CHAPTER 31: The Unseen Thread
Duskwatch Fortress – Late Night, A Week After the Oakhaven Purge
Nalen moved through the fortress like a whisper, the damp stone of the lower halls cool beneath his leather boots. His cover as a quartermaster's aide was solid. He knew every supply crate, every watch rotation, every crack in the old foundation. But his true purpose was a tight knot of conflicted loyalties in his gut.
The Empire was a slow, lumbering beast, but it was coming. His hidden message to the Chancellor of Doctrine—"Kill him now, or not at all"—had been ignored, or perhaps misinterpreted. Now, the legions marched, a force that would crush Kael and everything he was building. And in the process, it would likely crush Nalen, too.
He paused by a dusty archway, listening. The sounds of the fortress were muted: a distant snore from a sleeping guard, the drip of water into a forgotten basin, the faint, rhythmic chanting from Seyda's Red Veil acolytes in their lower sanctum. Nalen thought of Seyda's gaze, the night she almost saw through him. He thought of Kael's unwavering purpose, the chilling honesty of his words.
He had a choice. Betray Kael, and maybe save his own skin, for a time. Or help Kael, and potentially die for a cause he was still only beginning to believe in.
His hand went to the small, hollowed-out piece of bone, Crow-Talon 37, hidden beneath his tunic. His loyalty to the Empire was a habit, a cold duty. His fascination with Kael was something new, dangerous.
He made his decision.
His target was the Imperial Legions' march plan, a critical piece of intelligence he knew was being ferried by a specific, high-priority courier. He had gleaned this from a captured Imperial officer's coded notes, left amongst their belongings at Duskwatch. The courier was due to pass through a specific, isolated mountain pass far to the south, too far for Kael's usual scouts to reach in time.
Nalen didn't intend to kill the courier or steal the message directly. That would be too risky, too obvious, and would reveal his hand. Instead, he would simply... redirect him.
He slipped into the quiet, cluttered office of the Fortress Master, Lord Theron Varkhale's aide. The aide, a meticulous man named Borin, was asleep at his desk, a half-finished mug of bitter ale beside him. Nalen's fingers danced over Borin's desk, finding the official Duskwatch dispatch log and the small, heavy bag of sealed messages waiting for the morning's riders.
He found the right one—a small, nondescript scroll addressed to a regional lord far to the west, a known loyalist who would be expecting a routine supply update. Nalen knew this lord would be receiving dozens of similar communications.
With swift, practiced movements, Nalen replaced the contents of the scroll with a false message, carefully forged in the Imperial cipher he knew so well. This new message, seemingly innocuous, spoke of a shift in the *Imperial Legions' planned staging point*—a tiny, seemingly insignificant adjustment to their route, directing a portion of the vast army away from its actual course, towards a less-defended, more treacherous pass. The change was subtle enough to be plausible, and crucially, would tie up a significant number of Imperial vanguard units for several days, delaying their main advance by a crucial margin.
He resealed the scroll with a genuine wax seal, taken from a pouch on Borin's belt. No one would ever suspect.
He then added a single, tiny, almost invisible mark to the *outside* of the scroll—a faint, almost imperceptible symbol he'd learned from the Black Legates. A symbol that, if seen by the right eyes, would indicate that this message was "compromised" and to be discarded. This was his subtle hedge: if the false message was too easily discovered, it would be thrown away, and he wouldn't be implicated. If it was overlooked, the delay would be catastrophic for the Empire.
He slipped out of the office as silently as he'd entered.
As he walked away, Nalen felt a cold satisfaction. He had not betrayed his original masters by fighting them directly. He had simply... guided them. The Empire, in its arrogance, had chosen to crush a rebellion. Nalen had chosen to show them the long road, filled with traps of their own making.
He still wasn't sure if Kael was the world's savior or its pyre. But Nalen had ensured that, for now, Kael would have a little more time to burn.