The next morning, the command tent was already crowded when Reagan arrived.
Maps covered the central table, pinned beneath daggers and iron markers. Red lines traced the routes they had spent months establishing through the Life Mage realm. Several had been crossed out. Others ended abruptly at the military checkpoints Harry and Yennifer had established along the borders.
The air smelled of damp canvas, metal, and unwashed clothes. Nobody had slept well. Outside, soldiers drilled beneath a grey sky, their shouts carrying through the tent whenever the wind caught the canvas.
Reagan took her place at the head of the table.
"Callen's betrayal has set us back."She rested both hands on the map. "We've lost access to information we depended on, and our enemies now know enough to anticipate some of our movements."
Nobody argued.
They all understood what that meant. A compromised route could cost them a shipment of weapons. A compromised informant could expose an entire safe house. One mistake could leave a dozen people dead before the resistance even realised they had been discovered.
Jules shifted in his chair, worrying the frayed edge of his sleeve between his fingers.
"We're already reducing our raids on Life Mage strongholds and mines,"he said. "Now we're supposed to move more operations into the Death Mage realm, but the borders are tightening. Harry and Yennifer have united their forces. Their patrols are doubling, and the roads we used last month are already being watched."
He stopped and glanced around the table, as though hoping someone might offer an answer that would make the situation less terrible.
No one did.
Across from him, Ron leaned forward.
"My people are still out there. We have families waiting on those shipments. Children hiding in cellars because the creatures are getting closer to the villages. If we lose the remaining routes, we lose the supplies keeping them alive." His jaw tightened. "And if Harry gets any closer to our operation, we're doomed."
Jules swallowed.
"He'll send soldiers."
A chair creaked somewhere behind them. One of the younger men lowered his eyes to the map.
Jules leaned forward, pressing both palms against the table. His hands were shaking now, and he made no attempt to hide them.
"How are we supposed to fight a war on two fronts when we can barely keep our people alive on one?"
Reagan watched him without interrupting.
She understood his fear. She had seen what happened when a settlement was caught unprepared. She knew the sound of people screaming behind barricaded doors, the stink of blood in narrow streets, and the terrible silence that followed when the creatures of the night finally moved on.
But fear had kept them retreating for generations.
And they were running out of places to retreat to.
Reagan's mouth curved into a faint smirk.
"By letting them believe they're winning."
Jules stared at her.
"They think they've cornered us,"she continued. "They believe Callen's betrayal has left us scrambling. They expect us to hide, abandon our routes, and spend the next six months trying to recover what we've lost."
She straightened, lifting her hands from the map.
"Let them believe it. Let them grow comfortable. Let them pull their forces away from the places they think we've already abandoned."
Her gaze travelled around the table.
"While they congratulate themselves, we strike somewhere they never expected us to reach."
Gabrielle drew a slow breath. She had known this was coming, but hearing Reagan say it aloud still made her stomach tighten.
"We take down the Sister of Light."
The room went silent.
Jules's fingers stilled against the table.
Someone near the entrance whispered a curse. Another person turned sharply towards Gabrielle, as though waiting for her to laugh and admit it was a joke.
She didn't.
Gabrielle stepped forward and spread a hand across the map, just beyond the marked perimeter of the High Priestess's fortress.
"We have enough artillery to breach the outer defences. Our insider has identified the Umbrali Orb's location. If we move quickly and keep the operation compartmentalised, we have a chance of reaching it before the High Priestess can respond."
"A chance?" Jules repeated.
Gabrielle met his eyes. "Yes."
"And what happens when we get there?"
"Once the orb is taken and sealed, the High Priestess loses control of the protection it provides."
Jules went pale.
Everyone in the tent knew what the Umbrali Orb did. They had spent their lives hearing about it, living in its shadow, and suffering from the unequal distribution of the safety it made possible.
The orb helped keep the creatures of the night beyond the territories claimed by the Life Mages and Death Mages. Their towns could flourish behind fortified walls. Their citadels could trade, grow wealthy, and send their children into the world without teaching them how to recognise the sound of something hunting them.
The Sagan people had never enjoyed that luxury.
And if the orb were removed from the High Priestess's control, those protections could fail.
The creatures would have access to roads and settlements from which they had been kept for centuries. They could cross borders that had once stopped them, slip through defences built on the assumption that the orb would always hold, and descend upon cities that had never needed to prepare for them.
A wave of murmurs rose around the table.
"You mean the citadels?" Brandon asked.
"All of them,"Gabrielle said. "If the protection collapses, no one can guarantee which settlements will remain safe."
"And the creatures won't stay in the countryside,"Jules said. His voice had dropped to a whisper. "They'll come into the towns."
"Into the towns, the strongholds, the citadels," Gabrielle replied. "Everywhere they can reach."
For several seconds, the only sound was the canvas snapping in the wind.
Then the room erupted.
"You want to open the borders to them?"
"Have you lost your mind?"
"Some of our children are working there!"
"Do you know what happens if they reach the eastern settlements? There are thousands of people there!"
Reagan waited until the shouting began to falter. She did not raise her voice. She didn't need to.
"They have allowed your children to grow up afraid of the dark," she said. "They have watched your villages disappear, your families starve, and your people die. They had the resources to help. Instead, they made you pay for protection that should never have been a privilege."
Her gaze settled on Jules.
"How many times has your council representative begged them for assistance? How many times have they sent back a fraction of what you needed and called it generosity?"
Jules looked away.
"They murdered Salvador Mondego," Reagan continued, her voice hardening. "They turned Raymond Redington's own son against us. And after everything they've done, they still expect us to bow our heads and be grateful for whatever scraps they decide we're worth."
Gabrielle winced fighting tears. The pain of losing her father a year ago still sore.
No one contradicted her.
A woman near the tent entrance pressed a fist against her mouth. Her sister had vanished on a supply run years ago. The search party had found blood on the path and claw marks in the mud. No body. No farewell. Just an empty place at the table that nobody had ever stopped setting.
Beside her, a mother pulled her young son against her side. The boy was old enough to recognise the name of the creatures that hunted their settlements, but young enough to believe that if he stayed close to his mother, nothing could take him.
She tightened her arms around him.
Reagan noticed.
So did Gabrielle.
For a moment, the fury in Reagan's expression gave way to something colder.
"They have built their lives around a protection they refuse to share fairly," Reagan said. "They tax your resources, dictate the scraps you can keep, and send you just enough to ensure you remain dependent on them."
Her fingers curled against the edge of the table.
"Your blood is on their hands."
She paused, looking around the room.
"So is mine."
The words struck harder than the shouting had.
An older man at the back lowered his head. His son had died defending their village, holding a barricade long enough for three families to escape. The boy had been nineteen. The Life Mages had sent condolences and a bill for the supplies used in the defence.
The man had kept the bill.
He still carried it folded in his coat.
Now he pulled it out, stared at the creased paper, and closed his fist around it.
"They should see it,"he said.
The room quieted.
He looked up, his eyes wet and furious.
"They should see what we see when the sun goes down. They should hear what our children hear outside their windows. They should know what it is to wonder whether the people you love will still be alive when you open your door in the morning."
A woman beside him began to cry. She made no sound, only pressed her knuckles against her lips as her shoulders shook.
Others were remembering their own dead.
The brother who had gone out to fetch medicine. The daughter who had been taken from a guarded road. The husband who had stayed behind to hold a gate that no one had come to reinforce.
Grief moved through the tent, but it did not soften the anger. It fed it.
"They've never had to live with what they've done to us," the old man said. "Not once."
Reagan let the silence settle.
"Then let them learn."
Jules pushed himself away from the table. For a moment, he looked as though he might leave. His gaze moved from the mother holding her son to the map, where the fortress had been marked with a black circle.
"If we take the orb," he said, "we may not be able to control what follows. The whole world will suffer. We won't be spared either."
"Yes,"Reagan said.
Her answer came so quickly that Jules stared at her.
"You understand that?"
"Every word."
"And you're still willing to do it?"
Reagan stepped around the table.
"I am willing to let this whole world burn if it means we all get to live as equals."
Jules's jaw tightened. He studied her for a long moment, searching for some trace of hesitation, some indication that she hadn't fully considered what she was proposing.
He found none.
Gabrielle moved beside Reagan. The decision had already been made, but she could feel its weight pressing down on everyone in the tent. They weren't just planning an attack on a fortress. They were preparing to tear away a protection that had shaped the balance of power between entire realms.
Once they acted, there would be no pretending this was another raid, another stolen shipment, another small victory against a system that had outlived its usefulness.
This would change everything.
Jules finally returned to his chair. He sat heavily, his eyes fixed on the map.
"Then we need evacuation plans," he said. "For every Sagan settlement we can reach. Warning systems, safe routes, supplies. If the creatures cross the borders, we cannot leave our own people trapped between them and the armies coming after us."
Reagan nodded once.
"I have already started preparing them."
"And if we can't evacuate everyone?"
"I will use all in my power to make sure they at least get a fighting chance. That is more than any mage or privy council has granted a Sagan Village"
Reagan looked at him, then back at the fortress on the map.
They had spent generations paying for a peace that had never belonged to them. Now they were preparing to take that peace apart, knowing the consequences might reach even the people they meant to save.
There was no clean victory waiting for them. No guarantee that the innocent would be spared.
There was only a choice.
And the knowledge that, once the first weapon struck the High Priestess's fortress, the entire world would feel it.