The group ducked beneath the flap and entered the command tent.
The air inside was thick, heavier than the cool night beyond. Lanterns burned low, their glow too weak to push back the shadows clinging to the corners. Scrolls and diagrams were strewn across the central table, weighted down with iron nails and small stones.
At the head of the table sat Logos.
He was hunched slightly forward, one hand holding a map, the other resting flat against the wooden surface as if it anchored him there. But it was not his posture that stopped the men cold.
It was his eyes.
Black as midnight, black as an abyss, stripped of the faint silver glimmer they had once held. They drank the light, swallowed it whole. Looking into them felt less like meeting the gaze of a youth and more like staring into something bottomless.
And when he spoke—
"You are back."
The voice was wrong. Not just deeper, but layered. His words carried an echo, faint yet unmistakable, as if a second speaker lurked just beyond the fabric of the tent, repeating after him in perfect sync.
Shivers rippled down every spine.
Masen swore under his breath, hand going to his belt instinctively. "What the hell happened to your voice?!"
Logos tilted his head toward him, slow, deliberate. He considered Masen for a long, heavy moment. Then he answered with a single word:
"Refinement."
The sound of it thrummed in the air, lingering longer than it should have, like a bell still vibrating after the strike.
"Refinement?" Masen spat. "What in the pits of hell does that mean? You sound like you've swallowed gravel and steel both."
"Don't," Bal cut in sharply. His voice carried a rare edge, one usually buried under iron discipline. His eyes never left Logos. "Not here, old man."
Kleber tried to defuse the tension, muttering, "We leave him alone for a few months and he starts sounding like a priest's nightmare."
But Logos did not rise to the bait. His gaze shifted, steady, unreadable.
"He means coming of age," Lucy said suddenly. Her voice trembled only slightly.
Kleber's head whipped toward her. "You mean this is natural?!"
"Why are you acting like this?" Logos asked, tone calm, almost curious. "Change in voice and physique is common for children my age."
Children.
Desax latched onto the word. It sat uneasily in his mind, twisting there like a hook. Children. Logos was barely sixteen. And yet—his voice, his presence, his eyes—none of it belonged to a boy. Standing here, Desax could almost believe the young lord had never been a child at all.
The men exchanged glances. Uneasy. Unsettled.
Kleber, as ever, tried to hide discomfort behind humor. "If this is just your 'coming of age,' I dread to see you when you reach our age. Gods help us."
Bal, unwilling to indulge the tension further, cleared his throat. "The map in your hands, my lord. Is that what you had Desax carry to Sous?"
Finally, Logos looked up. Slowly. His eyes—those fathomless pits—met Desax's.
"Yes. And he delivered it. Did he not?"
Desax felt the weight of that gaze, as though Logos could strip truth from his bones with a glance. He forced his voice steady. "I did."
A faint nod. Barely more than a tilt of the chin. "Good. Then the board is set."
Lucy stiffened at his words. "That's people's lives, Logos."
Logos turned his gaze on her, expression unchanged. "You are free to speak, if you have a better idea."
Her jaw tightened. "I would, if you had let me in on it."
Bal glanced between them, brows furrowing. "Is this something we should know about?"
Logos's reply came measured, even—but that resonance in his voice gave every syllable a strange weight. "You should know only what is necessary. Knowledge without purpose breeds panic. Panic breeds failure. I cannot afford failure."
Masen's lips twisted. He leaned forward, muttering darkly, "And what about trust?"
The tent seemed to cool. For the first time since they had entered, a flicker crossed Logos's features. Irritation, perhaps. Or something colder, harder to name.
"Trust is earned by results," he said. "We have no casualties. Our walls stand. Our food stores grow. Is this not proof enough?"
Silence followed. The kind of silence that pressed on the chest.
Desax's thoughts spun. Sous spoke of honor, of the glory men seized in fire and steel. Logos spoke only of outcomes, of ledgers balanced with precision. No wonder the two lords would never see eye to eye. One looked upward, to ideals. The other forward, to inevitability.
Lucy's shoulders were rigid, her hands curled into fists. "There's more to winning than numbers, Logos."
For a heartbeat, his gaze lingered on her. Then, without warning, he reached across the table and caught her hand in his.
The gesture shocked everyone.
"You don't have to worry," Logos said. His voice softened, but the echo remained. "Evil is not my nature."
The words should have reassured. Instead, they made the room colder.
Kleber broke the tension with a crooked grin, though his voice lacked conviction. "That's a rare one. I've never heard someone need to say that about themselves."
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Logos's mouth, but it was unreadable.
The group stood there, caught between unease and duty. Between the boy they once followed and the figure seated before them, draped in shadows that clung like a second skin.
Desax found himself staring at the map in Logos's hand, but it was the boy's eyes he could not forget. Eyes that were no longer a boy's at all.