The negotiations concluded not with a bang, but with the quiet scratch of a quill on parchment. Silverwood, humbled and broken, ceded the contested northern territories and agreed to a crippling tribute of medical supplies and rare herbs for the next ten years. It was an unconditional surrender disguised as a treaty.
I felt nothing. No triumph, no satisfaction. I had dismantled Kael’s world piece by piece, not out of vengeance, but as a clinical necessity. A surgeon does not hate the tumor she removes; she simply excises the sickness to preserve the health of the whole. My whole was now Bloodmoon.
In the days that followed, a strange calm settled over the war camp. The victory was absolute, the threat from the south neutralized for a generation. Warriors who had been tense and battle-har
