The public execution of Ser Landon sent a chilling wind through the ranks of the knights across all ten kingdoms. In the city of Runest in Frosthold's, Captain Rykard in the main hall stood before his men, the parchment crackling in his grip.
"Let there be no ambiguity," Rykard's voice cut through the silence, his gaze a physical weight on each man. "Ser Landon of Sylvarath. Convicted of treason for surrendering a marked child to the wild. The sentence was carried out by beheading." He lowered the report, his eyes sweeping over them. "Compassion for the marked is collaboration with the enemy. It is a cancer that weakens the shield. And we cut out cancers."
Ser Evander stood perfectly still in the front rank, his face a mask of stone. But inside, a quiet voice screamed. 'Landon… you fool. You brave, noble fool. They killed you for a moment of humanity.' He felt a part of his soul wither and die, sealing away the last of his doubts behind a wall of cold, hard necessity. The Order was no longer a shield, it was a slaver's chain, and he had just felt the lock click shut around his own wrists.
The work did not stop. The next wave of marked births came just two moons later. In a cramped stone house in a Valrathian border town, a knight kicked down the door.
"There is no child here!" the father yelled, standing before the hearth, his arms spread wide.
The knight, his helmet muffling his voice into a grim monotone, "we know your wife was pregnant, so be reasonable and move away." The knight pointed to the faint, amber glow emanating from a hidden compartment under the floor. "The eyes always give them away. Hand it over."
"Please, she's just a babe!" the mother sobbed, clutching the knight's vambrace.
He shook her off without a word. This time, the knights were even more efficient, and even more brutal. The horror had become routine.
In the Bastion of Artheris, where stargazers once sought wisdom from the heavens, two acolytes now pored over a chart.
"The celestial alignment suggests the next birth-wave will coincide with the lunar perigee in three cycles," one said, his voice clinical.
"Inform the Kingsguard," the other replied, rolling up the parchment. "They will want to prepare for the purge." The stars were no longer guides, but a timetable for infanticide.
In Valrathia, the kingdom of roses and thorns, the beautiful nobles had turned the hunt into a profitable enterprise. At a lavish soiree, a Baroness sipped her wine and remarked to a knight-captain, "Twenty-Five gold crowns for a silver-eye, was it? A small price to pay for the security of the realm. My husband has even started a betting pool on how many will be caught in the first week." She smiled, a cold, sharp thing. "It adds a bit of sport to the unpleasantness."