Iron House mansion still stands."

Mihos let out one short breath through his nose.

Not a laugh.

Nothing that warm.

"Yes," he said. "The corpse still has a head."

That line stayed in the room.

Because it was true.

The mansion remained.

Dickoff still lived somewhere inside it or beneath it like a coward who had remembered survival too late.

But everything else was gone.

For Iron House to return from that kind of loss, it would need chaos stones in absurd quantity. Not enough to patch damage. Enough to build a second body under a name already bleeding confidence. And while those stones were gathered, the city would keep remembering this night.

That memory would cost more than stone.

Stephen lowered his head slightly. "What are your orders, young master?"

Mihos did not answer immediately.

He looked around the damaged pavilion. Broken cup. Fallen lamp stand. Split chest. Scattered papers. The little scene of damage only annoyed him more because it did not match the scale of the anger under his skin.

At last he said, "Find Dickoff."

Stephen’s eyes did not move, but he understood the shift in the order at once.

Not sent for.

Not summon.

Find.

Which meant the young master already knew the bastard was hiding.

Mihos’s voice remained controlled now, which was even worse than the outburst had been.

"If he can hide from me while his house burns, then I will decide whether he still deserves to keep breathing inside it."

Stephen bowed. "Yes, young master."

Mihos looked once more into the dark beyond the camp.

Sekhmet had made the night unpleasant.

That only meant the next move would no longer be made for amusement.

(Note: Support the story with power stones and golden tickets.)

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!