The reports were stacked neatly.
What they described was not.
General Albrecht read them anyway.
The tent was quiet except for the scrape of his stylus and the distant sound of men working through the night. Armor being stacked. Wounded being moved. The low, constant murmur that followed any battle large enough to leave questions behind.
He set the first report aside.
It ended cleanly. A failed miracle. A blessed one burned out under strain. The field declared unstable. The levy broke, regrouped, and withdrew. Losses recorded. Command preserved.
Acceptable.
He picked up the second.
This one lingered. Not on the miracle itself, but on the moment after. The way the center of the field had stopped collapsing. The way casualties slowed where they should have spiked. The hand was unsteady, the ink pressed too hard into the page.
Albrecht frowned and laid it aside.
He opened the third.
A casualty list. Names, units, and gaps where entire lines had folded. He read it once, then again, slower.
Something was missing.
Not a name.
A shape.
He reached for the map and spread it across the table.
The field had been used before. Not recently, but often enough that it should have been ruined beyond use. And yet this battle had ended unevenly. Losses were heavier on the flanks. The center had held longer than it should have.
He marked the place with the tip of his stylus.
Then he leaned back and exhaled through his nose.
"Bring me the levy rosters," he said.
The aide at the tent entrance hesitated. "Sir?"
"The ones from the center," Albrecht said. "Who lived."
The soldier was brought in at dawn.
Third-row infantry. Mud still crusted on his boots. Armor ill-fitting, straps pulled tight where they should have been replaced. His eyes kept drifting to the tent poles, as if expecting them to give way.
Albrecht did not offer him a seat.
"What did you see?" he asked.
"The battle, sir."
"From where you stood."
The soldier swallowed. "The blessed one failed."
"Yes."
"And after?"
The man hesitated. His brow furrowed, as if he were trying to recall something that refused to hold its shape.
"It got… easier, sir," he said finally.
Albrecht's stylus stopped moving.
"Explain."
"I can't," the soldier said. "Just—after he fell, things stopped going wrong as fast."
That was not how battles worked.
Albrecht dismissed him with a nod.
When the tent was empty again, Albrecht stood and crossed to the map.
Miracles failed. That was known. They burned bright and burned out. Men died for them, and the land paid the rest.
But this—
This felt different.
Not intervention.
Reaction.
He pressed his thumb against the marked spot until the parchment creased.
By noon, his orders were written.
The field would not be used again.
The reports would be filed separately.
And the survivor lists from the center would be copied twice—once for command, once for himself.
He did not yet know why.
Only that whatever had been present on that ground was not finished.
And that the world, for once, had not bothered to hide it.