The third force learned the wrong lesson from the southern road.
They learned that spectacle failed.
They did not learn restraint.
By morning, the smoke had thinned into memory, and the roads had returned to their usual rhythm. Trade moved. People spoke. Life reasserted itself in the stubborn, irritating way it always did after someone tried to impose an ending too loudly.
That was when the real danger began.
Lyra felt it in the absence of noise.
No rumors carried by traders. No envoys pressing for meetings. No flares testing response time. Even the watchers along the ridgelines thinned, their silhouettes dissolving into the land as if the lowlands had decided to forget.
“They’ve gone small,” Tyler said quietly as they walked the inner ring.
“Yes,” Lyra replied. “Which means they’v
