Morning broke, soft and gray.
No golden light, no birdsong.
Just a sky the color of old steel, and the distant clatter of hooves as the city below began to stir.
I stood at the edge of the training grounds behind Varlock Keep, watching the gathered men.
If you could call them that.
Thirty bodies stood in uneven rows before me.
Men too old to serve on the front lines.Soldiers crippled by old wounds.Disgraced knights stripped of their banners.Street toughs with nothing left to lose.
Each one discarded by the great machine of empire and nobility. Left to rot.
Now they stood before me — some leaning on canes, others glaring with dead eyes, some still drunk from last night.
But they stood.
And that was enough.
"Look at you," I said softly, letting my voice carry just enough to reach their ears. "The empire's trash heap. Broken swords. Forgotten names."
A ripple of anger flickered through the crowd.
Good.
I wanted them angry. Anger was fuel.
"But I see something else," I continued, pacing slowly along the line. My boots crunched on the frostbitten grass. "I see men the world fears. Because you know its lies. You've seen behind the curtain. You know that loyalty is rewarded with a noose, and honor is just a collar they chain around your neck until you break."
A few heads lifted. A few fists clenched.
The hook was sinking in.
I stopped in front of a gaunt man with a long scar down his jaw. His uniform still bore the faded insignia of the Royal Dragoons — the unit that had been wiped out during the border wars last year. Blamed. Forgotten.
I met his eyes.
"What's your name?"
He hesitated, then rasped, "Donmar."
I nodded. "Donmar. Tell me — when your unit fell, who stood for you? Who spoke your name in the court?"
His jaw tightened. He looked away.
I turned back to the crowd.
"None of them. No lord, no duke, no prince. They used you until you bled, then cast you aside."
Now the anger was real. Palpable. Rising like smoke.
I let the silence stretch, thick and heavy.
"Serve me," I said at last, voice like iron. "And I will not promise you honor. I will not speak of loyalty or glory. I offer you only this—"
I drew my blade in one sharp motion and drove it point-first into the ground before me.
"Vengeance."
A whisper rippled through the men.
Donmar's eyes burned now.
A one-eyed brute near the back spat on the ground and stepped forward.
"You mean to fight them? The lords, the courts, the whole cursed lot?"
I smiled thinly.
"I mean to tear down their lies. To build something new from the bones they left behind. And I need men who have nothing left to lose. Men who want to make the world remember their names in fear, not pity."
More steps forward now.
Slow, hesitant — but they came.
By the time the sun had fully risen, twenty-three of the thirty had stepped out of line and fallen to one knee before me.
Twenty-three broken men.
Twenty-three new blades.
It wasn't much.
Yet.
But I knew — empires were not born in palaces.
They were born in the gutters. In the shadows.
Among men like these.
Later, as I watched them begin their first drills — crude, uneven, but laced with a hunger the polished knights could never match — I felt the first ember of real power stir in my chest.
The world had cast me as a villain.
Fine.
I would teach them what a villain could do when given an army.
A soft cough at my side drew my attention.
It was Tomas, my steward — an aging man with thinning hair and a limp, once a minor clerk in the imperial treasury before being exiled here after some scandal no one bothered to remember.
"My lord," he murmured. "You asked to be informed… There are whispers spreading already. About last night. About you."
I smiled. "Good. Let them whisper."
Tomas hesitated. "And… Lady Evelyne has dispatched messengers westward. Her network moves as well."
At that, my smile thinned.
So. The game was truly on.
I turned my gaze back to the drilling men, watching as Donmar barked orders and cracked a staff against a slacker's back.
"We move faster," I said quietly. "Before she builds her wall, we will already be inside the city. In the cracks. In the rot they refuse to see."
Tomas inclined his head. "As you say, my lord."
I sheathed my sword, the weight familiar and cold at my side.
As I turned away, I whispered to myself:
"Let them call me monster. Let them think me beaten. By the time they realize the truth…"
I paused at the gate, looking back one last time.
Donmar caught my eye — and this time, he did not look away.
"…it will already be too late."
Far across the capital, unseen by me, another pair of crimson eyes watched from a high tower.
Evelyne's lips curved in a slow smile as the report crossed her desk.
So. Leonhart gathered his broken toys.
She would let him.
For now.
But soon, she would remind him who held the real power in this game.
And so, the dance continued.
Two monsters in silk and steel, circling ever closer.
Their knives hidden.
Their hearts aflame.