The field was quiet.
Not with peace—but with exhaustion.
Ash swirled through the remains of Starlight Ridge like ghosts trying to remember the shape of fire. The snow had melted around the fallen, turning the earth to red-streaked mud. The smell of resin and iron hung thick.
Renard Valtierre stood in the silence of a thousand broken breaths. He had not sheathed his blade—not yet. His cloak hung heavy with blood and fog. The once-pristine banner of Northreach fluttered limply behind him, tattered but unfallen.
All around him, the living gathered the dead.
Sorell oversaw Alpha's wounded with grim precision. Branley's helm was cracked, but he still stood in the shield wall line, refusing treatment until all others were accounted for.
Omega's survivors laughed and limped and spat blood into the dirt. Kael leaned against a broken pike, ribs taped in crude bandages, watching the sky like it had personally wronged him.
C-Team tended to the burned and the broken with glyphs that flickered and wept.
And Phantom Squad?
Silent. Intact. As if they had never left the fog.
Maera moved through the lines with a fractured shoulder. Elric cleaned his twin blades with slow, reverent care. Nyra stared at the retreating Caerenhold smoke trails with eyes sharp and unblinking.
Renard said nothing.
He was counting. Not losses.
Options.
A few hours later, in the strategy tent, Kael dropped onto a crate beside Renard with a long groan.
"We've lost fourteen," he said. "Another twenty out of combat. Phantom's intact, but barely. Black Sigil's down three, one critical."
Renard didn't reply. He adjusted the field map, marking new fault lines with charred chalk.
"We need days," Sorell said grimly. "We have hours."
"Then we'll stretch them." Renard's voice was steady. "Burn fatigue in drills. Sleep in shifts. Pull the bodies. Set false barricades and leave signs we're still here in full."
He leaned over the table.
"Make them guess."
Kael grunted approval. "And if they don't guess long enough?"
"Then we ghost them. Again."
A cough outside.
Then a voice.
"Permission to enter."
Kael looked up. "That's… not a local accent."
The tent flap lifted.
Lysette.
Hair loose, traveling cloak damp from melted snow. Eyes bright with distance and thought.
She stepped in quietly, nodding once to Kael, once to Sorell—then her eyes met Renard's.
"I bring dispatch from Lady Nyss," she said, holding up a sealed scroll. "And I chose to deliver it myself."
Renard didn't take it yet.
"You were at the capital."
"I was," she said. "Until Nyss decided this message required a trusted hand. One that already knew the terrain."
Kael raised an eyebrow. "You volunteering for courier duty now?"
Lysette smiled faintly. "Not quite. Consider me… invested."
She handed the scroll to Renard, then stepped aside, gaze lingering on him as he broke the seal and read.
The silence was heavy. He read slowly. Then again.
When he finally looked up, his expression hadn't changed.
But his pulse had.
Kael noticed. "Bad?"
Renard looked to Lysette.
"Worse."
She nodded. "The message came from Vale. Interrogation, final round. He gave up one more name before they put him under sleep-binding."
Sorell stiffened. "Who?"
Lysette answered.
"A man who trained under the original Phantom Doctrine. A Caerenhold defector from decades ago. Presumed dead."
Kael stood straighter. "You're saying they found a Phantom commander?"
Lysette's voice lowered.
"Not found. Crowned."
She turned to Renard. "The army coming next—Vale says it's bigger. More disciplined. They're not a vanguard. They're a successor. And the one leading them is someone Vale feared."
Kael's smirk faded.
Sorell crossed his arms. "This is what the last attack was for. A test. To see if we'd survive long enough to be worth crushing."
Renard turned and slowly walked to the map. His fingers traced lines in the soot. A new force. New vectors. New fires to prepare.
"This man Vale named…" he asked quietly. "Does he have a title?"
Lysette nodded.
"They call him the Whisper General."
That night, under cold moonlight, Renard stood alone by the perimeter fire. Lysette joined him.
They didn't speak at first.
Eventually, she said, "You never asked why I'm here."
He didn't look at her. "I figured you'd tell me when it mattered."
"It matters now."
She reached into her coat and pulled out a thin metal sigil—Nyss's mark, but altered. A branching thorn in its center.
"Lady Nyss raised me. Not as kin. As contingency. I was trained to walk where her influence couldn't reach."
"A shadow for a shadow."
Lysette nodded. "Exactly. But I chose this mission. You weren't assigned to me. I came to see what the capital feared."
She turned to look at him fully.
"They're afraid of you, Renard. Of what you mean. Of what you'll do when you stop hiding behind doctrines and start writing your own."
Renard met her eyes.
"And you? Are you afraid of me too?"
She smiled.
"No. But I am afraid for you."
By dawn, the banner above Northreach had been mended and raised again. Tattered, blood-marked—but standing.
Renard looked out across the hills to the east.
He didn't smile.
He didn't speak.
He just whispered into the rising wind:
"Let them come."
And the wind carried back a name.
Whisper General