"You are not immigrants!"
Lucia's voice carried across the gathered crowd with clarity.
"This is not exile. This is not an escape."
"This is freedom!"
She stood on the raised platform in the town square with an elegant dress, wildly contrasting with the worn clothing of those watching her.
"You call yourselves tired? Good. Tired men have nothing left to lose." She gestured broadly. "You call yourselves poor? Magnificent! For the poor fear no thieves. You say you are forgotten?"
She paused, raising both hands as if she wanted to engulf the crowd in her embrace.
"Then hear me… I. See. You!"
The whispers that had always accompanied big crowds seemed to abate.
"For too long you have rotted in the shadow of other men's wars. Soldiers bleed on the frontlines. Nobles glut themselves behind curtains. And you?" Her voice dropped. "You are told to wait like ghosts."
"When winter comes, your bones freeze. When summer comes, your skin burns. You are always hungry, you are always thirsty. And still, you wait."
"You endure. You survive. You wait for salvation."
She spoke each word separately now, letting them land individually.
"Survive."
"Survive."
"Survive."
"..."
"Is that truly it?"
Silence answered her, but she hadn't expected a response since she'd already decided for them.
"You were not born to rot in alleys while cowards toast their victories. You were not born to bow your heads while your children inherit your chains."
Her voice rose again, filling the square.
"And most of all… You are not forgotten!"
She raised one hand toward them.
"Someone has remembered you. Rejoice! You are ghosts no more!"
"Solmara is his land, and he invites you to walk his road beside him."
"The place I speak of is not a distant shore. It is a land that asks not what you were, only what you will become."
She gestured with both hands now, painting the picture.
"You will not beg or wander, for you will be too busy building and forging."
"You will think beyond mere survival. You will go beyond enduring and start truly living!"
Her voice climbed.
"You will be at the forefront of our race! Fighting for a just cause and living a meaningful life!"
"What ghosts?!" She bellowed. "You will become men and women of conviction! You will be remembered not as the tired, poor souls that huddled under walls, yearning to breathe free—"
She thrust her hand forward.
"You will be stalwart humans that go down in history!!"
The crowd was leaning in for a while now, caught in the rhythm.
"So I ask you now—will you cling to the rot?"
"...Or will you rise?"
"Will you remain ghosts, or will you become legends?"
She extended her hand toward them, palm up, like she offering for them to hold it.
"Take my hand. Step forward. Let the world remember the day the forgotten stood up."
Silence held for a breath.
Then one voice cracked from the crowd. "FOR SOLMARA!"
Another joined. "FOR SOLMARA!"
The sound grew, spreading through the gathered people like a wave.
"FOR HOME!" Lucia shouted.
"FOR HOME!" they returned, louder now.
The roar built. Fists rose and bent in the air like scattered stars. The chant turned into a tide, pulling them from their stagnant lives toward a reckoning they had no real understanding of.
They were a herd, intoxicated by the whispers of a devil.
"NOW!" Lucia roared.
"NOW!" the crowd replied, and the sound felt like it would break the horizon.
"FOR SOLMARA! FOR HOME! FOR BLOOD!"
They shouted until their voices turned hoarse. When their spirits finally calmed, they joined the long convoy that promised a future where they would at least be treated as human.
⁂
More than a thousand wagons trailed in three parallel lines stretching across the landscape. At the head of each line, lead wagons guided one of the most significant migrations in recent history.
Each wagon was a large, sturdy construction built to accommodate multiple families rather than single households. Eight people on average per wagon, though some carried more. The math made for a movement of almost ten thousand souls.
The wagons were pulled by Gorefiend-class horses. They were creatures with the stamina and strength to maintain pace for days without tiring. That was one of the reasons a convoy this size could move as a cohesive unit and not fragment into a chaotic mob.
The woman responsible for this entire movement sat at the foremost wagon of the center line.
Lucia had kept her signature pink hair and elegant features, but she'd changed from her usual professional attire to a more fashionable dress.
Normally, casual clothing would have been the obvious option to blend in and inspire kinship with the common people she was recruiting. But the narrative she was using to herd these people didn't need that.
In fact, it required the opposite.
What would these miserable souls gain by looking at another person the same as them? Kinship? They had plenty of that. There was always an endless number of the poor and weary.
What they truly wanted was someone above them. Someone elevated, but still willing to gaze down and guide them.
Lucia had taken that role. If it accomplished her lover's mission to bring new blood to his settlement, she would be their messiah for as long as they followed.
And follow they did.
From town to town, city to city, domain to domain, she spread the poison that was hope to every life on her journey.
What started as a convoy of one hundred grew to this astronomical size.
It wasn't only the homeless who were infected by the hope she brought. She employed a different approach for every class.
When dealing with merchants, it was opportunity and riches she peddled. When addressing nobles, it was honor and legacy. For the skilled laborers, it was security and fair wages. For the desperate, it was simple survival elevated to something resembling dignity.
The poor were still the most numerous, but she'd managed to ensnare more than a hundred merchants and a dozen minor nobles who'd been pushed out of succession and were hungry for a fresh start elsewhere.
They took their treasures and inheritances and joined this convoy of hope toward the unknown, trusting the rumors of a war hero and the words of a manipulator.
Lucia hadn't waited for them to reach Solmara—the name Ashen had given her to spread when addressing his region. She'd started using them immediately.
The allowance Ashen had provided, while substantial, wasn't nearly enough for a movement this large planning to travel all the way to the edges of the Wrath Domain.
So nobles and merchants were made to donate under the persuasion of her poisonous tongue, allowing her to hire guards to maintain order, buy food to feed the marching immigrants, and rent additional wagons to accommodate them all.
At first, she hadn't meant for it to grow this large. But one day, she woke up with a certain feeling… the feeling that resources did not matter anymore, and that she could go wild in recruiting people.
And this was the result.
Anyhow, she knew that if she focused hard enough, the information would transfer when needed.
All she felt right now was that same persistent sense that she didn't need to consider resource constraints.
What she knew for certain, even without full recollection, was that Ashen had found something earth-shattering. Something that could move Sin Lords if discovered. And even this knowledge would soon vanish from her mind.
Something of that nature would normally be kept secret from even one's closest relatives. But he'd shared it with them without hesitation.
He was fully trusting them. Considering them true co-owners of his growing land.
"...Makes me love you so much more ah~" she murmured to the empty air, her eyes glazing with the yearning to physically see him again.
That torturous yearning was only held back by the fact that the convoy rolled on behind her, and Solmara, where he was, waited ahead.
⛧ ⛧ ⛧