Eryx and Phaedra swung into motion first. Moonlight silvered the backs of the horses as he and Phaedra slid from the shadow of the trees and mounted with practiced ease. Their squad was small, chosen for speed and silence — three archers, two with short blades, and a wiry boy who could pick a lock like a priest unclasping a rosary. The road to Argolis was a ghost-path they'd traced in daylight and walked again under Atlas's patient instruction. Now they rode it as if it belonged to them.
The city slumbered, a low chorus of dogs and distant waves the only sound. The masked guard station that watched Argolis was built like a low box of stone with a tiled roof — an easy place to approach if one kept to the tiles and the moon. Eryx's team moved like cats, one by one clinging to the eaves and crossing from roof to roof until the station lay beneath their feet.
On his belly, Eryx peered through the cracked tile. Two guards dozed by the brazier, faces slack in the heat. His hands were steady as a surgeon's. A single signal and the archers let shafts sing — arrows cut the night and struck true, quiet as breath. Daggers flashed where silence faltered; throats were bled in two clean motions. No cries rose. Where the station's alarm might have sounded, only soft thuds marked men who had fallen asleep for the last time.
By the time the patrol-shouts would have begun, Eryx and Phaedra had already swept the compound, sealed doors, and melted away with the spoils of halters and keys. The masked guard station that watched Argolis was no more.
Across the water, Lukas led his team toward Nauplia. The port's watch-house crouched on a stone jetty, where the captain of the quays kept a nervous eye on incoming hulls and the men who prowled them. Lukas' squad jumped from shadow to shadow, the double-headed axe slung at his back but a short spear in his hand for speed. Nikandros and Thea split left and right, eyes peeled for lookouts.
They struck like a caught wave. The guard at the quay barely had time to blink as Nikandros' spear punched through leather and breath stopped. The captain's shout died on his lips when Thea's arrow punched through the rib between the twine of his mail. Men fell before they could mount any coherent defense. Where ships' ropes lay slack, the children seized oars and laid them where they could snap under strain; a handful of ropes were cut, moorings slackened. When the last man tried to run for a boat, Lukas met him on the plank, axe biting and ending the man's movement in a short, functional sweep. The port's hands lay quiet. The ships did not answer Chrysis.
Farther along the coast, Kyra and Leonidas' team struck Epidauros with a surgeon's accuracy. The watch-guards were trimmed down by swift blades; the forge, where local smiths tended tools for farmers and sailors alike, was seized and its bellows tamped to a dullness. Kyra's girls moved like shadows through the workshop, taking hammers and tongs and setting the place into a state where it could serve the camp rather than the cult. Riders who tried to flee found roads blocked by ropes and felled carts; the first warning bells of a mounted messenger in the morning would ring for no one.
Each team folded away into the dark after their work, leaving nothing but silence and the strange, stunned stillness of places that had been found empty of their masters. The plan — Atlas's plan — moved like a perfect machine.
And then came Atlas and Alexios.
They rode up to the Heraion of Argos with the horses' hooves muffled by wet grass, eyes fixed on the temple's marble. From the trees they could see figures at the outer circle — more guards than Atlas had expected. A torch-bearer marked the entrance. A man stapled to his boredom yawning beside the steps turned as their column crested the ridge. The light fell across Alexios's face and he smiled as if he'd been waiting for this all his life.
"Looks like they were ready for us," Atlas said, the line of his jaw hardening.
Alexios' reply was a rush, a grin and a challenge. He dropped from his mount and charged before Atlas could stop him — a living spear. Surprise gave him an advantage. He crashed through the first loose ring of guards, spear poisoned by the years of training. The first man never saw his death; the second tried to parry and found the spear through the ribs.
Atlas had no choice now but to join the chaos. He vaulted from his horse and moved like water into the gaps Alexios had carved. They were a violent pair: Alexios the sharp, eruptive force; Atlas the precise, deadly sword counterpoint. Where Alexios' rage opened lines, Atlas's blade closed them, slitting tendons, striking at guard's shields and forcing their stances to collapse. The two of them took the temple approach in a brutal ballet, each movement a practiced answer to the other.
Dozens of skilled guards—trained, masked, ruthless—converged, but the pair had the advantage of surprise, speed, and the single-mindedness of the hunted. They pushed forward, hand-to-hand and shoulder-to-shoulder, until the stone doors of the inner temple were before them like the mouth of a beast. A final surge saw the last guard fall; Atlas' sword rang once against metal and the frame shuddered. They threw themselves through the swing and the temple's cool air swallowed them.
Inside, the shrine was a hush. Incense still writhed from a braziers' edge; a figure knelt on the dais, draped in robes the color of old blood and finer than the rest. Chrysis bowed her head, hands folded, the cadence of prayer soft on her lips. She did not startle at their entry. She did not flee. The old priestess turned as if to examine the scenery—two children who had come with blades—and found their faces practiced in a steel calm.
"Enough," Alexios said, and his voice snapped like a spear hitting wood. "Stop your prayers Chrysis, It's time to pay for your crimes."
Chrysis's laugh was thin and practiced. "Crimes?" she purred. "What crimes, child? I raised you. I shaped you. I gave you purpose. You will be instruments for the gods."
Words between them sharpened into accusation and counter-accusation. Alexios's patience — if it had any — snapped. He surged forward, hands at Chrysis's throat, fury burning in his face. Atlas stepped between them, urgent and steady, because there was a reason Chrysis had to be brought back alive.
Chrysis tilted her head, as if humored by their rage. Atlas between them said, "Before you finish," voice low and dangerous, "tell me Chrysis — who is the spartan woman that came here with Alexios?"
Alexios stilled, breath ripping. Atlas felt the same pause that had sharpened in the temple of Asklepios not long before: some truths needed to be pulled, not torn. Atlas knew the name already from the game story, but he needed Chrysis to speak it. Her confession would be proof that cut a chain.
For a long, thin second Chrysis's face softened into a memory no knife could make. Then she laughed, a dry sound. "You want the spartan woman's name as if I am your servant. Very well. Myrrine of Sparta. That was the woman — filthy, broken, praying for a son. She left with her heart broken. Whether she died of sorrow or wandered away, what matters is that she is not here."
Alexios's fingers tightened until knuckles blanched. "Myrrine," he breathed, the name falling into the shrine like a stone.
He squeezed Chrysis's throat as if the word alone were not enough. "Dead or alive—what of her? Where is she?" he demanded.
Chrysis's thin smile thinned further. "You seek answers like a child wants sweets. All i know is that she left. That is all." Her voice was flat, cruel.
Alexios's face contorted, but the fury that would have torn her apart was held back by Atlas's steady hand on his arm. Atlas had what they had come for: a name, the seed of a path forward, and Chrysis's confession. Blood and retribution could wait for the camp; tonight they needed the capture.
Atlas moved with a single, practiced motion — not to kill, but to end the argument. A hard strike at the base of Chrysis's skull and she sagged like a puppet with its strings cut. The other children, who had slipped in behind them during the fight, finished the work: ropes, tight knots, and a heavy cloth to bind her. Chrysis went still, breathing shallowly.
They hefted her and mounted, the old priestess a living weight between children who had carried each other through worse nights. The ride back was a rush of hooves and low breaths, the world bleeding from black to gray as dawn chased them home. Behind them lay three dark stations broken and silent, and ahead—sleeping, vulnerable—lay the camp that had become a true, dangerous home.
Atlas kept his face set. The name — Myrrine of Sparta — burned in Alexios's chest like a sudden, bright fuel. Chrysis's capture was not the end of the war; it was the first, terrible victory, and the consequences would echo long after the horses' hoofbeats faded. They rode into the growing light with a single certainty: nothing would ever be the same.