Rhaegor remained beside the archway for a time after speaking, watching the yard settle into its new rhythm.

  Torven had driven the trainees through another sequence already—shield line forward, strike and pivot, retreat three steps and brace. Dust rose around their boots in thin clouds that caught the sunlight and drifted slowly across the yard like pale smoke.

  Kaelor stood beside him now, arms folded across his chest, eyes following the drills with renewed focus. The eagerness had not left him. It lived in the tension of his shoulders, in the way his gaze flicked constantly across the formation searching for the next weakness, the next opportunity.

  Young warriors always carried that fire.

  It was not a flaw.

  It simply needed direction.

  Rhaegor watched his son in silence for a moment longer before speaking again.

  “You believe Drogath charged the canyon because he desired glory.”

  Kaelor shook his head slightly.

  “No. I believe he charged because it was necessary.”

  Rhaegor’s tusk caps caught the light when he turned toward him.

  “Necessary and immediate are not the same thing.”

  Kaelor frowned, thinking.

  Below them the drill instructor barked another correction.

  “Your stance collapses under pressure! Reset!”

  Steel rang again as the line resumed.

  Kaelor’s voice came quieter now.

  “If he had waited too long, the Ashen Hand would have released the plague.”

  “Yes.”

  “And thousands of Iron Tenth would have died.”

  “Yes.”

  Kaelor looked at him again.

  “Then waiting was still dangerous.”

  Rhaegor nodded once.

  “All command decisions are.”

  The answer seemed to surprise him.

  For a moment Kaelor simply studied his father’s face.

  “You’re uncertain,” he said finally.

  Rhaegor gave a faint huff that might have been amusement.

  “Of course I am.”

  Kaelor blinked.

  “I thought commanders were supposed to know the answer.”

  “Commanders are supposed to carry the question,” Rhaegor replied.

  The younger orc leaned back against the stone arch, absorbing that.

  The yard continued its relentless drills. Torven had shifted the trainees again—now forcing them into paired shield formations designed for pushing through enemy lines. The movements were faster now, harsher. Mistakes drew immediate correction.

  Kaelor watched them for several breaths before speaking again.

  “If the Iron Tenth is preparing quietly,” he said, “then the threat is something we don’t fully understand.”

  Rhaegor inclined his head.

  “That is my suspicion.”

  “And if we do not understand it,” Kaelor continued, “should we not act sooner rather than later?”

  Rhaegor’s gaze drifted across the compound beyond the training yard. From this angle he could see the upper roofs of the barracks and the distant towers of Futaria rising beyond the garrison walls. Warriors moved along the walkways in steady purpose, armor plates catching flashes of sunlight as they prepared.

  Varrok’s work had spread through the entire Iron Tenth by now.

  The tribe was waking its teeth.

  “We will act,” Rhaegor said.

  Kaelor’s eyes sharpened.

  “When?”

  Rhaegor looked at him again.

  “When action becomes the correct answer.”

  Kaelor exhaled slowly through his nose.

  “That is not a satisfying response.”

  “No,” Rhaegor agreed. “It rarely is.”

  For a few moments they stood together in silence.

  The sounds of the training yard filled the space between them—boots scraping earth, shields striking wood, Torven’s relentless corrections.

  Kaelor eventually pushed himself upright again.

  “I want to be part of it.”

  Rhaegor did not need to ask what he meant.

  “I know.”

  “I’ve trained for years,” Kaelor said. “I’ve studied the formations. I’ve drilled every weapon the instructors will give me.”

  He hesitated before continuing.

  “I’m ready to earn my Khufar.”

  Rhaegor studied the iron caps beginning to form along his son’s tusks. They were still smooth, unmarked by rings, the metal bright where it had not yet known the long wear of campaign.

  “You will earn them,” he said.

  Kaelor’s voice sharpened slightly.

  “When?”

  Rhaegor reached forward and rested one heavy hand briefly on his son’s shoulder.

  “When the Iron Tenth requires it.”

  Kaelor held his gaze.

  “And if the Iron Tenth marches soon?”

  Rhaegor allowed the smallest hint of a smile.

  “Then you will march with them.”

  The answer settled something in the younger orc’s expression. The restless energy did not vanish, but it found direction.

  Kaelor nodded once.

  Behind them the drills reached their conclusion. Torven barked a final command and the trainees pulled back from their formations, breathing hard but holding discipline.

  The yard fell into temporary stillness.

  Rhaegor watched them with a commander’s eye—measuring posture, stamina, cohesion. These were the warriors who would stand when Futaria required them.

  These were the warriors his father’s sacrifice had helped preserve.

  Kaelor straightened beside him.

  “Do you think Drogath would approve?” he asked.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Rhaegor’s gaze lingered on the warriors below.

  “I think he would expect us to be ready.”

  Kaelor nodded thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” he said. “That sounds like him.”

  Rhaegor looked once more across the compound where the quiet preparations continued in steady waves.

  No horns had sounded.

  No banners had been raised.

  Yet every warrior in the Iron Tenth now moved with the same unspoken understanding.

  Something was coming.

  And when it arrived, the Iron Tenth would be ready to meet it.

  The Terra district should have sounded like iron.

  Hammering. Armor plates shifting. Weapon drills echoing across stone courtyards.

  Instead, the warriors of the Iron Tenth moved in silence.

  Ishrael Voss noticed it immediately.

  He kept walking, head down, cloak pulled close around his narrow shoulders as he passed beneath the heavy stone arches of the garrison quarter. Orc warriors worked quietly around him. A pair sat sharpening long cleavers on whetstones, their tusks capped in dark iron and threaded with Khufar rings. Another group stood beside a rack of spears, murmuring low incantations while faint runes crawled across the weapon hafts.

  Enchantments.

  Subtle ones.

  The kind applied before a march.

  But there were no horns.

  No shouted orders.

  No mustering drums.

  Just preparation.

  Quiet preparation.

  That alone made Ishrael uneasy.

  The Iron Tenth did nothing quietly unless someone powerful had told them to.

  He resisted the urge to glance around too openly.

  Curiosity attracted attention.

  Attention attracted questions.

  And under the Iron Mandate, questions were rarely asked unless the answer had already been decided.

  Ishrael turned down a narrow side street between two storage warehouses. The moment he slipped into the alley, the sounds of the district faded behind him.

  He paused.

  Listened.

  Nothing followed.

  Still, he waited another moment.

  The Mandate’s watchers rarely revealed themselves until the instant they stepped out of the dark.

  Satisfied enough, Ishrael crossed the alley and lifted a rusted sewer grate from the ground.

  The ladder below descended into blackness.

  He slipped inside and pulled the grate closed above him.

  Darkness swallowed the tunnel.

  The air smelled of damp stone, stagnant water, and something faintly sour that Ishrael had long ago stopped trying to identify.

  He lifted his hand and spoke the words automatically.

  “Bones of the elders, roots of the deep—

  little flame wake and darkness retreat.”

  A small emerald fire flickered to life above his palm.

  Ishrael grimaced.

  Without dragon blood, words were the price of power.

  The green flame floated lazily above him as he dropped the final few feet from the ladder and landed lightly in the sewer canal.

  Water trickled slowly along the stone trough that ran through the corridor.

  The light rolled outward across the tunnel walls.

  Something watched him from the dark.

  At first Ishrael thought they were eyes.

  Then the creature shifted.

  The glow came from a single amber orb embedded in the center of its skull.

  Six legs clattered across the stone.

  A Kerun scuttled away into a drainage crack with an irritated hiss.

  “Filthy things,” Ishrael muttered.

  Another clung to the ceiling ahead.

  The orb on its forehead flashed suddenly.

  A harsh pulse of light filled the tunnel.

  Ishrael blinked and cursed.

  By the time his vision cleared, the Kerun had already vanished into the sewer walls.

  “Annoying little creatures.”

  He stepped over a pile of scattered Kerun droppings and continued deeper into the tunnels.

  The route twisted through the undercity like the veins of some buried beast.

  Ishrael followed it by memory.

  Left at the broken pipe.

  Across the narrow canal bridge.

  Up one ladder.

  Down another.

  Anyone without the path memorized would have been hopelessly lost within minutes.

  The tunnels grew quieter the deeper he traveled.

  Even the Kerun stopped appearing after the third canal crossing.

  That was usually a sign he was close.

  Ishrael slowed as he approached a blank stretch of stone wall.

  To anyone else, it was simply another section of sewer masonry.

  But Ishrael knew better.

  He raised the floating flame slightly and examined the bricks.

  There.

  One stone looked identical to the others, yet somehow felt… wrong.

  He stepped forward and placed his hand against it.

  Working for Washia Vitrina had many advantages.

  Surviving her experiments was not always one of them.

  The brick drank his heat.

  The moment Ishrael’s palm settled against it, the stone answered with a faint pulse—soft as a heartbeat, precise as a blade-tip tapping glass. Runes woke beneath his skin, crawling along the lines of his fingers in thin green filaments that matched the hovering flame above his hand. The sensation always made his teeth itch. Mana being pushed through a body felt intimate in a way blades and chains never did.

  A second pulse followed.

  Then a third.

  The wall accepted him.

  The brick sank inward a finger’s breadth, then slid sideways with a sound like wet stone grinding against stone. A seam opened in the masonry, just wide enough for Ishrael to slip through. He stepped into the gap, and the wall sealed behind him without a trace, leaving him in a corridor that should not have existed.

  The air changed.

  Sewer stink faded into something sharper: heated resin, scorched metal, and the faint bite of ozone that always clung to active crystals. His flame dimmed on its own as if embarrassed to be so crude in a place that survived on finer tricks.

  Ahead, the corridor narrowed, then widened into a soft curve. Ishrael walked it with measured steps, boots quiet on dry stone. The floor here carried carved channels—subtle grooves, barely visible, arranged in looping spirals that fed into one another like a carefully planned irrigation system.

  Mana-flow.

  A siphon line.

  Washia’s work.

  Above him, a faint vibration shivered through the stone. It came and went in repeating cycles, like a distant machine inhaling and exhaling. Ishrael pictured it without seeing it: custom reactors packed with crystals, charging and discharging in controlled waves. Pulling power from the city in pinpricks small enough to escape casual notice. Futaria’s districts bled alignment into their own conduits every hour of every day; a thief with patience could steal from that river and leave the surface unchanged.

  A city’s worth of vigilance made those pinpricks dangerous anyway.

  Ishrael reached the first membrane.

  It hung across the corridor like a sheet of clear water suspended in midair—glass-thin, perfectly smooth, trembling with contained pressure. He could see through it, but the view beyond looked slightly wrong, as if distance had forgotten how to behave.

  He lifted his hand, gathered his courage, and stepped into it.

  Coolness swept over his face and down his spine. Sound dulled instantly, the world’s texture thinning like cloth being stretched. The green flame above his palm shrank and steadied, tightening into a more compact glow.

  One membrane down.

  Two more to go.

  Washia stacked them deliberately: the first muted external sound and scent, the second scrambled mana signatures, and the third ate the shape of the second. A nested lie—each layer defending the previous one. The regime’s searchers relied on patterns. Washia built places where patterns dissolved.

  He crossed the second membrane and felt pressure build behind his eyes. His stomach tightened as if gravity had shifted a fraction. He slowed, breathing through it, letting his body adjust.

  Without dragon blood, even walking through a shield carried a cost.

  The third membrane shimmered faintly, almost gentle. Ishrael stepped through it and felt the city vanish behind him.

  Silence settled.

  Not the quiet of a sewer at night.

  An engineered silence—complete, deliberate, absolute. He could have shouted and heard only the soft movement of his own chest.

  He released a slow breath and continued.

  The corridor ended at another wall.

  This one held no seams, no obvious mechanism, no sign of a door at all. Just stone blocks, mortared with care, arranged so evenly they looked like a single carved slab.

  Ishrael raised his hand toward a cluster of bricks near the floor, searching for the correct one by memory. There was a pattern to it, a sequence that changed every few cycles—Washia’s idea of “basic security.” He pressed three stones in order: left, upper-right, then center. Each touch fed a trace of mana into the stone.

  Nothing happened.

  His throat tightened.

  He tried again, slower, more careful.

  Left. Upper-right. Center.

  The wall remained stone.

  Ishrael swallowed. He glanced down the corridor behind him, then back at the wall, as if staring harder could convince it to behave.

  A soft click came from within the masonry.

  Relief loosened his shoulders.

  A square of stone slid upward, revealing a hand-sized recess lined with pale crystal. The crystal held a faint internal glow, like moonlight caught in ice. He placed his palm inside.

  Cold bit into his skin.

  Runes flared.

  The recess drank his mana, tasted it, compared it to a template embedded somewhere deeper in the wall. Ishrael held still while the scan ran its course. This was the part that always made him feel like prey.

  Identity glyphs.

  The Iron Mandate loved identity glyphs.

  Anyone crossing a gate someday would need one, the street vendors whispered. Everyone needs identification, they said with cheerful confidence, and they sold the idea like it was bread.

  Washia took the same logic and twisted it: if the Mandate could use it to track, she could use it to bar the door.

  The crystal brightened once, then dimmed.

  Acceptance.

  The wall shuddered and folded inward along invisible joints, stone sliding with intricate precision until an opening formed wide enough for a person to pass. Warm light spilled out, bright and oddly colored—greens and violets layered together, punctuated by harsh white flares that flickered as if something inside couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be fire or lightning.

  Ishrael stepped through.

  Washia’s lab did not look like a room.

  It looked like an idea that had escaped into the physical world.

  Tables stacked on tables crowded the space in tiered chaos. Glass vessels the size of his torso bubbled with liquid that glowed faintly, each one connected by tubes that ran into crystal manifolds. Mana crystals hung from cords like fruit in a mad orchard, rotating slowly within invisible fields. Metal arms mounted into the walls held tools—chisels, tongs, thin blades, delicate clamps—each moving in tiny automated adjustments as if testing the air.

  A half-assembled device sat in the center of the floor: a lattice of black metal rings around a suspended crystal core. The core pulsed in uneven rhythm, brightening, dimming, brightening again. Every pulse made the room’s shadows twitch.

  Ishrael’s flame hovered close to him now, like a nervous pet.

  He took two careful steps forward and closed the door behind him. The wall sealed with a whisper of stone. Silence remained, yet the lab itself hummed with internal motion—reactors cycling, conduits feeding, shields breathing.

  He turned toward the nearest worktable.

  A tray of components lay scattered there: etched plates, coil-wrapped rods, and a cluster of translucent stones that glimmered with internal light. Several of them flashed in a slow, rhythmic pattern, like a heartbeat made of color.

  Ishrael leaned closer.

  The stones were beautiful.

  They were also glowing.

  His hand moved toward one without conscious permission.

  The moment his fingertip neared the surface, the stone flared bright—violent green-white, sharp as a lightning flash trapped in a gem.

  Ishrael jerked his hand back.

  Too late.

  The crystal snapped like a seedpod.

  A crackling burst of energy detonated across the table, knocking tools into the air and sending a spray of heated dust outward. Ishrael threw up his arm, instinctively forming a half-spoken ward—

  “—By ember and—”

  The blast punched him in the chest anyway, slamming him back into a rack of hanging coils. Glass clinked. Tubes rattled. Something expensive shattered somewhere in the room with a sound like a bell being broken.

  Smoke curled upward in thin ribbons.

  The lab’s lights flickered once.

  Then steadied.

  From deeper within the labyrinth of tables and suspended devices, a voice snapped through the engineered silence—sharp, furious, and entirely familiar.

  “Ishrael!” Washia Vitrina’s shout cut across the chamber like a thrown knife. “Don’t touch anything that’s glowing!”