The day of the operation had been set. The following night, Kritos and Thasos would slip away on their own and infiltrate the most terrifying encampment in the history of Aseri.

It was dusk, and the two of them sat by the flickering fire near the triage tents. The agonizing screams of the wounded never ceased, but tonight carried the desperate hope that these would be the last they ever heard.

Thasos had procured parchment and ink, writing steadily for some time. When he finally set his quill aside, he rolled the scroll and stared at it in heavy silence.

"For your wife?" Kritos asked.

"No. For Linos," Thasos replied, his voice dropping. "I tremble at the thought that these might be my final words to him. That I might not live to see him become a man."

Kritos clenched his jaw and shut his eyes. "Thasos, it's not too late. Let's—"

"No, my friend! I am doing this for him. So that he may live," Thasos interrupted firmly. He reached for two tin cups, filled them with fresh water, and handed one across the fire. "We have no wine, but let us celebrate tonight!" He raised his cup high. "For Linos and the whole Aseri!"

Kritos hesitated for a fraction of a second. The urge to abandon the grand scheme swirled in his mind; it felt like a voluntary march toward certain death. But he gritted his teeth and clinked his cup against his friend's. "For Linos and the whole Aseri," he echoed, taking a deep gulp.

By tomorrow night, they would either be continuing this celebration, or they would both be dead in the mud.

The sun had long set when the two friends met in the most secluded corner of the encampment, facing the opposite direction of the battlefield. The patrols were sparser there, and Thasos knew of a narrow, hidden breach beneath the timber palisade. Draped in black cloaks, their faces buried deep within heavy cowls, they melted into the long shadows that swallowed the supply shacks.

Kritos followed Thasos’s whispered instructions to the letter. No one in the camp would ever believe they were embarking on a rogue mission to trap the Demon. If caught, Kritos would be forced to present the medallion to justify his absence. The High Mages would examine it... they would realize who he was, and what he had done.

The gap beneath the timber wall was uncomfortably tight, but it had been utilized recently. They carefully removed the loose stones hastily stacked to conceal the exit, scrambled on their bellies through the dirt, and meticulously replaced the masonry on the outer side to erase their tracks.

They broke into a quiet sprint toward the safety of the treeline. Kritos gasped for air, his chest burning as he fought to keep pace. Like a graceful stag, Thasos wove effortlessly through the dense, tangled woods—like a wisp of smoke gliding silently over rotting roots and jagged shale. Kritos, conversely, felt like an awkward octopus dragged onto dry land, stumbling over his own clumsy limbs as he fought just to keep Thasos's dark silhouette in sight.

Once they had put a long distance between themselves and the fort, Thasos halted to let them catch their breath. Kritos collapsed into the damp moss.

"No more running. We move slowly from here on out. Skirting the perimeter of the killing fields, straight to the monster encampment," Thasos instructed, watching his friend heave for oxygen.

It took Kritos several long minutes to muster the breath to speak. "What... what awaits us when we get over there?"

"Exactly what I told you. Absolute silence. The monsters do not speak; they do not feel pain. The Demon's mages simply stitch them back together for the next push. The warlord himself remains inside his command pavilion. No one knows what he does in there. The only absolute certainty is that every morning at dawn, he emerges to order the vanguard forward. You are certain you know where the shard is kept?"

Kritos swallowed hard. "Yes... The moment I see the location in my visions, I will know. It has to be near his personal quarters."

But the bitter truth was that they were walking in blind. Once they reached the enemy lines, Kritos would simply search for the Star himself. And then, it would be his turn to deceive him and steal back his half of the silver.

After hours of trekking, they skirted the edge of the sprawling valley where hundreds of human souls were extinguished every day. The stench of putrefaction was physical, catching in the back of the throat. Had the moon been just a little brighter, they would have seen the literal pools of Aserian blood. Because Niota’s legions did not bleed.

In the foggy distance, the cursed encampment could be seen. Its sickly, pulsating blue luminescence cast long, unnatural shadows, striking pure terror into the hearts of the two infiltrators.

As they crept past the perimeter, Kritos once again had to rely entirely on Thasos’s mastery of unseen movement. Gaining entry proved  insultingly easy. There were no defensive ditches. There were no watchtowers. What mortal commander would be foolish enough to order a night raid against an army of the already dead?

This primordial necromancy utilized corpses indiscriminately—whether freshly slain in the mud or dragged from tombs beneath the earth. Where Niota had harvested so many thousands of dead remained an open question. He had marched out of the desolate West, from Rovia, across the impassable desert, leaving the defenders of Aseri with nothing but grim speculation.

The silence belonged to a mausoleum. Thasos guided him with agonizing slowness through the camp, though Kritos didn't even know what they were hiding from. There was not a single campfire. The reanimated husks simply sat in ordered rows upon the bare earth. Utterly motionless. Staring blindly into the dark.

Bleached skeletons, bloated torsos draped in sloughing, gray flesh, and even recognizable, freshly fallen soldiers of Aseri whose bodies the rear guard hadn’t managed to recover... A nightmare legion brought into reality... entirely because of his own towering hubris.

"There. The Demon's pavilion," Thasos whispered, pointing to a dark tent in the center of the host. "Do you recognise anything?"

Another lie to pile upon the pyre...

"That is it! We have to get inside," Kritos whispered back, his teeth chattering.

Two towering, heavily armored knights flanked the canvas entrance. They weren't from the undead. They were living, breathing soldiers. Thasos looked at the sentries, then back to Kritos. "We have no option. We hold our position until dawn, when he takes the field."

Pressed flat against the cold earth behind a stack of supply crates, they waited for the sun. Just before the first golden rays breached the distant eastern peaks of Aseri, while the twilight still painted the wasteland in bruised, somber purples, the heavy canvas flaps parted. The Demon of Rovia stepped forth.

A violent shiver racked Kritos's spine. To look upon raw, manifested cataclysm once again... to stare at the very creature turning his homeland into a boneyard...

The two sentries turned and fell in behind him. Niota stood before his silent, seated legion and casually hoisted his massive greatsword into the sky. Instantly, accompanied by a deafening, collective rattle of dry bone and rusted mail, the entire undead host rose as a single entity and began their march toward the human lines.

It was their only window. Thasos grabbed Kritos's arm and guided him swiftly through the maze of empty weapon racks, slipping straight through the flaps of Niota's unguarded pavilion.

"Where do we look, Kritos? Quickly!" Thasos hissed, frantically scanning the opulent rugs and dark oak furniture.

"Uh... In my vision, it was sealed within a small iron coffer."

They began tearing through every corner, chest, and drawer that could possibly conceal the divine relic capable of turning the tide of the war. Thasos searched with desperate, sweating hope; Kritos searched with crushing, suffocating guilt. Because Kritos knew the truth. The missing piece of the puzzle was definitely tucked safely beneath Niota’s tunic. He was merely burning minutes until the Star returned to his quarters—so he could spring his trap.

He didn't have to wait long. Heavy footfalls crunched against the gravel outside the canvas. Slow, rhythmic footfalls. Impossibly heavy and menacing. The distinct, metallic clinking of that dark plate armor was a herald of absolute, inescapable ruin.

Kritos didn't even need to turn his head to know who stood at the threshold. He could never, across a thousand lifetimes, forget those exact steps from the dark crypt beneath Falcon's Peak. The sheer horror draining the last drops of color from Thasos’s face was merely the confirmation.

Niota, the Star of Ire, had stepped back into his tent.