They had marched to war four thousand strong. Thirty-one of them sat in the black woods beyond the ravine, and the woods said nothing.
It was his forest — the woods his mother had taught him, where he had learned to read the trees like letters. For once, the forest kept his secrets the way he had kept its fallen timber. Ren sat closest to him, pressing a rag to a wound on his shoulder, saying nothing, watching Shizui the way men watch weather.
They found the decree at dawn, nailed to the wayshrine where travelers left prayers:
"By order of the Crown: the army of the Red Moon is revealed as corrupted. In the thrall of underworld darkness, the traitors opened our lines and invited the Enemy in. By grace of Captain Yuri, the Shield of the Realm, the betrayal was cut short at the gates. Let no trace of the corrupted remain. All kin of the tainted shall be offered to the flame. The gods save the King."
Ren read it aloud. His voice broke on the word kin.
"They're celebrating him," Ren whispered. "They're singing about him in the streets. We bled two years, and they—"
"All kin," Shizui said quietly. "Ren. All kin."
The color left Ren's face. His mother. His sisters. The western villages.
Shizui was already running.
He ran for two days and two nights without stopping, through woods he had known since birth, across the borderlands of Dragon's Dogma, his heart hammering a single name over and over: Diana. Diana. Lilya. Diana.
He had crossed a battlefield of ten thousand dead without knowing fear.
It was the smoke on the horizon that finally frightened him.