Scene 1 — Pugil Daemonum (Goblin Front / War General)
Tossing the torch into the cart carrying dry grass, I push it downhill and let gravity do the preaching.
The wheels catch.
The cart rattles.
And the night below—quiet, sleeping, stupid—doesn't realize it's about to be corrected.
My fellow goblinkin surge with me, charging down the slope in a loose wave. No chants. No howls. We don't need noise to feel important. The tactics are already inside us—stitched into our nerves by the Lord of Shadows, delivered through memories that don't belong to any of us and yet fit perfectly.
Strike the food.
Split the camp.
Force the strong to show themselves.
Let panic do half the killing.
The cart hits the bottom and the dry grass blooms into fire like the earth itself exhaled.
Orange light crawls up tents and huts.
Smoke rolls over sleeping faces.
Screams rise.
And we're already there.
From the mouths of other monsters, there's been talk about this rival tribe—something odd among them. A strange creature, more tiger than humanoid. Not like us. Not like the kobolds. Not like the elves who ran into the Great Forest the moment the rumors started.
If it's real, it means the rival tribe is close to stabilizing—close to becoming more than just a scattered limb of a forming kingdom.
Which means if you wait, you don't get a raid.
You get a future problem.
We don't do future problems.
We solve them while they're still soft.
I move behind the first wave, axe low, breath steady, watching my line execute the pattern like they were born with it. In a way, they were. Even our young come out stronger now—hobgoblin standard like weakness is a disease we don't pass down anymore.
Small in number, sure.
But every war adds bodies.
Every win adds evolution.
Every step forward tightens the connection to the Shadow that watches without eyes—quiet pressure behind reality, patient as a knock that arrives at the exact moment you can't pretend you didn't hear it.
I don't call myself anything grand.
I don't speak crowns or titles.
That's not my role.
I'm a general—one of the hands that makes the tribe move when it would rather hesitate. One of the lines that gets sent first when the leader wants to know how the enemy bleeds.
So I do what I always do.
I jumpstart the war.
Not for a name.
Not for a throne.
Just to make sure the one above me has a battlefield big enough to step into.
A war big enough that when the dust settles, nobody can keep pretending we're still "just a tribe."
A runner catches up from behind, voice female, clipped, annoyed—like she's tired of watching me spend bodies to buy momentum.
"Pugil Daemonum." She grabs my shoulder for half a second before letting go. "We should join them. The Princeps Vicarius Umbraru won't be happy if you lose too many cannon fodder again."
I don't stop walking.
"He said prioritize our original groups," she adds, faster. "Quit wasting time. Stop throwing our line into the grinder just because you like the chaos."
I glance back just once—enough to let her know I heard her, not enough to give her anything readable.
Then I face forward again and step into the smoke.
Because she thinks this is indulgence.
But it's not.
It's positioning.
If our leading figure is going to rise the right way, he needs more than loyalty—he needs inevitability. He needs a conflict that forces the world to acknowledge him. Forces the tribe to rally around him without debate.
So I lead my line deeper into the burning camp, searching for the strongest resistance, the place where the enemy's spine will reveal itself.
If that tiger rumor is real, I'll find it.
Not as a trophy.
Not as a boast.
Just another lever—another reason the war can't cool down until the one meant to stand at the front finally does.
⸻
Scene 2 — Bo (Baldur's Assignment)
"Bo… just relax, man."
A hand clamped onto my shoulder the moment I finished tearing through the last of the records Baldur sent me after. My breathing was already wrong—too fast, too hot—like my body knew what my eyes hadn't accepted yet.
I shrugged him off hard enough to make him step back.
"The hell you mean relax?" I snapped, voice cracking at the edges. "These bastards are the same as us! Same access. Same clearances. Same 'protector' speeches. What the hell do they use our privilege for—" I slapped the folder stack, papers scattering, "—to sell us all out? I'm sick of this!"
My vice squad leader caught the pages as they slid off the desk. The team leaned in without thinking.
Then they saw the photos.
Not one. Not two.
Dozens.
Ritual circles etched into concrete. Symbols painted with something too dark to be paint. People lined up in cages like animals. Wide eyes. Bruised wrists. Mouths gagged. A shot of a ledger with neat handwriting next to names that weren't names—inventory labels.
For a second nobody spoke. Not because they were shocked.
Because they recognized the pattern.
"This is the exact crap our people ran from in the east," I said, jaw tight, forcing each word to come out clean. "The exact crap we swore we'd never let follow us here. And these bastards have the nerve to import it like it's culture."
I flipped to another page, knuckles white.
Shipping manifests. Transfers. Shell companies. A list of "donors" that were really buyers. A map with pins. More pins than a city should ever have.
"If Baldur didn't catch Artemis fast enough…" My voice dropped, and for a second I almost smiled—not with humor, with grim respect. "She'd have razed this whole archive to the ground."
I exhaled hard, forced my shoulders to settle, forced my hands to stop shaking.
Then I straightened like I was back in uniform.
"Get her on the line," I said. "Now."
My vice squad leader hesitated, like he wanted to soften it. Like he wanted to remind me she was already moving.
I stabbed my finger at the map board.
"I'll send her the locations myself. You guys—go help the teams already assigned. They're going to need bodies on scene. Witnesses. Faces."
I looked at them one by one, letting the anger sharpen into something usable.
"They'll need people that can stand there and say it out loud before the narrative gets built for us."
I tapped the photo stack once—quiet, final.
"We at least need to show it's not all of us who stand on this side," I said. "Even if we're choosing the harshest option."
Because I knew what came next.
If we moved too clean, they'd call it a purge.
If we moved too loud, they'd call it terror.
If we didn't move at all, they'd call it permission.
"Move," I said again—no longer asking.
And the room obeyed.
⸻
Scene 3 — Todcast Broadcast (Pressure Becomes a Weapon)
"We have massive reports tonight.
Former members of the League of Men from NYC have officially been labeled domestic terrorists after multiple members were sighted shutting down several organizations across the country."
The anchor's tone wasn't excited. No sensational grin. No hungry energy.
That's how you knew this wasn't just content.
This was the opening volley of a public war.
"The government—already on its last legs leading into the elections—is taking a hardliner stance," the anchor continued. "They are demanding the Society hand them over immediately."
He paused, letting the words hang long enough for the audience to feel the trap.
Then he shifted.
"But Crystal—co-leader of Ashes of Circles and wife to Baldur—has delivered a counter-argument. Todcast has received verified evidence of what was found, and those impacted."
The feed cut to blurred footage.
Emergency lights washing buildings in red and blue.
Medics guiding shivering survivors out of basement doors that shouldn't exist.
Blankets over shoulders. Masks. Eyes refusing to meet the camera because shame is what victims get handed first.
A shaky clip of symbols painted on a wall.
Then a still image—faces blurred, but the posture familiar: prisoners.
The anchor's voice came back lower.
"Here on Todcast we pride ourselves on personal honesty," he said. "So I won't sugarcoat it."
He swallowed once.
"The Society has overstepped boundaries."
A beat.
"But in the face of the year we've had leading up to this election…" He leaned forward slightly, not dramatic, just enough to make it feel personal. "I'm not saying follow my lead, guys."
His eyes narrowed.
"I'm saying think.
Think about what you're being asked to believe.
Whether it's our parents' generation of non-astrals clinging to a world that's already gone… or the rest of you like me—busy, tired, stuck at C–B rank—trying to survive while the people above you play chess with your neighborhoods…"
He tapped the desk once, sharp.
"Ask yourself who's willing to talk it out with the future—and who's tried to keep their hands on the monitor the entire time."
He sat back.
"For now… this Tod Pod signing off."
The screen faded.
But the words didn't.
Because now the public had a story.
And stories spread faster than truth.
⸻
Scene 4 — Crystal & Baldur (After the Broadcast)
"Like him or hate him," Baldur said, swirling liquor in his glass like he was timing his thoughts, "he never folds to pressure."
The podcast replayed in my head even after the TV went dark. That anchor had walked the line perfectly—just honest enough to feel brave, just controlled enough to avoid becoming a target.
Baldur leaned back, eyes on me.
"Even you can't force him to pick a side, Crystal."
I snorted, the sound sharp but tired.
"That's why we like him," I said. "If he folded easily then even if I agreed with him… I wouldn't trust him."
Baldur's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like an acknowledgment that trust was scarce and expensive now.
"He stays focused on facts and solutions," I continued, "only melting down when life is really crashing."
That got a real smirk out of him—brief, almost fond.
"Yeah," he muttered. "The rare genius meltdown. When sanity remembers it's optional."
Then his expression cooled again, like the world had stepped into the room.
"Sweden is asking for aid from Oceanus," Baldur said.
I turned slightly. "Sweden?"
"They're following Poland and Romania," he said. "Cutting access from the EU. EU officials wanted them to pay nine million dollars just to say no—while pushing more refugees into their country."
The number hit like an insult.
Not because I didn't believe it.
Because it sounded exactly like something bureaucrats would do—charge you a fee for self-preservation and call it policy.
Baldur took a sip.
"Even the normal people there are pursing so called invaders," he added, voice flat, "and throwing them back into the European countries that accepted them."
I stared at him for a second, then let out a slow breath through my nose.
The ugliness of it wasn't surprising.
The inevitability was.
Because that's what happens when the old guard refuses to adapt. When they keep trading their own people for optics, for votes, for alliances that don't bleed the same.
I glanced toward the window—toward streets full of civilians who still pretended this was politics and not war.
Grinning, not from joy, but from clarity, I said, "The old guard is being forced to recognize the world is changing with or without them."
Baldur raised his glass a fraction, like a quiet salute to inevitability.
"And for the western travelers," he said, "we've learned something simple."
I nodded.
"They would rather die," I finished, "than stop selling us out."
The room fell silent again—not peaceful, not safe.
Just… aligned.
Because once you say it out loud, you can't go back to pretending.