CHAPTER 29: The Grand Delusion
Imperial Grand Command – Fields of Judgment
The tent reeked of damp leather and barely suppressed fury. Lord Marshal Daegarn traced a line on the campaign map with a gloved finger, his knuckles white. The line, once a smooth advance, now zig-zagged, pockmarked with red circles marking 'incidents'.
"Another patrol vanished near Whisperwood," a junior aide stammered, his face pale. "No trace, Lord Marshal. The last one was found… dismembered, nailed to trees, facing Duskwatch."
Archlector Malgrad, robed in crimson, scoffed. "Rebel trickery. Superstition. The weak are always superstitious."
"The weak are also hungry, Archlector," Lord Tervan, the Quartermaster General, cut in, his jowly face glistening with sweat despite the cold. "Reports of food shortages are rampant. Local requisitions are failing. The farmers claim their grain is 'cursed' or 'spoiled by Imperial greed.' My own men are reporting widespread illness from tainted wells. This is not the clean march we were promised."
Lady Edraya, Minister of War, slammed a fist on the table. "This is propaganda! The peasants are being fed lies by this Kael. We burn their homes, we salt their fields, and they still refuse to yield the last of their meager stores? It's lunacy!"
Daegarn looked up, his gaze tired but sharp. "It's not lunacy, Lady Edraya. It's a strategy. Kael is not fighting us on the field. He's fighting our will. He's turning our own strength—our numbers—against us. Every mile we advance, our belly grows, and the land before us empties."
"Then we forage harder!" Tervan snapped.
"And risk more ambushes by phantoms? More vanishing patrols?" Daegarn countered, his voice rising. "More whispers that our own officers are hoarding and burning? Our men are starting to believe it, Tervan! The Purifiers' sermons about heresy aren't working if the soldiers think *we* are the villains."
Malgrad's eyes narrowed. "The Purifiers will intensify their teachings. We will remind them of their sacred duty. These 'ghosts' are merely agents of the profane, easily dispelled by faith."
"Faith doesn't fill a stomach, Archlector," Tervan grumbled, earning a sharp glare from Malgrad.
Daegarn ignored them, walking to the tent flap. He looked out at the endless expanse of campfires, a million small lights under a bruised sky. He saw the sheer scale of the army, a beast that demanded constant feeding, a force built for crushing decisive battles, not for chasing shadows and starving in an empty land.
Sergeant Garron, the scout from Oakhaven, had been brought to him personally. He had told Daegarn, with wide, terrified eyes, of the "whispers in the woods" and the "woman like a ghost." Daegarn had dismissed it as fear then. He didn't anymore.
He turned back to the room. "The northern villages are burnt out. The wells poisoned. The forests are a death trap. The Red Veil moves like smoke. And our supply lines, Lord Tervan, are beginning to fray before we've even reached Duskwatch."
"We must advance!" Edraya insisted. "Any delay will be seen as weakness."
"Weakness is irrelevant if our men are too sick or too terrified to fight," Daegarn snapped. "We need a new plan. This... 'judgment' is turning into a slow, agonizing crawl."
He walked back to the map, his gaze falling on the empty space where Duskwatch stood. Kael was playing a different game entirely. A game of attrition, of morale, of turning the vast, hungry beast of the Empire into its own undoing.
"Send a fresh patrol, heavily armed, along the easternmost route," Daegarn finally commanded, his voice cold and deliberate. "I want to confirm something. If this Kael is denying us everything, what is he feeding his own? Find out where his supplies are coming from. And find me a living Red Veil."