Interlude XXV – Ashen's Patience
Ashen leaned over the map lit by lantern glow. Her lieutenants fidgeted, eager for another raid.
"We could strike again tonight," one urged. "Catch them bleeding. Finish it."
Ashen shook her head. "They're already finished. They just don't feel it yet. Our blades are hunger, cold, silence. Let them starve on despair before we touch them again."
The men went quiet.
Her smile was slight, cruel. "Seraphine fights like a wolf. Wolves break not when wounded, but when the pack thins. And her pack thins by the hour."
----
Interlude XXVI – Darius' Ledger
Darius stood in a cave mouth, snow drifting in, his cloak wrapped close.
He stared at faint motes of System light skittering across stone, numbers tallying, calculations unseen by mortals.
The Wanderer at his side asked softly, "She's faltering, isn't she?"
Darius' voice was grave. "Not yet. But Ashen's strategy is to erode. Death by inches. Seraphine doesn't realize the siege isn't about gates—it's about time."
He exhaled. "If she doesn't change her play, she'll lose without ever being broken in battle."
----
Interlude XXVII – System Log
[INFINITE REALMS – PROLONGED ENGAGEMENT DETECTED]
Attrition Ratio: 3:1 in Favor of Aggressor.
Projected Collapse Timeline: 19 Cycles.
Warning: Sustained morale decay imminent.
Countermeasure Suggestion: Shift Strategic Paradigm.
----
The fortress should have been loud with relief after the counterstroke.
Instead, silence gripped the halls.
Seraphine walked them, boots echoing too loudly. Soldiers bowed heads as she passed, their eyes haunted. Every shadow seemed to hold the missing.
Valeria marched beside her, stiff, jaw clenched. Noctis trailed with hands in pockets, humming tunelessly, but even his grin was brittle.
The battle had been won. The war had only deepened.
That night, the fortress woke to screams.
The infirmary was a tangle of shouting, torchlight, and spilled blood. A guard lay dead, throat cut, his body still warm.
Noctis crouched over the corpse, eyes narrowing. "Not ours. Blade's too clean."
Sabotage. Assassins had slipped through.
Panic rippled. Soldiers clutched spears tighter, but the halls seemed to grow darker by the breath.
Seraphine's hand tightened on her sword hilt. Ashen hadn't broken their walls. She was inside them.
Three more days passed.
No more assassins struck, but food stores ran lower. Water cisterns froze deeper, harder. The cold gnawed.
Worse than hunger was waiting.
The enemy's drums did not return. The silence outside thickened into a pressure all its own. Every soldier on the battlements stared into the snow, praying to see movement, fearing it at the same time.
Valeria snapped at officers more than once, her patience stripped raw. Noctis vanished for hours, returning with blood on his hands and nothing to say about it.
And Seraphine… Seraphine felt her chest tighten each night, as if invisible hands closed around her ribs.
Ashen wasn't striking. She was withdrawing. Waiting for the citadel to consume itself.
The first deserters were caught at dawn.
Two young recruits, barely armed, trying to slip past the gates into the storm. They begged for mercy when dragged back, claiming they only wanted to find food, that they'd return.
Seraphine listened, jaw hard. She wanted to believe them.
But if she forgave this, the gates would bleed empty by morning.
Her sword came down swift.
The courtyard froze.
Blood spattered the snow.
Noctis watched her with sharp eyes, unreadable. Valeria stood like iron, neither approving nor condemning, only waiting.
Seraphine's voice rang across the courtyard: "There will be no desertion. Not while I still breathe."
The silence after was heavier than screams.
That night she couldn't sleep. The air was too still. Her thoughts too loud.
She stood at the battlements, snow coating her shoulders, eyes fixed on the black tree line beyond the walls.
A flicker of torchlight sparked, then vanished.
She knew Ashen was out there. Waiting. Smiling.
Her sword hand twitched. Rage surged—but helpless rage, the kind that corroded from within.
This was worse than battle. This was suffocation.
And Ashen was tightening the rope one breath at a time.
By the fourth night, Seraphine admitted the truth to herself:
If she waited longer, the citadel would collapse without a single enemy arrow fired.
And that was the plan all along.
Ashen didn't need to win in glory. She only needed Seraphine to rot from the inside out.
Seraphine clenched the battlement stone until her fingers bled.
"No," she whispered, the word slicing against her teeth.
Not like this.
She would break the noose. Even if it meant shattering her own walls.