The Hegemony army arrived on the seventh day after the first dust clouds were spotted. Elias didn't need his ravens to see them; he could feel them. The sheer mass of their life signatures was a roaring, discordant noise on his Sense Life/Death map, a tide of humanity crashing against the shore of his quiet domain.
From his perch in the highest branches of a sentinel pine, achieved through a brief Wraith Walk, he observed their vanguard. They were not the slapdash expeditionary force he had first encountered. This was a Legion. Hundreds of disciplined soldiers in polished iron, marching in perfect formation. Their supply train was a village unto itself. At their center rode a man in ornate, gilded armor, his helmet plumed with black feathers. This was no mere Captain. This was a General, a Lord. This was a statement.
They made camp in the large clearing before Sunstone, a sea of tents and campfires that dwarfed the small, huddled village. They set up siege equipment—catapults and ballistae—not for the wooden palisade, but as a show of overwhelming, indisputable force.
That evening, a single herald, bearing a white flag, was sent to the village gates. Jorn met him.
Elias listened, an unseen wraith hovering nearby.
The herald's message was simple and brutal. "Lord Valerius, commander of the Seventh Hegemony Legion, offers terms. In retribution for the assault upon his sworn agent, Silas Marwood, and the theft of Hegemony property, Sunstone will surrender unconditionally. Your chieftain will be executed. Ten village youths will be taken for a term of twenty years of military indenture. The rest of the village will swear fealty and accept Hegemony law."
Jorn's face was a granite mask. "And if we refuse?"
The herald smiled, a cold, empty thing. "Then tomorrow at dawn, Lord Valerius will cleanse this forest of your hovels and salt the earth where they stood. You have until sunrise."
The terms were designed to be impossible. An execution, the theft of their children—Valerius didn't want surrender. He wanted to make an example. He wanted a slaughter to be witnessed by the other tribes in the region.
As the herald departed, a profound despair settled over Sunstone. It was a tangible thing, a wave of cold fear that Elias felt wash over him. The Soul Anchor burned with Elara's terror, a focused point of agony in the sea of dread.
This was the moment. The crucible of his kingship. He had the army. He had the power. Now, he had to deliver the sermon that would prepare his "congregation" for the unholy salvation to come.
He waited until the deepest point of the night, when the moon was hidden and the Hegemony campfires had burned down to embers. Then, he moved. Not with his golems, not with his wraith-form. He walked.
He approached the palisade of Sunstone, a single, dark figure emerging from the woods. His armor, the layered plates of Rust-Beast hide and black iron, did not gleam; it absorbed the faint light. He held his iron-tipped spear, and at his side walked his Huscarl, the great bear-golem of bone and steel, its every step a silent, crushing weight.
He stopped fifty yards from the gate. He didn't speak. He didn't have to. The guards on the wall saw him first, their gasps sharp in the night. The alarm was raised, not with a panicked shout, but with a series of urgent, fearful hisses.
The gate creaked open, and Jorn emerged, alone. He held no weapon, only a burning torch. The old chieftain's face was grim, but there was a flicker of desperate hope in his eyes.
Elias did not address him. He looked past him, at the faces peering over the wall, at the shadows of the villagers gathering in the gateway. He let the silence stretch, forcing them to absorb the sheer, terrifying presence of him and his monstrous champion.
Then, he spoke. His voice was the Ashen King's voice—low, resonant, amplified by a touch of Soul Whisper so that every person in the village could hear it not just with their ears, but in their minds. It was a voice that commanded absolute attention.
"Tomorrow at dawn, the men of iron will bring their war to your gates," he began. The sermon was stark, devoid of comfort.
"You will not fight them. To fight is to die. Your spears are reeds. Your walls are parchment."
A murmur of despair went through the crowd. He was telling them what they already knew, extinguishing their last embers of warrior pride.
"Your strength is not in your arms," he continued, his voice a cold, immutable law. "It is in your silence. In your stillness."
He raised his spear and pointed it not at the village, but at the forest behind him. The Blackwood. His domain.
"This is not your land. This is my land. The iron men are not trespassers against you. They are trespassers against me. An army has come to hunt a single Warden."
The villagers stared, beginning to comprehend the terrifying scale of what he was implying. This was a war between gods, and they were merely the mortals caught in the middle.
"Tomorrow at dawn, you will bar your gates. You will go into your homes. You will extinguish your fires. You will silence your children. You will make this village a tomb of silent, waiting stone. You will not watch. You will not listen. You will simply... endure."
His instructions were absolute, bizarre, and terrifying. He was demanding their perfect, blind faith in the most unnerving way possible. He was asking them to make themselves helpless.
"The war that is coming is a war of monsters and metal. It is not a war for men to witness," he declared. "The Blackwood is deep. And it is hungry. The debt that is owed will be paid, not with the lives of your children, but with the blood of fools."
He paused, letting the final, chilling promise sink in.
"Do this," his voice resonated, a deep, final command. "Trust in the silence. Trust in the dark. Trust in your Warden. And you will see the sun rise on the day after."
Without another word, he turned his back. He and his Huscarl melted back into the trees, leaving behind only the echo of his voice and a choice: place their lives in the hands of a mad, incomprehensible monster, or face the certainty of annihilation by a conventional one.
From a safe distance, Elias watched. He saw the flicker of the torch as Jorn re-entered the gates. He saw the villagers talking in hushed, frantic tones. He felt their fear, their debate, their despair.
Then, he felt it through the Soul Anchor. A clear, unwavering pulse of conviction from Elara. She was speaking to the others, her voice filled with an unshakeable faith he had inadvertently cultivated over five years. He saved me. He saved my mother. He drove away the blight. He has never failed us.
One by one, the fires in Sunstone began to go out. The village, which had been a small island of defiant light, slowly submerged into the overwhelming darkness of the forest.
Elias, the silent king, had delivered his sermon. And his congregation, in their terror and their hope, had chosen to obey. The board was set. The sun was on the horizon. The slaughter was about to begin.