The days grew heavier.
One by one, the reports returned.
From the river crossing of Tarsin: devoured. Just as Logos' parchment had marked, the waters ran dark with the husks of fish and cattle alike, bridges stripped down to skeletal beams.
From the ruins near Brevay: silence. The scouts described bones gnawed so clean they gleamed white in the torchlight, as though the land itself had been bleached. Blood clotted the earth, so thick the scouts' boots stuck in it. Again, precise.
From the hollow fortress of Drene, abandoned for a century: nesting. Crawlers larger than common breeds, their shells layered with stone-like ridges, as if the very ruins had been grafted onto their hides. Just as the parchment had warned.
The pattern held. Report after report, from tower to village to garrison. Each mark on the boy's map was a tooth in a beast whose jaws were closing.
The boy's map had teeth.
Sous pored over each letter in his chamber long past midnight. His candle guttered low, smoke staining the canvas walls above him. His armor lay unpolished in the corner, forgotten. His sword—faithful companion of his rise—remained sheathed, leaning against the table leg like an afterthought.
He scarcely noticed.
It was not the Crawlers that consumed him, nor even the looming specter of the Sire itself.
It was Logos.
Every confirmed mark was proof of foresight.
At first it fascinated him. The elegance of it, the impossible clarity. To see where the monsters moved before they arrived—what commander would not covet such a gift?
But fascination bled into envy. Logos was sixteen, just like him, yet already whispering to the future as if it were an open book. What use was Sous' swordsmanship, his drilled knights, his shining reputation, if another boy's pen could outpace all of it?
Envy hardened into something darker. Fear.
Foresight was no mere trick of cleverness. It was power older than crowns, more dangerous than armies. It could unmake campaigns before they began, unseat kings, end dynasties before they drew their first breath.
If the boy in Laos truly bore such a gift… then one day, all thrones in the realm might tilt toward him, willingly or not.
Sous pushed the thought away, jaw set hard enough to ache. "No," he muttered to the empty chamber. "Not yet. He is untested. Untempered."
But the parchment burned in his mind. With each report, the chance of coincidence dwindled to nothing.
And behind all of it, like a dark star, loomed the possibility that the Sire itself—the ancient, near-mythic Crawler—was not distant at all. That it was here. Watching. Waiting.
If Logos had foreseen even that…
Sous' lips twitched. A laugh escaped him, sharp and bitter.
"Hehehehe…"
The quill snapped between his fingers, spilling ink across the parchment. Black veins spread across the page like spider legs. His hand trembled for a heartbeat before he crushed the feather into a fist.
"Foresight," he whispered again, the word both curse and crown. "I wonder what Chancellor Frankfort would think if he saw him."
The Chancellor—the spider at the heart of the kingdom's web. A man who had outlasted kings and bent dukes into his schemes. If Frankfort learned of Logos' supposed gift, would he seek to harness him? Or silence him before he grew too strong?
Sous' jaw tightened. He could not yet decide which would be worse.
Far away, at Baron Laos' fortress, another night unfolded.
Here the air hummed differently. The walls were alive with hammering, the ring of steel against steel, the gruff laughter of men sparring in the cold. Refugees murmured in the courtyards, their voices rising with the crackle of fire pits. Sentries called the watch at even intervals, a rhythm almost comforting in its regularity.
Life persisted, stubborn, against the memory of Crawlers gnawing at the horizon.
In a modest chamber near the stronghold's heart, Lucy bent over a wooden table.
She was cooking. Something she hadn't done for a year and a half.
Her hands, more accustomed to parchment and blades, now smelt of yeast and ash. She kneaded dough, folded beans into a pot, stirred honey into warm bread. She had ordered no servants, no soldiers. This was hers to do.
Not for soldiers. Not for councils.
But for him.
For her son.
The word still sat strangely on her tongue, heavy in her chest. She had not borne him. She had not been there at his birth, nor claimed him by blood. She had entered his life when others abandoned him, and yet—when Logos had first looked at her not merely as aide, but with something unspoken, fragile, almost yearning—she had felt it.
A bond chosen, not given.
Now she wished to remind him. Not with lectures. Not with cheek-pinches or scoldings. But with something simpler. Something human.
Food. Warmth.
The walk to his chamber felt longer than it was. Each step measured. She passed soldiers who bowed their heads, children darting past with play-swords, sentries murmuring as they checked their spears. But Lucy's thoughts were on the boy waiting beyond the door.
When she entered, Logos stood near a set of jars, several chemicals bubbling faintly, a contraption holding a row of mice beside him. His eyes, black as bottomless ink, did not move until she set the tray down.
Only then did his gaze shift, inhumanly steady, to hers.
Lucy forced her shoulders to remain still. "You've been at this all evening."
"Yes." His voice resonated oddly, carrying that faint echo since his "refinement."
She lifted the cover, letting the scent of broth and honey escape into the chamber. "Eat."
Logos regarded the food for a moment, then turned to the basin, washing his hands with deliberate care before seating himself. His movements were precise, practiced—like a soldier, not a boy.
Lucy placed the food: steaming honey bread, beans simmered soft, a dark mug of coffee. A simple meal. Yet her heart beat faster as though she were setting an offering at an altar.
Logos broke the bread with quiet fingers. He chewed once, twice. His expression did not shift.
But when he reached for the second piece without prompting, Lucy let out the breath she had not realized she was holding.
"Do you like it?" she asked, her tone steadier than she felt.
"Yes," Logos said simply. Then, after a pause: "It is warm."
The words were plain, yet to Lucy they rang like victory.
She sat across from him, not speaking further, only watching as he ate. For once, there was no strategy spread between them, no scrolls, no maps, no endless weight of Crawlers pressing against their walls.
Just mother and son.
And though Logos' eyes remained fathomless, that single word—warm—was enough to remind Lucy that somewhere inside the strategist, the monster-slayer, the boy she once cradled still lived.