The scent of agarwood incense curled through the air of the Grand Strategy Room in the Palace of Iskhalin. Whispers floated beneath the smoke, mingling with the scratch of quills on ancient maps.
King Sharrfan sat upon his throne, surrounded by military advisors whose faces bore the marks of exhaustion, fury, and quiet shame. Princess Reizha, the blood of the palace, had been taken by the enemy. Now, they sat in a circle of desperate plans.
"She's arrogant, yes. But she is still of Iskhalin's blood," one general muttered.
"Arrogant is no excuse to let her fall," another added, his voice sharp with restrained tension.
King Sharrfan tapped his fingers slowly against the armrest of his throne, eyes narrowed at the flickering candlelight.
"Form an elite unit," he ordered at last. "No more than a hundred. Only the finest. Only those unafraid to enter Eirindale's lands."
From hidden barracks and secret palace corridors, the chosen hundred were gathered—seventy men and thirty women. Trackers, warriors, masters of stealth. They were not ordinary soldiers. They were the shadow of Iskhalin's power, trained to move without sound and strike without mercy.
As dusk set the sky aflame, they moved. No drums. No cheers. Only silent steps through tall grass, and hushed prayers whispered behind the doors of the homes they left behind. No banners. No symbols. They traveled through the western horse-trail, slipping into the cool, quiet edges of Eirindale.
**
Go to the quiet hamlet of Varned, nestled at the edge of Eirindale's Southeastern woods, the people lived in a fragile kind of peace. After seasons of rumor and shifting winds, they had grown accustomed to the tension that hung over the land like fog—present, but distant enough to ignore. That morning, however, the fog felt heavier. Not from the weather, but from something unseen, creeping among the trees.
Old Thomel, a beekeeper whose legs had long betrayed him, sat beside his hive with a small fire to warm his bones. His eyes, though dimmed by time, caught the faintest ripple in the foliage—bodies slipping between trunks, low to the ground. No flags. No drums. No sound of boots. Just silence, and motion like ghosts crawling across the forest floor.
He did not cry out. He only stared, the stick in his hand trembling. "They have come," he muttered. "But they wear no face."
Further uphill, a little girl named Yisela tugged at her mother's cloak as she watched shadows glide across the road near the barley fields. "Are they friends?" she whispered.
Her mother pulled her close, eyes narrowing. "No soldiers move like that unless they wish not to be seen." She did not wait to explain. Doors were shut. Lamps doused. The soft rhythm of a village morning fell silent, as if the very soil held its breath.
Whispers spread like fire through dry leaves. The merchants halted their wagons. Shepherds called back their flocks. In the distance, from the bell tower of a small shrine, the watchman rang three quick chimes—no louder than a bird's cry, but enough to alert the network of silent eyes that Azfaran had placed across the outer ring of Eirindale. Not soldiers. Not spies. Civilians trained to read the wind and the earth, to speak without voice.
"We saw them."
"Black leather. Blades on their backs."
"They moved like mist through the west."
In the village of Kaedwen, a weaver's apprentice huddled beneath the eaves of his workshop, eyes wide as he watched the last of the shadows disappear down the gully that led to the central road. He counted them—twelve, fifteen, maybe more. Men and women. Grim. Focused. Eyes like steel forged in fire.
He waited until the last bootprint faded into the forest, then darted down to the square, where others had gathered in silence.
"They are not here to speak," he said. "They are here for blood."
But not all villagers felt hatred. In the house of Mirella, a widow with two sons conscripted by Eirindale's militia, there was only dread. Her thoughts did not drift to glory or battle, but to the mothers of those intruders—mothers who might never know what became of their children. She wept not for fear, but for the waste of it all. War had already taken her husband. She feared it now came for sons she hadn't even buried yet.
That night, as the elite unit of Iskhalin crept deeper into the land, the villages along their path lit no fires. Instead, they watched from behind shutters. They listened for a wrong step, a snapped twig, a shouted command. And all the while, they passed messages written in ash and thread, covert signals to the Eirindale command.
No one in the hamlets fought. Not with swords. Their battle was silence. Their resistance, vigilance.
When Captain Arzila's squad unknowingly passed the ruins of an old mill, they did not see the pair of brothers hiding in the rafters above, counting their numbers, memorizing their pattern. Nor did they notice the boy who climbed the tree two miles south to light a small green lantern—just once, and then hide it. A prearranged sign. It was how the militia knew to position archers near the pass called the Raven's Mouth.
By the third day, the villagers began packing quietly. Those with children sent them to stay with kin closer to the capital. The elders remained. They always did.
"I have survived two wars," said Thomel to a messenger. "I have no legs to run, but I have eyes to see. Tell Azfaran I will light the signal if they pass again."
And so, the people of Eirindale did not scream. They did not fight. But they watched. And in their watching, they sealed the fate of the shadows that dared creep into their land. What the elite soldiers of Iskhalin did not know was this: the soil of Eirindale remembers every footprint. And so do its people.
**
Quiet did not mean unseen.
Among the dew-covered bushes and thick leaves, Eirindale's watchful eyes had spotted them. Scouts unseen by normal eyes, guardians of shadow who served Azfaran and his plans for defense.
From a watch post near the southern farms, an Eirindale scout sped like lightning toward the guard tower. No movement went unmarked.
"They are not ordinary soldiers," said one of the scouts.
"Let them come deeper," replied the captain of the watch. "Let them think they're invisible."
**
Day by day, the elite unit pushed deeper into Eirindale. The farther they strayed from their homeland, the quieter the paths became. But behind branches and beneath shadows, Azfaran's silent guards kept their watch. No step went uncounted. Like fish swimming into a net, they were unaware of the threads tightening around them.
The leader of the elite unit, a woman named Arzila, began to sense something amiss.
"No resistance. No enemy tracks. This feels too easy," she whispered.
A man behind her nodded. "Or we are being led into a trap?."
Still, time pressed them onward. Reizha had to be found. With resolve, they pushed through the valley toward Annvled, the heart of Eirindale, and where, it was said, Reizha was being held.
**
By the sixth day, as night approached, the terrain narrowed. Towering stone walls formed a natural corridor like a bottle's neck. They had unknowingly entered a place the locals called The Raven's Mouth, a natural choke point, known for swallowing entire armies in the past.
Suddenly, a long whistle pierced the air, sharp as a blade of wind.
The first arrow struck a soldier in the chest. He fell without a sound. Then the sky rained arrows.
Panic. Screams. Barked orders clashed in the echoing gorge. The elite unit scrambled behind rocks and scattered trees, but they were exposed, and Eirindale's archers had the high ground.
From crevices in the stone, Eirindale's trained archers unleashed deadly volleys. They did not charge. They crushed, slowly, methodically.
Arzila drew her sword and shouted, "Break the line! Out of the path! Scatter, now!"
But the way was already blocked. Entry sealed. Exit cornered. From the right flank, light infantry of Eirindale descended like silent wolves. The fight turned to close combat. Blood splattered the once-quiet green earth.
Some of Iskhalin's soldiers fought to the bitter end. Some surrendered. Some fled into the wild trails and never returned.
When the clash of steel and storm of arrows finally quieted, only seventeen remained out of a hundred. Their eyes were hollow, their clothes torn, bodies bruised and stained with dust. Among them, only Arzila stood tall, though her legs trembled.
Eirindale's soldiers surrounded them. Not with gloating, but with a stern, cold respect.
"You have entered our land," said one Eirindale captain. "But we will not treat you like beasts. Come. To the dungeons of Annvled. The king will decide your fate."
With hands bound and heads held high, the last of the elite unit were led through winding paths toward Annvled. The city stood in silence, its watchtowers staring down upon them like the eyes of forgotten gods.
**
At the palace of Eirindale, night had not fully fallen when the news arrived.
"The elite unit of Iskhalin has been captured, King Azfaran," said the messenger, kneeling before him.
Azfaran looked out the window, where the first stars were beginning to shine. He said nothing for a long time.
"War is not just about defeating the body," he said at last. "But guarding the heart from the poison of hate."
He turned to Kael and Maeron, who stood silently behind him.
"Prepare the interrogation hall. I want to hear it from them—why they crossed into our lands. And whether Reizha is truly worth being saved by spilled blood."
One of the captured soldiers—a man named Faruq—was brought into the stone chamber to speak with Azfaran himself.
Despite his wounds, he met Azfaran's gaze without fear.
"We didn't come to steal your land," he said. "We were ordered. We were sent to rescue a princess… even though we ourselves don't know if she deserved to be saved."
He paused. Then spoke again, calmer this time.
"We are not bringers of war. We are the fruit of a king's pride—of his fear to lose face. Reizha… she is not the reason we left. She is a symbol. A symbol of power cracking from within. But we had to obey. Or our families back home… would suffer in our place."
Azfaran fell silent for a moment, then gave his order "hold them. Do not kill them." Even if some of the elite women were already on the brink of death.
That night, Eirindale did not celebrate victory. They only recorded it.
For the war had not ended.
It had only begun to stir from beneath the earth,
waiting for its fire to rise brighter than ever.