The moon hung pale and quiet over Ember Line, casting silver shadows across the ravaged valley. The fires of battle had long cooled, but the night still hummed with restless breath—freedom's fragile whisper beneath layers of rock, soil, and memory.
Inside the hidden command cavern etched into the cliffside, Asa sat alone, half-shrouded in shadow. A lantern flickered low beside him, its flame dancing in rhythm with the wind outside. He stared into the fire, silent and still. Since Ember, he'd barely slept—his mind a blade forever sharpening.
A faint scuff echoed at the mouth of the cave.
Asa didn't move. "You're late."
A shape emerged from the darkness—small, bent slightly, carrying a mess tin strapped to a rusted belt. A man wrapped in dirt and smoke, smelling of onions and firewood. The scavenger bowed low.
"I had to be sure I wasn't followed," he muttered.
Without waiting for permission, he knelt before Asa and drew the tin from his belt. With careful fingers, he twisted off the false base, revealing the folded cloth, now faintly frayed and warm to the touch. He handed it over in silence.
Asa took it gently, unrolling the message beneath the lamp. His eyes narrowed as he read the lines, each word unraveling a web of strategy and deceit.
Kheran Ridge – Watch South Movement – Odo shifts tactics – Shadow Units Formed.
Helda commands. Precision strikes. Morale rebuilding. My cover intact. Will disrupt when ordered. Await reply.
At the bottom, the sigil burned faintly, already beginning to fade—Forun's ancient glyph for "watchful blood."
Asa read it three times, committing every line to memory before holding it over the lantern flame. The cloth crumbled into ash like a whisper lost to time.
He looked up at the scavenger. "Did anyone see you leave?"
"No, sir. I waited until second patrol looped around."
"Good," Asa said, rising slowly to his full height. "Take the north tunnel back. No light. No sound. If you're stopped…"
The scavenger nodded. "I don't know a damn thing."
He disappeared as quietly as he came.
Asa turned and reached for the thick map pinned to the cave wall. His eyes swept over Kheran Ridge, down toward the southern passes, then west where the old mines lay—untouched since the first strikes.
Moments later, footsteps approached from deeper within. Mora, Kael, Rhea, and Devon entered without a word. They had all felt the shift in the air, as if called by instinct.
"News?" Devon asked.
Asa didn't turn. "A whisper in the dark."
He faced them now, firelight reflecting in his eyes. "They plan to bleed us with precision—strike teams, silence, sabotage. Odo has changed the game. And Helda… she plays it with cold hands."
Kael scowled. "Then we strike first, like I said."
"No," Asa said. "They expect motion. We give them stillness. We plant silence where they expect chaos. And when they step forward into nothing, then we strike."
Mora nodded in approval. "Ambush the hunters."
"And Gad?" Rhea asked.
Asa looked at the ash still glowing faintly in the lamp dish.
"He waits for our signal. When the fire returns, he'll light it from within."
----
The night before the storm was always the quietest. In the heart of the southern barracks, Commander Helda stood before her elite strike teams—four squads clad in matte-black gear, faces hidden behind helms designed to silence breath and hide heat signatures. She moved like a blade honed to a whisper, her voice low but cutting through the darkness with precision.
"Kheran Ridge is the throat," she said, pointing to the holographic projection of the terrain. "We slit it. Quietly. No artillery. No tanks. You strike, then vanish. Take out communication nests. Disrupt their supply caches. Cause confusion. Make them question where we are."
She circled the map with one gloved finger.
"Odo wants Asa either caged or buried. If you see him, mark his trail. But do not engage unless confirmed. He's more valuable alive. We will break their spirit through silence."
The soldiers nodded, disciplined and unreadable. A generation raised for conquest.
"And remember," Helda added, eyes narrowing, "there's no reinforcements. You are ghosts. Make your deaths costly if it comes to that."
She turned on her heel and left them to gear up in the dark.
---
Across the camp, Gad sat on his bunker. The paper in front of him was blank, but his mind was a whirlwind. He had received the silent pulse of his father's message earlier that evening—delivered through the cook's scavenger contact, embedded in a stack of spoons with a single tooth missing on the fifth. Their signal.
The fire was returning.
He knew what he had to do.
His disruption would come during the strike. Helda's elite units would be moving through Kheran Ridge just before dawn. If he could relay timing to Forun fighters… if he could redirect a supply drone to reveal movement routes… it would be enough to hand Forun the edge.
But every step was a blade.
He folded a note in micro-cipher, slipping it into a ration crate scheduled for field deployment. He'd already rerouted the crate to pass through a checkpoint overseen by a known sympathizer—one of Asa's old men, hidden in Greenland's ranks.
It was the most he could do without exposing himself.
He heard a footstep
He tensed, but relaxed slightly when he heard the voice.
"Gad," came Jimi's tone—soft, uncertain. "You awake?"
Gad stood up . Jimi stood there, eyes heavy with thought.
"They say we move out tomorrow," Jimi said. "But something feels wrong."
Gad studied him. "It always feels wrong when it's real."
Jimi hesitated, then leaned closer. "If we see Forun soldiers again… if I have to… I don't think I can do it this time."
Gad put a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Then don't," he said simply.
Jimi frowned. "That easy?"
"No," Gad said, voice low. "Nothing about this is easy."
Jimi left a moment later, still confused but strangely comforted. And Gad returned to his desk, sealing his final message with a synthetic thread that would dissolve after six hours.