They came limping into the ruins, ash still in the air and the wind sharp with blood.
Men with shattered limbs. Women burned shoulder to spine. Children carried by strangers, or crawling forward on hands wrapped in rags. There were no horns. No clerics. No banners. Just the open gate, and the tents beyond it.
Black canvas had overtaken the old imperial courtyard. The vaults had been emptied of gold. The throne hall had been gutted and scrubbed of its seals. Now those same stones held barrels of marrow clamps, disinfectant, and bandages stacked in clean bundles. A ring of raw iron was bolted into the center square, unadorned. Above it hung the gray banner of the League of Free Cities.
This was no temple. It was a hospital.
And it worked.
Altan stood at the edge of the square. His cloak still bore dust from the frontier. His boots hadn't been cleaned. He hadn't come for inspection. He came to see if it functioned.
Lord Qiu stood beside him, arms behind his back, silent for a moment before speaking.
"So this is what you're leaving us," he said. "A sanctuary. Or a garrison."
Altan didn't look away from the scene before him. A boy, no older than nine, helped carry a bleeding man on a door plank. The boy didn't flinch. The man didn't scream.
"Both," Altan replied.
Six hundred Hospitaliers worked here, pulled from the Stormguard. Each had passed the Hollow Helm Trial. They had performed surgery without sleep and killed with blades sharpened for utility, not honor. Their faces and heads were covered in black linen wraps, tight and dry. Only their eyes were visible. Their gauntlets were stained but functional. Their belts held clamps, bone saws, and sidearms.
They didn't speak unless necessary. They didn't pray. They moved.
A hundred Stormguards formed the outer perimeter. Armor sealed. Faces unreadable. They didn't answer questions and didn't interfere with the healers. They were there to ensure no one disrupted the silence.
Above them, standing at the broken ledge of the former treasury vault, the Warden watched. He wore no insignia beyond the darksteel ridges on his shoulders. His linen wraps were tight as the others, but no one confused his rank. He did not speak. But nothing escaped his notice.
Altan had stood here days before.
The courtyard was still choked with rubble and blood then. Tents hadn't yet been pitched. The ash hadn't been cleared.
He'd walked the ruined ground alone.
Not to mourn. Not to remember.
He was mapping.
Surgery wing in the western corridor.
Orphan care near the inner barracks.
Clean water at the old cistern.
Message intake and coded relay through the vaulted chamber.
Healing is secondary. What matters is reach. What matters is silence.
He needed teams in every city, every major road. Not doctors—sentinels who could cauterize wounds with one hand and send a sealed warning with the other.
He needed orphans. The ones who wouldn't ask questions. The ones who already understood silence.
He needed clinics that could disappear into the town's routine—and still respond faster than any Senate vote.
No one would call it rule. But it was power.
And power, applied early, saves time.
He raised a hand to the architects that day.
"No gold. No shrine. Just stone, canvas, and black."
When they asked what it was, he'd answered:
"It's what comes after war.
Not peace.
Structure."
Inside the tents, the work continued without rest.
A woman cried out as a dislocated shoulder was reset. The sound cracked through the air, but no one stopped.
"Hold her steady," said the Hospitalier.
The squire obeyed. Pale but focused. He kept her locked in place as the joint was forced back into its socket with a solid pop.
"Breathe in," the healer said. "Now out."
The woman gasped. Her head rolled back. The surgeon bound the shoulder and moved on. The squire lingered.
"You're alright," he said, quiet. "You're safe now."
Elsewhere, a man sat stunned as his son opened his eyes. Pale, stitched, alive.
"You… you brought him back," the father said.
The healer wiped his gloves clean.
"He held on. Keep him warm. Let the thread hold."
"Thank you," the man said, again and again.
The healer didn't answer. He was already gone.
That night, Altan returned alone. The scaffold tower was half-built. The Warden stood at its base.
"I release you from the silence," Altan said.
The Warden gave a short nod. "What do I need to know?"
"They're coming back," Altan said. "Zhong loyalists. Surviving cousins. Foreign-backed royals. Not with blades. With gold. With titles. They'll talk peace."
"And spread through our cities."
Altan looked toward the tents.
"This is the first site. Every major city gets a full detachment. One hundred Hospitaliers. Towns will receive clinics. Ten, maybe twenty staff, depending on size."
"They'll report to me?"
"They already do," Altan replied.
"And the silence doctrine?"
"Holds. Except for the Hospitaliers. They speak when needed. Pain needs direction. Healing needs words."
"If any use their voice for influence?"
Altan's tone flattened. "Then silence them permanently."
Voices echoed from the orphanage wing. A boy darted through the corridor barefoot, still bandaged. A Hospitalier caught him gently by the shoulders.
"Slow down."
"I'm not a soldier," the boy said with a grin.
"Not yet."
The boy ran on. The hallway returned to silence.
"They'll be trained," Altan said. "The orphans. No elemental affinity, they go to the crucible. Stormguard. If they spark, they're assigned to the Gale Army."
"Why not let them choose?" the Warden asked.
"Because someone else will choose for them if we don't," Altan said.
He looked back once more.
"There's nothing noble in what we're doing. But it works."
He left before second dusk.
The work didn't stop when the sun dipped behind the ruined wall. The tents stayed lit. The cauterizers stayed hot. Gauze was changed. Arteries sealed. Limbs bound. Some patients wept with relief. Some didn't understand they had survived.
A child was shown how to hold a bowl with his left hand. A squire finished stitching a leg while muttering old campaign songs. A woman, her ribs cracked and lungs burned, slept through the night for the first time since the siege.
No one called it peace.
But no one left alone.
The Warden stood at the scaffold post. He did not move. His eyes moved. His ears took in every voice that whispered a little too long. Every outburst. Every silence that lasted too short.
This wasn't mercy. It wasn't healing for its own sake.
It was structure.
Quietly built. Carefully protected.
And it would hold.