The silence in the bunker after Liam's declaration was thicker than the mountain rock surrounding them.
It was Varg who shattered it.
"Horror story?" he spat, the word a venomous laugh. "We'll be the ones slaughtered in the dark! Night attacks are suicide. Their blessed sigils glow! Our own troops will be stumbling over each other. You'd get us all killed for a… a performance?"
Liam didn't look at him.
His gaze remained locked on Koth, who had not moved, his massive fists still planted on the map.
The Commander's expression was dark, but the molten intensity in his eyes had shifted from contempt to a deep, grinding calculation.
"The human is not entirely wrong," Zara said, her voice cutting through Varg's fury with clinical precision.
She approached the map, her silver eyes tracing the lines Liam had indicated. "Our predictability is our greatest vulnerability. The Paladin-Commander's tactics are efficient because they are built on a flawless understanding of our defensive patterns." She tapped the eastern ridge. "Introducing an unpredictable variable here…" Her gaze flicked to Liam. "…even a catastrophic one, has tactical merit by sheer virtue of being unexpected."
"Merit?" Varg snarled. "He's a court jester, Zara, not a strategist!"
"He is a variable," Zara repeated, her tone final. She looked at Koth. "The question, Commander, is whether the potential reward of breaking the enemy's rhythm outweighs the immense risk of this specific variable."
Koth finally straightened, his joints cracking like grinding stones. He looked at Liam, truly looked at him, for the first time since the capital.
"Explain your 'horror story'," he commanded, his voice a low rumble. "In detail. No grand speeches. Just the plan."
This was the audition. Not for a god, but for a commander.
Liam nodded. The actor retreated; the strategist, sharpened by the Cognitor's cold logic, took the stage.
"The ridge isn't for holding. It's for listening. And for killing." He pointed to the narrow path. "We seed the approach with simple, brutal traps. Pits lined with sharpened stakes, to kill, but also to maim and scream. We use the rockfalls your engineers are already proficient in, but we trigger them remotely. We make every step they take a gamble."
He then gestured to a section of the outpost's inner wall, a sector that was perpetually in shadow, furthest from the enemy's line of sight.
"At night, we send out small, fast teams—your best scouts, your quietest killers. Their sole objective is to disappear into the darkness between their camp and our walls, and silence their patrols. Not engage. Erase."
Varg opened his mouth to protest, but Koth silenced him with a sharp gesture. "Go on."
"The performance," Liam continued, his voice dropping, "is for their Commander. We make his scouts vanish without a sound. We make his safe approach route a gauntlet of screams. We let him lie in his tent at night and listen to the silence where his men should be, and the screams where they are. We attack his certainty. We make him afraid of the dark."
The bunker was silent again, but the quality of the silence had changed.
The sergeant was staring at the map, a faint, grim light in his exhausted eyes. Zara was nodding slowly, her mind already adapting the concept, refining it.
Koth's gaze was heavy.
"You understand the cost of failure? If they counter-attack during our foray, we won't be able to recall our teams in time. They will be slaughtered. The outpost could fall in hours."
"I understand," Liam said, his voice flat. "But the outpost is falling in days anyway. This isn't a plan for survival. It's for victory."
Koth held his stare for a long, heart-pounding moment. Then, he gave a single, sharp nod.
"Zara. You have the details. Use the Shadow Claws. Varg, you will work with the engineers on the ridge traps. No glory. Just efficiency. And silence." He turned his burning gaze on Liam. "You. You will come with me."
---
The tour of the outpost seemed a brutal education. Koth didn't speak, he just moved, a mountain of grim purpose, and Liam followed.
They moved past the main barracks—a foul-smelling cave where demons slept in shifts on thin straw pallets.
They passed the infirmary, where the soft, hopeless moans of the wounded were a constant, low hymn.
They walked the perimeter wall, where sentries stood with bows that had too few arrows, staring into the gathering darkness of the valley as if it were a physical enemy.
The soldiers they passed didn't salute. They looked at Koth with a kind of weary faith, and their eyes slid over Liam with a uniform, dull hostility.
[Collective Belief Average: - 31%]
The closer they got to the reality of their suffering, the less they believed in him.
They arrived at a secluded section of the wall, overlooking the treacherous eastern ridge. The wind here like a cold knife.
Koth stopped, leaning his forearms on the rough-hewn stone. "You see them?" he grunted, nodding down into the gloom. "The ones who will die for your 'performance'."
Liam looked. In the fading light, he could see the shapes of demons—young, old, all gaunt—mending armor, sharpening spears, their movements slow with exhaustion.
"I see them," Liam said.
"They don't believe in gods," Koth said, his voice low and hard. "They believe in the demon next to them. They believe in the Commander who shares their rations and stands on the same wall. They believe that if they die, it will be for the demon on their left and right, and for the home behind them." He turned his head, his molten eyes boring into Liam.
"You are not one of them. Your words are wind. Your title is dust. If you get them killed for a lie, I will personally throw you from this wall before the paladins have a chance."
It wasn't a threat. It was a promise.
Liam met his gaze, the wind whipping his dark hair. "I'm not here to be one of them. I'm here to make sure they live."
A flicker of something—not belief, not yet, but a raw, grudging acknowledgment—passed over Koth's face. He gave another of his curt nods and pushed off the wall.
"See that you do." Koth turned, walking away.
"Hey," Liam stopped him.
Koth turned, eyes narrowed as it fixed on Liam.
"I understand your frustration and pardon your disbelief, but when the time comes, you will answer for your blasphemy. Remember that."
Koth didn't give a response, he only turned.
As he walked away, Liam remained, watching the soldiers below.
He saw a young demon, no older than the boy on the road, struggling to lift a heavy stone for the fortifications. Another, older demon with a limp, wordlessly moved to help him, taking half the weight.
They weren't a grand army.
They were a pack of survivors, bound by shared hardship and a desperate, gritty loyalty to each other.
His plan, his "performance," would risk all of it.
The stage was no longer a castle throne room or a glowing garden. It was this broken wall, these tired soldiers, and the waiting darkness.
The script was written. Now, he had to make them all believe it was a story worth dying for.
And more importantly, a story they could live through.