The body hung for less than an hour.
Volgrin command had built the gallows near the old supply post, just visible from the Elthemar walls. The rope was thick. The platform stained. The act itself — swift. Quiet. Mechanical.
And then it was done.
No cheers. No celebration. No second speech from Halvek.
Just a creaking board in the wind and a city that still hadn't surrendered.
Auren Varik stood beside the forge, watching from a distance. His hands were blackened with soot, though he hadn't worked the bellows all day.
Ilenna came up beside him. "You watched."
He didn't respond.
"I tried not to," she said. "Failed."
Silence.
Then Auren said, "That man had a name."
"They always do."
He turned. "But no one said it."
"That's the point."
In the trench behind the mess line, Tessan sat, weak but recovering. The fever hadn't killed him. Yet.
But the boy's eyes had changed.
"You see it, don't you?" he asked Auren that afternoon. "They're trying to break the city with fear."
"They're trying to break us too," Auren replied.
Tessan held his tin cup tightly. "I used to think war was about winning."
Auren looked up.
"Now I think it's about surviving long enough to forget what losing meant."
That night, Auren returned to the edge of camp.
There was a rusted crate buried beneath snow, half-covered with old canvas. He pulled it free and opened it.
Inside were old scrolls, spare bolts, dried ink, broken scabbards — discarded supplies that had never been officially logged.
He reached in and pulled out a battered courier satchel, still bearing the sigil of an older campaign — Volgrin's siege of the Black Reach, five years prior. A forgotten war.
He carried it back to his tent.
When no one was looking, he began writing.
Not to Dareth. Not to Larian. Not to anyone with a name or uniform.
He wrote to the field hands.
To the servants in the noble houses.
To the stable boys and fletchers.
To anyone who might still be listening.
The men who speak loudest at campfires do not bleed at the breach.You are not a sword. You are a person holding one.You have the right to ask why.You have the right to say no.
You are not alone.
He wrote ten copies.
Folded each.
Signed none.
Then, slowly, over the next three days, he left them where someone might find them: tucked beneath food crates, slipped into latrine posts, pinned under a stone in the trench.
And he waited.
On the fourth day, someone left a reply on his cot.
No name. No signature. Just five words, written in charcoal on torn cloth:
How do we say no?
Auren stared at the words for a long time.
Then burned them in his lantern flame.
Not out of fear.
But because there was no answer.
Not yet.
Inside Elthemar, Governor Larian stared at the growing pile of war debris clogging the central wells.
Wood fragments. Twisted metal. Bone.
Mira approached. "The people are beginning to murmur."
"About surrender?"
"About survival."
He nodded. "Good."
"They're also talking about hanging a Volgrin scout. The one we caught last night."
He raised his head.
"Without trial?"
"No trial left," Mira said flatly. "Just hunger and cold."
Larian stood slowly. "Then give him food. Give him water. And put him back outside the gate."
"That's mercy," Mira said.
"No," he replied. "That's a message."
Back in the Volgrin camp, the food began to rot.
Not all of it. Not enough to starve.
But enough to spread panic.
Sacks of grain turned sour.
Barrels of meat bloated with frost.
Bread blackened at the edges.
Auren helped drag out two crates from the mess tent, both stinking with mold.
"Sabotage?" Tessan asked, covering his nose.
"No," Auren said. "Neglect."
He turned to one of the quartermasters, a greasy-bearded man named Farl.
"These weren't checked before distribution?"
Farl shrugged. "Had five hundred mouths to feed and twenty hands. You want to count every crumb, you do it yourself."
Auren looked at him. "That's how people die."
Farl's mouth curled. "They're already dying."
That night, someone burned another letter.
Auren found it near the gallows. Ash still hot.
The parchment had been thick. High-grade. Not army-issued.
It hadn't been a message for soldiers.
It had been for civilians.
That's when he realized: someone else had begun writing too.
He wasn't the only voice in the dark.
And maybe… he wasn't the loudest.