The week passed in a tense, suffocating quiet. The villagers of Oakhaven tried to go about their lives, but the Baron's deadline hung over them like a storm cloud. Elara tried to organize a resistance, but it was a desperate, hopeless effort. They had no weapons, no training, no leader.
They didn't know they had all three, living in the small cottage at the edge of the valley.
Nox did not train them in the open. He became a whisper. He would find Thomas the farmer in his fields and show him, in a few, simple movements, how to turn a pitchfork from a farming tool into a deadly spear. He would find the village blacksmith and, with a few quiet suggestions, show him how to temper his iron to be as strong as steel.
He did not use his power. He used his knowledge. The centuries of combat experience, of strategy, of understanding the simple, brutal physics of a fight. He moved through the village like a ghost, planting the seeds of a rebellion.
