A dim silver crescent moon hung over Dornheim, bathing the unfinished camp in a deathly light.
Hours of deep night had rolled past.
Everyone slept in the heavy silence: Marek's builders, exhausted from a grueling day, the refugees, and a tired Clara. Even the lamps in Iron's workshop had finally gone dark.
Noah sat on the edge of a high cliff protruding from the darkness, dangling one foot in the air. His sharp hearing caught nothing but the rhythmic breathing of hundreds of people.
"How boring..." he whispered under his breath, propping his cheek up with his palm and twisting his lips into a dissatisfied grimace.
Suddenly, his ear twitched sharply.
The soft scuff of a leather sole against fine gravel made Noah instantly snap to attention. His yellow pupils narrowed, locking onto the house where the king and his entourage were staying.
The door of the building creaked open silently. Two shadows slipped out.
They were royal guardsmen, but right now they wore no heavy, clanking armor—only dark leather jackets, hoods concealing their faces, and naked, dimly glinting daggers in their hands. Crouching low, they headed straight for Iron's workshop.
An anticipatory smirk spread across Noah's face. He froze on the cliff, watching with intense curiosity to see what they were planning to do.
They slipped past the stacks of logs, crept along the wall, and stopped right at the workshop door. One of them reached for the doorknob, intending to quietly eliminate Iron.
In that exact split second, Noah dropped from the cliff like a silent stone, right onto their heads.
Crack! Crack!
Noah caught their necks from behind in a death grip. One short, precise slam of their foreheads together—and both infiltrators crumpled into the mud with a muffled groan, knocked out instantly.
Noah grabbed both by the scruff of their necks with clear distaste, effortlessly dragging them into the shadows and silently hiding the bodies behind massive water barrels. Casting a contemptuous glance over them, he grumbled quietly:
"And this is the elite of Avers? Why are you so pathetic and weak?"
About fifteen minutes passed. Gloom reigned inside King Edriac's guest house.
The door opened quietly, and the commander of his personal guard whispered into the dark room:
"Your Majesty... the first pair hasn't returned. Their time is up. They have vanished without a trace and aren't checking in. The camp is suspiciously quiet."
Edriac ground his teeth in irritation, his face contorting with rage.
"Hardly surprising," the king spat. "Pathetic, incompetent fools. They probably tripped over some root in this pitch darkness and broke their legs."
The king stopped abruptly and turned sharply to the commander:
"Everfall must die, and his ores must belong to me. Take ten elite guardsmen. Go and purge this camp. If necessary—kill every single one of them! But the girl, Clara... leave her alive. She will still be of use to me."
The commander gave a brief nod and vanished. A minute later, a tight group of ten armed fighters moved silently out into the dark streets of Dornheim.
Noah, sitting on the roof of a neighboring barracks, watched them gleefully.
"A whole ten of them," he whispered. "At least some variety in this boring night."
Noah leaped into motion. He attacked seamlessly from their blind spots.
The guardsman bringing up the rear suddenly felt someone's fingers close tightly around his chin and the back of his head. A split second—and his neck twisted at an unnatural angle with a faint click. Noah caught the body, preventing the armor from making a sound, and carefully lowered it to the ground.
Nine. Eight. Seven.
He flanked them ruthlessly, breaking jaws, driving fighters face-first into the damp earth, and snapping bones. Not a single one managed to let out a cry; not a single one managed to draw a sword.
In less than a minute, King Edriac's detachment was completely wiped out. Tossing aside the last suffocated fighter, Noah dusted off his palms and looked toward the royal house.
"Time to wake him up," Noah whispered.
A light, barely perceptible nudge to my shoulder instantly yanked me from my sleep. I opened my eyes and immediately saw Noah standing before me.
"Wake up," his whisper came.
I didn't waste time on pointless questions. The servos in my prosthetic whined quietly in response to a mental pulse, and I carefully transferred from the bed into my chair. I rolled silently to the wide window of the workshop.
Noah stood beside me, melting into the deep shadow of the wall. From here, the entire central square of the camp was visible in the palm of my hand.
A couple of minutes later, the door of the guest house slammed open, and King Edriac flew out into the street. His face, contorted with rage and confusion, radiated pure malice. Behind him, hastily donning helmets and drawing heavy swords, the rest of his guard poured out, clanking loudly in their armor.
Eighty-eight men, then? I thought to myself.
Meanwhile, Lumon hummed in my vision, confirming my calculations.
Before Edriac's mouth could even open, I clapped my hands sharply and deafeningly.
CLAP!
In that exact second, dozens of torches flared to life with a crackle along the entire perimeter of Dornheim. The darkness retreated, flooding the square with a bright, flickering orange light.
Out from the hybrid-houses, tents, and from behind stacks of logs came a dense ring of people. All of them stood in pre-arranged positions, staring grimly and silently at the royal guard.
I smoothly rolled my chair onto the workshop porch, right into the torchlight.
"Lord Edriac!" My voice sounded surprisingly loud and firm. "Your men just launched an armed assault on my workshop and tried to instigate a massacre in my own camp! How do you explain this assassination attempt?"
He drew himself up haughtily, casting a disgusted glance over the workers surrounding him.
"Nonsense and blatant, vile lies!" Edriac bellowed. "My knights are clean before the law! You dare accuse a crowned head based on your empty fantasies? Where is your vaunted proof?!"
I gave Noah a brief nod.
He vaulted off the porch and, a second later, tossed a whole pile of bound, battered, and disarmed guardsmen from those two initial squads right at Edriac's gilded boots, letting out a chuckle.
The King merely let out a mocking, cold smirk, looking down at his broken fighters:
"And is that all? Do you truly believe these honorable men are capable of murdering sleeping people? Perhaps the poor souls simply wanted to relieve themselves in the middle of the night? Or maybe my commanders decided to conduct a lawful night reconnaissance of the area, solely for the safety of my majesty in this wild wilderness?"
"Oh, really?" I smiled faintly and looked back at Noah. "Go ahead."
He closed the distance in a single step, moving right up into Edriac's personal space. With a fluid motion, his palm slid inside the lapel of the king's luxurious caftan, snatched something away, and instantly darted back to my chair.
Resting on his palm was a tiny, fingernail-sized, flat device made of the dark Omega alloy, featuring a barely noticeable crimson dot of Celestial ore. My high-tech audio bug.
I activated the wireless connection via Lumon, syncing the device with the speakers of the prototype resting on my lap.
"Let's listen to your 'reconnaissance,' Your Majesty," I said, pressing a virtual button.
From the weapon's speaker, booming across the entire square, came a crisp, perfectly recorded, and undeniably recognizable voice of King Edriac himself, giving the order to his commander twenty minutes ago:
"...Iron must die, and his ore must belong to me... Go and purge this camp. If necessary—kill every single one of them! But the girl, Clara... leave her alive. She will still be of use to me..."
The audio recording cut off with a dry click.
A deathly silence fell over the square.
Inside Edriac's head, a thought instantly flared:
I don't care! Screw the recording! My forces here are still more than enough. I'll slaughter every single one of them, burn the houses, and cover my tracks completely! No one in the capital will ever find out what actually happened here!
In a furious spasm, the king's fingers closed around the gilded hilt of his sword. He already opened his mouth to bark the order to begin a bloody slaughter.
But the moment the blade shifted just a couple of centimeters inside its scabbard, a voice echoed directly inside his mind.
"I hope you understand the consequences that await you if you begin your little circus."
The King froze dead in his tracks. His hand, gripping the hilt, began to tremble violently. A paralyzing terror locked Edriac's mind. His heart hammered in his chest like crazy, and heavy beads of cold sweat rolled down his forehead and back. Edriac couldn't take a single step.
I watched the king's face closely. He stared into the void, as if the devil himself stood before him.
Could this really be because of the audio bug? I thought. No... something else is happening. But either way, I can't let an opportunity like this slip.
I sharply cut the air with my hand. "Get out of here, Edriac."
The King swallowed convulsively. With great effort, he forced his numb fingers to release the sword hilt. Without looking at me, he spun sharply on his heels and commanded his army in a raspy, strained voice:
"Retreat! All forces... leave the camp immediately! To the carriages! Move it!"
His subordinate knights stood in absolute shock and bewilderment. Commanders exchanged glances, failing to comprehend why their ruler was fleeing before a handful of militia despite holding a colossal military advantage.
But the royal command was absolute. Without a single question, the guards of Avers obediently turned around and hastily, muttering through their teeth, trudged back to their horses and wagons.
Once inside the carriage, as the lacquered wheels rattled furiously down the road away from the camp, the commander of the personal guard couldn't take it anymore and turned to the pale, trembling king:
"Your Majesty... forgive my audacity, but why did we retreat? We would have crushed that rabble in a matter of minutes!"
Edriac looked at his general with a wild, unhinged gaze and forced out, terrified, in barely a whisper:
"You idiot... If we had started that battle... He would have found out! He would have known that exact second! You understand nothing... You don't understand!"
The knights in the carriage had no idea what he was talking about and simply remained silent.
When the clatter of the royal wheels finally died out somewhere far off, the heavy tension finally broke. The workers began putting out the torches, cheerfully discussing how smoothly we had kicked the pompous king out the door.
Clara quietly stepped off the porch of the smithy.
I spun my chair toward her and gave her a warm, genuine smile. "Excellent work, Clara. And... I'm so sorry. I truly regret that you had to draw the attention of that disgusting idiot and endure his filthy hands all for the sake of our plan."
Clara let out a breath of relief, a faint smile appearing on her lips. She tiredly brushed a strand of hair from her forehead and shook her head.
"It's fine, Iron, don't worry about it. I volunteered for this to plant that... what did you call it? That 'bug' on him. The main thing is that the little thing worked perfectly."
"Yeah, it worked like a charm," Noah smirked, coming up from behind and tossing the tiny device in his hand.
I played along with Noah and gave a weak smile, but my mind wasn't at ease. Edriac's face still hovered before my eyes.
Yesterday and now... he behaved far too cartoonishly... flashed through my head. Maybe he got too nervous? Unlikely. Then what the hell was that?
I stared thoughtfully into the darkness of the night road where the carriage had vanished.
My head is starting to hurt a bit.
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