General Edran stood at the edge of the formation, booted feet sunk into the damp soil of the riverbank, the wind off the Iskaroth cool against his face. He held his horse by the rein with his left hand, and in his right he carried his helmet, the steel dulled by years of campaign.

  The horse gave a gentle snuffle and pressed its muzzle against the general’s cheek, a brief, wordless gesture that seemed to tether him to the moment. It had taken weeks to reach this point, inching along the left bank in patient, disciplined motion, and now, at last, the towers of Velmire’s Reach loomed like solemn sentinels on the far side of the water.

  He raised one gloved hand, and the line came to a halt with practiced silence.

  “Captain Renvar,” he said without turning, his voice low, clipped…one of the officers stepped forward at once.

  “You’ll take the men, leave two with me then follow the river northeast until you reach the foothills. Sweep for anything that should not be there, then cross at the mining station and await my arrival.”

  Renvar saluted in the traditional style, fist over heart, head bowed, and then turned, barking soft commands. The unit moved like breath through tall grass, fading along the curve of the river until only the quiet remained.

  Edran stood still a moment longer, eyes scanning the far horizon.

  Then he turned away from the river, striding inland at a steady pace, perpendicular to the current. The two men he had kept fell in behind him without question…they spoke no words.

  Hours passed, the sun dipping westward, its rays slipping between sparse trees like golden spears. The scent of pine faded, replaced by the old, dry musk of ancient forest…then, as twilight bled into dusk, the first glow appeared ahead, a flicker of firelight, too constant to be natural.

  The soldiers stiffened, the glint of iron fences, the outline of pikes, rows of tents, training yards lit with mage-lamps…this was a military camp. Hidden and unmarked on any map.

  Edran did not slow.

  He glanced back once, his voice even and cold. “This is classified beyond measure…breathe a word of it, and history will forget you ever lived.”

  “Sir!” came the tight reply, the sound of loyalty bound in fear.

  They reached the gate moments later…a narrow slit opened in the ironwood door and a pair of wary eyes narrowed then widened.

  “General Edran,” the guard said quickly, drawing back and unlatching the gate. “Lord Kassyn Vhorr is expecting you.”

  The gate opened without fanfare. The sign above bore no name, but this was Iskar’s Veil, a secret camp, hidden from the eyes of the realm, where soldiers and scholars alike tested the newest tools of war. Here the artisans forged weapons unblessed by light, and whispered chants that twisted into curses. The kingdom could not afford to fall behind in the great game of war, yet such a place could never bear the scrutiny of the people. If they knew… if they saw… they would call it blasphemy. For the experiments here had sown only death and suffering, and the earth itself remembered, heavy with the cries of the forgotten. Iskar’s Veil was a name few knew to speak, and fewer still returned from its shadow.

  Edran walked straight to the central tent. At its entrance, he gestured curtly for the men to stand guard…they took position without a word.

  Inside, Kassyn Vhorr stood behind a darkwood desk, his long fingers just now closing the lid of a small rune-marked box…faint silver shimmered along its seams, then died.

  “Ah, Edran,” Kassyn said, voice smooth as oiled leather. “Old friend, your presence here tells me all is well…the plan proceeds.”

  Edran stepped inside but did not sit, his arms remained crossed behind his back.

  “No thanks to you,” he said, voice like a drawn blade. “You’ve grown bold, too bold, what were you doing so close to a village of the kingdom?”

  Kassyn gave a sigh, but his smile didn’t falter “The forest’s power nodes don’t move at our convenience, we go where the currents pull us. If we are to unmake the druid scum, we must understand the roots of their strength.”

  “You risked everything” Edran snapped. “I had to clean up the mess…some believed the story I fed them, others didn’t. The zone is now locked with wards, my wards, you are forbidden from it.”

  Kassyn's hands tightened on the desk, jaw twitching. “No! Unacceptable, we were close to a breakthrough…”

  “You were meddling with powers beyond your reckoning,” Edran said, and his eyes flashed with golden sparks, like firelight caught in glass. The tent’s air seemed to hum with sudden pressure.

  Kassyn leaned back, the chair creaking beneath him…he spread his hands in mock surrender, though the cunning never left his gaze. “My apologies… General Edran.”

  Edran did not blink, or change stance.

  Kassyn continued, the mask slipping just enough to show the hunger beneath. “It’s only, we were making real progress, the energies were responding, I may have… overreached.”

  “You always do” Edran said, and turned his gaze to the sealed box on the desk. “You’ve been speaking with the prince again.”

  Kassyn’s silence confirmed more than words ever could.

  “What did you make him do this time?” Edran asked, voice low, each word weighted like a soldier’s oath.

  Kassyn Vhorr met his gaze without flinching, the faint candlelight dancing in his eyes, he leaned forward across the desk, elbows resting atop sealed documents and inked diagrams not meant for anyone’s eyes…

  “It’s not my fault,” he said softly, almost laughing. “He looks up to me, the boy wants to learn, he needs to understand…Chimeras, beasts, hybrids, he thinks he can build something better, an army, bred not born, fewer good men dead on the field and all of that.”

  Edran studied him for a long moment, the golden sparks fading from his eyes but not the fire behind them.

  “I know you too well to believe that horse rot.”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Kassyn smiled, slow and wide like a shark, the smile of a man who always had one more move hidden beneath the board.

  Edran stepped closer, the leather of his coat creaking with the motion. “You’d best be careful when messing with gold,” he said, tone flat as stone. “It draws too much attention and men get killed for far less.”

  “I know, I know,” Kassyn waved a hand. “We work in the shadows, yes, but even shadows must step into the light eventually. That’s what this is for, isn’t it? The future of the kingdom, its glory and prosperity. ”

  “Maybe…” Edran cut him off. “Maybe not…the people don’t need to know how the kingdom is kept safe what sacrifices we make and how we expand its borders, what matters is that the work is done, the rest is… burden.”

  “Expand it,” Kassyn echoed with a smirk. “Well, now who’s grown the fat ego?”

  Edran’s jaw tightened. “Why shouldn’t we? We still flinch from druidic magic because we don’t understand corruption. It creeps and bends men like trees in wind, destroying who they were…”

  He stepped to the edge of the table and tapped a long finger on a blackened map pinned with bone-colored pins.

  “We borrow chants…we bind slivers of their essence into stone, but a Heart?” his voice darkened. “The last time we touched one, the forest answered and our men turned into beasts, wild and mad, and the trees drank their blood. We don’t understand the source of this power and how it functions, that’s why we are behind, always on the defence, and I would like to be ahead of them for a change…that’s what this place is all about.”

  Kassyn shrugged, unbothered. “We do more now than ever before, the artisans have helped us breach the Second Tier…perhaps even the Third. You should be proud, we’re no longer scratching at bark, we’re cutting into root.”

  Edran said nothing at first, looking into Kassyn eyes, “As long as it doesn’t blow up in our faces first.”

  He turned his back on the desk and looked out through the canvas slit of the tent, toward the dying forest light beyond the camp.

  “What concerns me, Kassyn, is not how to do these things…It’s why they are the way they are, what order lies beneath all of it, what truth governs this madness.”

  Kassyn exhaled, half-laugh, half scoff. “And there it is…the philosopher, always digging for purpose. Who cares how the poison works, Edran, if it kills the right man?”

  Edran turned back to him, and in that moment the flame of the lantern caught something deeper in his eyes, not light, nor fire but warning.

  “I do,” he said. “Because we’re not just throwing stones, we’re scratching at the bones of the world and if we shatter something we were never meant to touch…” he let the words hang “Then it’s not just us who’ll pay the price.”

  “Well,” Kassyn said, his voice low, the edges curled with dry amusement, “if it will ease that iron weight of yours, I’ll show you our progress, that is why you risked coming here, isn’t it? I’ll show you what lies behind the curtain…how deep we have managed to dig.”

  Edran gave a single nod, sharp and silent.

  Kassyn smiled wider and gestured toward the tent’s opening. “Then follow me.”

  They stepped back into the cool air of the camp, dusk had fallen while they spoke. The forest beyond Iskar’s Veil stood like a wall of shadow, and the mist that crept along the ground gave the camp a dreamlike quality, half-forgotten, half-feared.

  Both moved swiftly through rows of tents and weapons racks, past half-dismantled training dummies and silent watchmen who saluted without meeting their gaze. At the edge of the camp’s rear boundary stood a small stone structure, weathered carvings marked its face.

  They stepped inside a circular chamber, no more than four paces across, lit by a single crystal embedded in the ceiling. In the center stood a stone dial, waist-high, wide as a barrel lid. The surface was etched with runes that shimmered faintly in the light, each stroke carved with such precision that they seemed to whisper when one stood close.

  Four words marked the edges in the old tongue, each inscribed with a strange, living glow:

  “Truth”

  “Burrows”

  “Ashen Ground”

  “Camp”

  Edran approached the dial slowly. He reached out and let his fingers graze the edge, a spark of recognition flickering behind his eyes.

  “The same design,” he murmured. “As the one in the forest back near Westmere...”

  Kassyn nodded, his hands folded neatly behind his back. “The same pattern, the same material, we still don’t know who built the originals… only that the druids revered them. These stone dials seem to focus their power like a lens, far more than ordinary runes. They allow the incantations to be woven without the need for a vast power source, and they endure longer. In fact, if the balance is found you can make the chants last… almost forever”

  Edran’s expression hardened. “I’ve been to the last site before you moved it, the one your men abandoned after the backlash. It reeked of pain, sorrow and... blood that had been screaming for years.”

  Kassyn’s smile thinned. “That dial was a replica. We managed to remake two, in fact…so the little spectacle you caused, blowing it to pieces along with half the forest, doesn’t set us back.”

  Edran cut in, his voice sharp “I had to put up a show, you didn’t exactly clean house. You even left some of the creatures behind.” He leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “Fortunately, that worked in our favor.”

  Kassyn tilted his head, amusement flickering in his eyes. “Creatures, you say? Hmph. I thought I ordered them all to retreat… dumb beasts. Well, so long as they didn’t give you too much trouble, I suppose I’m glad it worked out in the end…now where should we go first?”

  “Start with the Burrows,” Edran said. “I want to see it all, but begin there.”

  Kassyn stepped forward and placed both hands on the dial. With a practiced twist, he rotated the center disc until the runes aligned beneath the carved word: “Burrows”

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the stone groaned, deep and low, like the belly of the mountain exhaling. The light dimmed, the runes flared with molten gold, pulsing once... twice.

  And then they were gone.

  No sound, no swirl of wind, no shimmer of light.

  Only absence.