The field stank of blood and wet earth long after the last Council soldier disappeared into the hills.
Cairos walked among the fallen in silence.
He did not hurry. He did not avert his eyes.
This was part of command too—seeing the cost clearly, without romance. Men lay twisted in the mud, some Bloodline, some Council, faces slack, eyes open to a sky that no longer cared who they had served.
Rethan followed a few steps behind, helmet tucked under his arm. His knuckles were split, blood drying black in the creases.
"They withdrew clean," he said. "Too clean for a rout."
"Yes," Cairos replied. "Maelor doesn't bleed pride. Only time."
Lysa knelt beside a wounded Bloodline archer, tying off a gash with practiced hands. "This wasn't a victory," she said without looking up. "It was a conversation."
Cairos stopped. He looked at her, then at the men working around them, dragging bodies, muttering prayers, arguing softly about supplies.
"It was both," he said. "We proved something. And so did he."
They regrouped before nightfall, pulling back into the hills where the terrain twisted into broken stone and shallow gullies. Fires were kept low. Scouts fanned outward, overlapping patrols designed to catch anything that breathed too close.
Cairos sat with Joren over the maps, lantern light trembling over inked lines.
"Maelor will change his approach," Joren said. "He won't try to corner us again so directly. He'll bleed us instead."
"How?" Rethan asked.
Joren tapped the map. "Villages. Roads. Neutral towns. He'll make following you expensive."
Cairos' jaw tightened. "He'll squeeze the people."
"Yes."
Silence followed.
Lysa finished binding the archer's wound and stood. "If he does that, some will blame you."
"They already do," Cairos said. "But blame is lighter than chains."
"That's easy to say," she replied sharply, "until children starve because an army came looking for you."
Cairos met her gaze. He didn't look away. "That's why we won't let him control the narrative."
Maelor Venn stood inside a stone hall that had once belonged to a minor lord, now stripped of banners and furniture, turned into a forward command. He listened as reports were delivered, hands clasped behind his back.
"Losses moderate," an officer said. "Morale shaken, but intact."
"And Cairos?" Maelor asked.
"Bold. Calculated. He avoided pursuit."
Maelor nodded. "Good."
The officer hesitated. "Good, sir?"
"Yes," Maelor said calmly. "It means he understands restraint. Men who don't are easier to break."
He turned to the table, where a different map lay open—this one marked not with armies, but with villages. Trade routes. Grain stores.
"Send word to the eastern hamlets," Maelor continued.
"Offer protection. Food. Stability. In exchange, they deny Cairos aid."
"And if they refuse?"
Maelor's eyes hardened. "Then we make an example. Quietly."
Another officer shifted uneasily. "The Council—"
"The Council wants results," Maelor cut in. "They will accept the method if the outcome is clean."
He straightened. "This war will not be decided by fields of corpses. It will be decided by who the people fear more."
The first village burned three days later.
Not openly. Not dramatically.
Just a line of smoke rising into the morning sky, seen by Bloodline scouts from a ridge too far away to intervene.
Cairos arrived by dusk.
The houses were blackened shells. The well was fouled. Bodies lay in the square—some soldiers, some villagers. A message had been nailed to the remains of the meeting post.
Aid the traitor, share his fate.
Rethan swore under his breath. "Bastards."
Lysa stood frozen, staring at a small body near the well, half covered by ash. "This is on us," she whispered.
Cairos said nothing. He knelt, pried the message free, and folded it carefully.
"No," he said finally. "This is on Maelor."
"That won't matter to the dead," Lysa snapped.
Cairos rose slowly. His voice was quiet, but it carried weight. "No. It will matter to the living."
He turned to the men gathering behind him. Faces were tight. Angry. Conflicted.
"This is what happens when men mistake control for order," Cairos said. "Maelor thinks fear will starve us out. He thinks I'll be forced to choose between my war and these people."
Rethan looked at him. "And will you?"
Cairos' eyes hardened. "I already have."
That night, Cairos changed the war.
Messengers were sent in every direction—fast riders, carrying no banners, no seals. Only words.
He ordered the Bloodline split again, smaller units moving independently. They struck supply convoys, not randomly, but selectively—those bound for garrisons closest to civilian centers.
They left food behind.
They executed officers publicly, but spared conscripts.
They spread stories.
Not lies. Truth, sharpened.
By the end of the week, villages along the eastern routes began closing their gates—not to Cairos, but to the Council. Word spread that Maelor's protection came with a cost, and Cairos' presence came with restraint.
It wasn't enough to stop the burnings entirely.
But it slowed them.
Maelor noticed.
The message arrived under a white cloth, carried by a single rider who did not draw his sword even when surrounded.
Cairos met him in an abandoned chapel, stone walls cracked by age and war. Rain tapped softly against the roof.
The rider knelt and offered a sealed letter.
"No traps?" Rethan asked.
The rider shook his head. "My life is the guarantee."
Cairos broke the seal.
The handwriting was precise.
You are adaptable. That is rare.
This war will devour more than soldiers if it continues as it is.
Meet me. Alone. At Black Hollow, three days hence.
—Maelor Venn
Lysa read it over Cairos' shoulder. "It's a trap."
"Of course it is," Rethan said. "Only a fool—"
"I'll go," Cairos said.
Both of them turned on him.
"No," Lysa said flatly.
"Yes," Cairos replied.
"Because Maelor is not asking for surrender. He's measuring me."
"And if he kills you?" Rethan demanded.
Cairos folded the letter. "Then the war continues without me. But if I don't go, he escalates. More villages burn. More pressure."
Lysa stepped closer, voice low and fierce. "You don't get to carry all of this alone."
Cairos met her gaze. For a moment, the commander faded, and something raw flickered beneath.
"I don't get to put it on others," he said.
Black Hollow was a scar in the land—a wide depression where the earth had collapsed generations ago, ringed by stone and dead trees. A place with no cover and no witnesses.
Cairos arrived alone.
Maelor stood waiting, armor unadorned, helm under his arm. He looked older up close. Lines marked his face, carved by years of decisions that had killed men by the thousands.
"You came," Maelor said.
"Yes."
They stood facing each other, no weapons drawn.
"You're costing me more than I expected," Maelor said. "That's not an insult."
"And you're killing civilians," Cairos replied. "That is."
Maelor didn't flinch. "Wars are not clean."
"They don't have to be cruel."
Maelor studied him for a long moment. "You think you're different?"
"No," Cairos said. "I think I'm honest about what I'm doing."
A faint smile touched Maelor's lips. "That's what worries me."
They spoke for an hour. Of strategy. Of limits. Of what the Council demanded and what the land could bear. Neither yielded.
Neither threatened.
When they parted, nothing had been resolved.
But something had shifted.
That night, Cairos returned to his camp under a sky heavy with clouds.
Rethan was waiting. "Well?"
Cairos removed his cloak slowly. "He won't stop."
Lysa's shoulders sagged. "Then what was the point?"
Cairos looked toward the dark horizon, where fires burned faintly in the distance.
"Now he knows," Cairos said, "that I won't either."
Thunder rolled.
And far away, Tarek al-Rhazim listened to the reports, fingers tapping slowly against his throne.
The war was tightening.
And pressure, once applied, never truly went away.