In Argent, the heart of the Iron Hegemony, the air in Archon Titus's strategium was as cold and sterile as polished steel. Maps of the known world covered a vast obsidian table, each territory colored and claimed. Only one region remained a defiant, ugly patch of charcoal-black ink: The Blackwood.
General Kael stood before the table, his uniform immaculate, but his posture radiating a rigid, hollowed-out shame. His report was finished. Silence, thick and heavy, filled the chamber.
Archon Titus, a man whose face seemed forged from the same iron as his empire, stared at the map. "Let me be certain I understand, General," he said, his voice quiet, which was far more terrifying than if he had shouted. "You are telling me that the ground itself rose up and consumed your legion's weapons. That my Null-Spire, the pinnacle of our anti-thaumaturgical engineering, 'melted' like a candle. And that this entire campaign of utter humiliation was orchestrated by a single entity who never once showed his face."
"That is correct, Archon," Kael replied, his voice strained. "He... it... it was like fighting a ghost who commanded the very laws of physics."
Beside him stood Lord Valerius, older now, his face a web of bitter lines. He had been summoned to this meeting, a living testament to the Hegemony's first failure. "I told you, Titus," Valerius rasped. "My men faced his legions of the dead. This is an evolution. He no longer needs bones. He commands the very dust."
Titus slammed a steel-gauntleted fist onto the table, the sound a sharp crack of controlled fury. "This is not an evolution! It is an impossibility! Matter does not simply 'awaken'! There are rules. Principles. This... Warden... this 'Ashen King'... he breaks them. He is a cancer in the ordered world."
The generals nodded in grim agreement. To them, it was simple. They had faced a demon, a being of pure chaos and evil. The only solution was more force. A bigger army. More powerful siege engines.
But a fourth man in the room, one who had remained silent until now, cleared his throat. He was Praetor Kaelen, the Archon's Spymaster, a man as thin and sharp as a stiletto. His domain was not the battlefield, but the whispers and secrets that moved between them.
"Archon," Kaelen said, his voice a dry rustle of parchment. "May I offer an alternative analysis?"
Titus turned his cold gaze on him. "If you can find logic in this madness, Kaelen, by all means."
"I see no madness here," the Spymaster began, steepling his long fingers. "I see a brutally efficient and, frankly, terrifyingly logical strategy. He did not defeat your legion, General. He dismantled it. He identified its core components—weaponry, supply lines, fortifications, command structure—and removed them, one by one, with surgical precision. It was not a battle. It was a systematic, logistical unraveling."
Kael looked offended. "He used dark magic! It was an act of pure evil!"
"Was it?" Kaelen's eyes gleamed with intellectual curiosity. "The most curious part of the 'Ashen King's' strategy is its restraint. General, how many of your men did his swarms of rust and metal kill directly?"
The General hesitated. "None. They were... disarmed. Humiliated. But the casualties were from the tower's collapse and the ensuing panic."
"Exactly," Kaelen pressed. "And you, Lord Valerius. In your defeat, he raised your dead, yes. A horrific act. But did he send them to tear your survivors apart? No. He had them collect his tithe of iron and then sent them back to the dust. In his entire campaign of 'pure evil,' this Warden... this King... has killed a Hegemony soldier only when they posed a direct, immediate threat to his stated domain. This last engagement was not a slaughter. It was a surgical amputation. He took our army apart, piece by piece, and then sent it home. He is delivering a message, not indulging in bloodlust."
Archon Titus listened, his expression unreadable. He traced the border of the Blackwood on the map. "A message that his power is absolute and ours is irrelevant."
"Precisely," Kaelen affirmed. "Which means we are using the wrong tools. This is not a problem of steel and sinew. It is a problem of esoterica and will. We sent an army to solve a political problem. Then we sent a larger army to solve a monster problem. But we are not facing a politician or a simple monster. We are facing a rival god."
Titus paced the room. "Then what do you propose, Praetor? We cannot cede the territory. To do so would be to admit there is a power greater than the Hegemony's order. It would be ideological poison."
"We do not cede," Kaelen said smoothly. "We subcontract. If we cannot defeat this entity with our logic, we must fight it with a logic that is its antithesis. We must fight this shadow with a blinding, terrible light."
Valerius scoffed. "What are you talking about? Magic?"
"Worse," Kaelen said with a thin smile. "Dogma. For generations, the Hegemony has maintained a carefully managed non-aggression pact with the Luminant Theocracy to our east. We tolerate their sun-worshipping zealotry; they respect our borders and our secular law. But their elite templars, the Order of Sol, they specialize in one thing and one thing only."
Archon Titus stopped pacing. He understood. "Witch-hunting."
"They would call it 'purifying the unclean'," Kaelen corrected gently. "They hunt rogue thaumaturgical entities. They battle demonic incursions. They are fanatics, zealots, and impossible to reason with. We despise everything they stand for. And they are the perfect weapon to aim at a reclusive king who raises the dead and commands the earth."
The room fell silent. The idea was both brilliant and repugnant. To unleash the self-righteous, magic-hating fury of the Order of Sol on the Blackwood was to start a fire one could not be certain of controlling.
"We would be inviting a rival power into our sphere of influence," Titus mused, testing the shape of the idea.
"For a limited engagement," Kaelen countered. "We offer them a bounty, a sacred charge. The head of the 'arch-necromancer' of the Blackwood. They will see it as a holy crusade. They will pour their resources, their faith, and their unique anti-magic capabilities into destroying him. We need not lift a finger. We simply point them at our mutual enemy."
Archon Titus stood before the map, staring at the black ink stain of the forest. Twice his legions had failed. Twice his logic and order had been undone by a power that followed its own terrifying rules. Praetor Kaelen was right. Steel had failed. It was time for faith—a weapon far sharper and more indiscriminate.
He made his decision.
"Praetor," he commanded, his voice devoid of all warmth. "Open a channel to the high priest of the Theocracy. Inform him that the Hegemony has uncovered a blight, a practitioner of the darkest arts who has established a kingdom of undeath on our very border. Inform him that his Order of Sol has our official sanction to enter the Blackwood and... purify it."
He looked at his generals. "Let the fanatics have their crusade. The Hegemony will be waiting to claim whatever remains from the ashes."