Forty-seven kills. A Fear Index of 41. Five men bound to his Dominion who had fought harder and survived longer than any statistical model should have allowed.
And 137 soldiers who had followed his orders for nine hours because the alternative was death, and who would remember — in their bones, in the part of the brain that makes decisions before the conscious mind has time to intervene — that the baron's son had stood on the barricade when the commander fell and had not stepped down until the forest went quiet.
They would not call it loyalty. Not yet. They would call it survival. They would say: He knew what to do. He told us, and we lived.
But survival was the seed. And Jeran knew exactly how to water it.
---
The aftermath was quiet.
