The council hall was colder than the stone it was built from. No torches tonight — just the thin gray light of dawn bleeding through the high windows. The war banners had been lowered, their colors dulled by soot and shame.
The king sat at the head of the long table, eyes fixed on nothing. Around him, his generals whispered in fragments, each trying to sound less terrified than the next. They spoke of strategy, of rebuilding, of vengeance. But all their words stumbled on one name.
Darian.
The war chief who had been unseated, humiliated, stripped of command for saying what no one wanted to hear: that the Elish Empire could not win. He'd withdrawn his legion before the great push, saving thousands — and for it, he'd been branded a coward.
Now, with the plains burned and only a thousand men left in chains, the silence around his name weighed heavier than any blame.
"The people will ask," said a Lord, voice tight. "They'll remember Darian's words."
The king's knuckles whitened on the table. "Then we will remind them he was wrong to doubt."
"Was he?" another lord murmured. "Because from where I stand, his doubt looks like prophecy."
The name Darian Vale hung in the air like a ghost no one wanted to face.
"He failed once," the Minister of Arms muttered, "and the empire remembers failure more than it remembers loyalty."
A few heads nodded — the safe kind of nods that belong to men who never bled. The king said nothing.
"And his punishment?" asked another Lord. "House arrest. The Vale name buried in shame. His sons barred from the warfront as though cowardice ran in their blood."
A grim smile flickered at the edge of another general's mouth. "Seems the empire's curse became their blessing. They live — while our sons feed the crows."
The hall fell silent. The truth was poison, but they all drank it in the same uneasy gulp. Every man there knew Darian's withdrawal had saved more lives than Flint Sky's charge ever had. But pride was a god the Elish still worshipped.
The king finally spoke, his voice low, brittle. "We will not rewrite our history to flatter the disgraced. Darian Vale stays where he is. The people need faith, not truth."
And beneath the council table, a messenger's scroll trembled in a scribe's hand — the first report from the healers below, where Flint Sky had begun to wake.
The chamber doors creaked open, and the messenger entered, his steps heavy with dread. He bowed low before the council, the sealed parchment trembling in his hands.
"This," he said, "is the report of the battle, dictated by the War Chief while under treatment. His wounds prevent his presence, but his words… they could not wait."
The king gave a slow nod. "Read."
The messenger swallowed hard and unrolled the parchment.
"The imperial army has been utterly destroyed. Only a thousand of our finest remain — captives in the hands of the Scythelanders. The enemy has sworn to march them to our gates, to butcher them before our walls, and then lay siege to the city itself. It is meant to crush the empire's will before its body falls."
He hesitated before the final line, voice breaking as he read:
"A message from the tyrant Skar — a promise carved in flesh and left for me to see: The empire will drown in the echo of its own glory."
The scroll fell from his hands. Silence swallowed the room. Above, the city still celebrated the illusion of victory. Below, the man who'd spoken those words bled slowly into his bandages, whispering for forgiveness that no one would grant.
The king rose slowly, his gaze sweeping across the council table. What he saw there wasn't strength. It was fear dressed in armor. Men who had led thousands now stared at the floor like children awaiting punishment.
"Enough," he said, his voice low but sharp enough to still every whisper. "You speak of plans, yet bring me nothing but despair. The enemy is at our gate, and all you offer is silence."
No one dared answer.
The king's eyes drifted toward the tall, sealed doors at the end of the chamber — doors that hadn't been opened in decades. Behind them lay the sanctum of the Great Elders, the ancient order withdrawn from the world since the dawn of the war.
"Summon them," he commanded.
The courtiers stared, horrified. "Your Majesty, the Elders swore never to interfere—"
"Then let them break their oath," he said. "The age of war has broken every other."
The guards hesitated only a heartbeat before striking the great bronze bell. Its toll rolled through the citadel like thunder, echoing down the hidden corridors where the Great Elders had long kept their silence.
And somewhere deep below, as the sound faded, the wounded War Chief stirred. His eyes opened to the same tolling bell, as though the summons had reached even the edge of his fading dream.