The walls of High Town caught the dawn before anywhere else in the Heartland.
This was by design. Lord Aldric Farquat had commissioned the architects himself, had stood over their shoulders as they calculated angles and trajectories, had demanded they begin again—twice—until the mathematics proved what he required: that the first light of every morning would touch his walls, his towers, his kingdom before it graced any other.
He stood now at the window of his study, a room positioned at the apex of the highest spire, and watched the gold creep down the white stone ramparts like honey poured over bone. Below, High Town stirred in its orderly way—bells ringing at prescribed intervals, shutters opening in sequence, citizens emerging to sweep their regulation-width doorsteps.
Clean, he thought. Correct.
Behind him, the messenger waited. Farquat could hear the man's breathing—too loud, too animal—and the faint creak of leather boots shifting on marble. The messenger was tall. Farquat had noted this immediately upon the man's entrance, the way he'd had to duck slightly through the doorway, the way his shadow had fallen over the lord's desk rather than stopping respectfully short.
He would have the doorframes raised. Again.
"You may speak," Farquat said, without turning.
"My lord. Word from the Thornwood territories." A pause. Paper rustling. "The Wolf King has... the reports say he's gone mad, my lord. Slaughtered three of his own vassals in open court. Claimed they were conspiring against him. His wolves have been seen hunting beyond their usual grounds, and the border villages are—"
"Afraid?"
"Yes, my lord."
Farquat permitted himself a small smile. The glass reflected it back to him—the window had been treated with a subtle enchantment, one that added just a touch of height to his reflection, a broadness to his shoulders. He'd had the enchanter killed afterward, of course. Couldn't have word spreading that the Lord of High Town employed fairy tricks.
But the mirror remained. Necessary evils.
"And the other courts?" he asked. "How do they respond to Bloodmaw's... deterioration?"
"Confusion, my lord. Some are reinforcing their borders. Others are sending envoys to investigate. The witches—" The messenger caught himself.
Farquat turned. Slowly. Precisely.
He was not a large man. This was the first thing anyone noticed about Lord Aldric Farquat, and it was the last thing anyone mentioned twice. He stood perhaps five feet and two inches in his stocking feet—though no one had seen him in stocking feet since he was a boy, and those who remembered had been quietly retired from service. His boots added three inches. His crown added two more. The platform upon which his desk sat added another six, so that even sitting, he looked down upon those who stood before him.
His face was lean, clean-shaven, with the pinched precision of a man who found the world perpetually insufficient. His eyes were the pale grey of winter slate, and they held all the warmth of the same.
"The witches," he repeated. "Continue."
The messenger swallowed. "The witch covens are... concerned, my lord. There's talk of a meeting. The one they call Granny Weaversong has sent ravens to the other hedge witches, and—"
"Granny Weaversong." Farquat tasted the name like something spoiled. "The old sow of the Eastern Woods. Still alive, is she?"
"Yes, my lord. They say she's been alive for—"
"I know what they say." He descended from his platform, each step measured, his heeled boots clicking against the marble. The messenger instinctively stepped back, though Farquat was half his size. This pleased the lord immensely. "They say she's been alive for two hundred years. They say she can curdle milk with a glance and speak to the dead. They say she helps people."
He stopped before the window again, hands clasped behind his back.
"Do you know what I say?"
"No, my lord."
"I say she's a creature wearing a woman's skin. Like all of them—the wolves, the goblins, the things that live in hollow trees and whisper to children. They look like us. Some of them even believe they're like us. But underneath?" He turned his head slightly, profile sharp against the dawn light. "Underneath, they are chaos. Rot. A corruption so fundamental that it cannot be reasoned with, cannot be rehabilitated, cannot be tolerated."
The messenger said nothing. This was wise.
Farquat moved to his desk—ascending the platform in two swift steps, settling into his chair, immediately commanding the room again—and opened a drawer. Inside lay a small glass vial, no larger than his thumb. The substance within was the colour of dried blood, particulate and fine, shifting like living sand when the light caught it.
Red spores.
"Do you know what separates man from beast?" he asked, holding the vial up to the light. "It isn't reason. Wolves reason—after a fashion. It isn't speech. Parrots speak. It isn't even civilization. Ants build cities."
He set the vial down gently. Reverently.
"It is will. The will to impose order upon chaos. The will to look upon the darkness and say: not here. Not in my kingdom. Not while I draw breath."
He looked at the messenger—truly looked, for the first time—and the tall man seemed to shrink.
"The Wolf King's madness is a tragedy," Farquat said. "Inevitable, but tragic. It is in their nature, you see. The beast always wins in the end. The fairy always betrays. The witch always curses." He smiled, thin and cold. "We are simply... hastening the revelation. Helping the world see what was always true."
"My lord?"
"You are dismissed. Send word to the border garrisons—increase patrols, but do not engage. Let the beasts tear each other apart. When the dust settles..."
He gestured toward the window, toward the gleaming walls, toward the ordered streets below.
"...we will be there to sweep up the pieces."
The messenger bowed and departed, ducking through the doorframe.
Alone, Lord Aldric Farquat lifted the vial of red spores once more. Such a small thing. Such a quiet weapon. No armies, no sieges, no mess. Simply nature, accelerated. The fairy creatures were always going to destroy each other—he was merely helping them along.
The Wolf King had been the first. He would not be the last.
Soon, the witches would turn on the werewolves. The goblins would war with the sprites. The curseborn would slaughter the fae-touched. And when the Heartland had bled itself dry of magic and monstrosity, Lord Farquat would descend from his high walls with fire and order and cleanliness.
He would be the hero of this story.
He was certain of it.
After all—he was the tallest thing for miles.
In the laboratorium far below the castle, something shifted in a cage. Something with matted fur and hollow eyes, a creature that had once been proud, that had once run free beneath the moon. It did not remember its name anymore. It only remembered the smell of the red dust, and the feeling of its own mind—crumbling, crumbling, crumbling—like a tower with no foundation.
And in the Eastern Woods, a raven landed on a crooked windowsill and spoke a single word to the old woman inside:
"War."