The wind howled like a beast over the ridge, carrying with it shards of snow sharp enough to sting through leather.
Inside the command tent, the lantern's flame guttered, shadows twitching along the canvas walls.
Hiral's gloved fingers tightened on the reins of his thoughts as a breathless courier staggered through the flap, frost crusting his beard and lashes.
"General—urgent word from our scouts near Eldara."
The man's voice was hoarse, but the message struck clean through the winter's roar like a blade through silk.
Eldara's desperate gambit had reached them—two contradictory pleas for aid, one sent to Ro, the other to the Eastern Alliance, each accusing the other of marching for invasion.
For a heartbeat, Hiral said nothing. His jaw tightened, the muscle twitching once before he forced it still.
He didn't need to imagine the rest—he knew the shape of such a scheme, the ruin it could unleash.
This was the kind of spark that didn't flicker out; it dug into dry timber and spread until whole kingdoms were reduced to ash.
And beneath the cold calculation, agitation pressed at him like a splinter under the skin.
He had known.
Not in fact, not in proof—but in the gnawing way a soldier knows the sky will break into storm before the clouds gather.
Eldara had been fraying for months, and he had felt the strain in every unanswered letter, every delayed envoy. He'd told himself there was time, that the mountain passes would open, that winter would not hold forever.
But the truth, bitter as frostbite, was that he had waited—and waiting had cost him the chance to keep this from the edge.
Without another word, he took up his brush and scrawled a sealed order, his strokes quick and sharp.
"To Tirin," he told the courier, pressing wax to the paper and stamping it with his seal. "Find him. Put this in his hand—no one else's. He is to hold any military dispatch from the ministers or the Empress until I give the order."
The man saluted and vanished into the storm.
"Seran," Hiral called, his tone edged. The captain stepped in, snow dripping from his cloak, eyes searching his commander's face.
"The army is to station here, at our ally's border," Hiral said. His gaze sharpened. "You will not—under any circumstance—enter Eldara's territory without my direct command."
Seran's brow furrowed, confusion shading into concern. "General, you can't mean to ride in alone. If their king is desperate enough to weave this kind of trap, he may be desperate enough to spring it on you. Assassins, hidden troops—"
"I've gone through worse," Hiral cut in, voice steady but stripped of patience. "And this isn't malice—it's desperation. They've been calling for help for weeks. I was already moving to answer before the winter swallowed the passes. We were too slow."
His hand tightened on the edge of his cloak before pulling it around him, the motion sharp with resolve. Regret burned under his ribs—hot, aching, and useless now.
"I can't risk more delay," he continued, stepping toward the tent's opening. "If the wrong men meet at Eldara's gates, they won't be speaking—they'll be killing. And once that starts, nothing will stop it."
Seran's lips pressed thin. "You're asking me to stand down when the threat is right there in front of us."
"I'm asking you," Hiral said, pausing with the snow already swirling around his boots, "to guard the peace we've spent years keeping alive. Through schemes, through lies, through… all the things we'd rather not name. If we lose it now, then it would be harder than ever to hold on to it."
He swung into the saddle as the snow began to fall harder, thick curtains swallowing the horizon until the world seemed to shrink to the churn of hooves beneath him and the rasp of his own breath.
The cold bit deep, sharp as penance, but he welcomed it. It kept him from drowning entirely in the tangle of thoughts clawing at him.
Eldara's desperate king. The schemes born from frost and hunger. The fragile balance he'd bled years to keep from tipping into ruin. And beyond all of it—him.
Alexis.
The name settled in his chest like a weight and a warmth at once. He had told himself, over and over, that Alexis would understand if he saw the truth for what it was—that they stood on the same side, even if their banners didn't always fly together.
But now… with black-plated riders already in motion and tempers across the borders waiting for the smallest spark, understanding might not be enough.
Let him see what I see, Hiral thought, the words almost a prayer. Let him not be my enemy in this.
Regret was a dull ache under his ribs—the memory of unopened letters, of half-measures taken when swifter action might have saved them all from this precipice.
He should have been in Eldara weeks ago. He should have forced the passes, braved the early storms. Now his delay might cost him not only the fragile peace he had fought for, but the one bond he had never dared to name aloud.
Guilt pressed harder with every stride of his horse. Guilt for the soldiers who might die before their commanders even realized they were pawns.
Guilt for the people of Eldara, driven to desperation while he gambled on time he didn't have. And guilt for Alexis—because if fate turned cruel, they could meet with blades drawn, the weight of the war between them heavier than any strike of steel.
But beneath the regret and guilt, a thin thread of hope still burned—flickering, fragile, but unyielding. The hope that if he could reach Eldara first, if he could pull this kindling apart before it caught flame, then all he had worked for—every lie told, every alliance kept alive by sheer will—might yet survive.
And maybe, just maybe, so would the quiet future he had once imagined, far from courts and battlefields, where the sea was the only horizon and names meant nothing.
The memory came unbidden: Alexis at the ship's prow, hair whipped by salt wind, laughing at some half-forgotten jest. A moment untouched by crowns, free of the weight they both carried now. That had been real. And he would not let war erase it.
Kicking his horse into motion, Hiral plunged into the storm, a lone rider racing the fuse of a continental war.
Snow swallowed him whole, but his mind burned with a single vow—he would reach Eldara before the fire took everything.