Kael's POV
I smelled the smoke before I saw the village.
We'd marched through the night—thirty-eight exhausted men stumbling through darkness, following Radiant Shield knights who wouldn't tell us where we were going. My feet bled inside my boots. Tom had fallen asleep walking and nearly tumbled off a cliff.
"Stay sharp!" Captain Markus hissed. He was our unit leader, a Radiant Shield knight with cold eyes and a crooked smile. "We hit the target at sunrise. No survivors. No witnesses. No mercy."
"What target?" I whispered to Tom.
He shook his head, looking as scared as I felt.
The forest opened up, and I saw it. An orc village nestled in a valley, smoke rising from cooking fires. Dawn painted everything gold and peaceful.
Too peaceful.
"Where are the warriors?" Tom breathed. "Where are the guards?"
Captain Markus grinned. "Dead already. We hit their war party three days ago. These are just the leftovers."
My stomach twisted. "Leftovers?"
"Families. Children. The weak." He drew his sword, and it gleamed in the rising sun. "Can't let future warriors grow up, can we? Today you boys become real soldiers. Today you learn what war actually means."
"We're attacking families?" The words burst out before I could stop them.
Markus's hand shot out, grabbing my throat. "You got a problem, bastard?"
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak.
"Didn't think so." He shoved me away. "Remember—this is justice. They killed our villages. We kill theirs. Eye for an eye." He raised his sword. "CHARGE!"
The Radiant Shield knights thundered forward on horseback. Our unit ran behind them, weapons drawn, screaming battle cries we didn't mean.
I wanted to stop. To run away. To be anywhere but here.
But Rodrick was behind me, and he'd already beaten me once for being "weak." If I stopped now, he'd probably kill me himself.
So I ran toward the village with everyone else, my heart trying to escape through my chest.
The first thing I saw was a mother.
She stood outside a small hut, holding a baby. When she saw us coming, her face went white with terror. She didn't run. She just clutched her baby tighter and started begging in the orc language.
A Radiant Shield knight rode past and cut her down without slowing.
The baby fell into the dirt, crying.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no—"
"KEEP MOVING!" Markus roared.
Fires erupted everywhere. The knights were throwing torches onto roofs, into windows, into grain stores. Orcs poured out of their homes—old ones, young ones, mothers with children.
Not warriors. Not soldiers.
Just people.
"Please!" An elderly orc raised his hands, trying to surrender in broken Common language. "No fight! No fight!"
Three soldiers stabbed him. He died begging for mercy.
I stopped running. My legs wouldn't work anymore.
Around me, it was slaughter. Men I'd trained with—boys from farms and shops—were killing anyone who moved. Burning homes with families still inside. Laughing while they did it.
This wasn't battle. This was murder.
"Kael, move!" Tom grabbed my arm, trying to pull me forward.
A door burst open ahead. A young orc girl—maybe ten years old—ran out, her clothes smoking from fire. She had the same terrified eyes as the human children I'd seen in our village square, laughing and playing just weeks ago.
She ran straight toward me, arms outstretched, begging for help in a language I didn't understand.
"KILL IT!" Captain Markus screamed from somewhere behind me. "THORNWOOD! KILL IT NOW!"
My sword was in my hand. The girl was three feet away. Time slowed down.
She wasn't a monster. She wasn't evil. She was just a scared child who wanted someone—anyone—to save her.
I couldn't do it. My arm wouldn't move.
"COWARD!" Markus bellowed.
Tom stepped forward. His face was twisted with horror and tears, but he raised his sword.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
The girl fell.
I dropped my weapon and vomited. Just fell to my knees in the ash and vomited until there was nothing left inside me but shame.
"Pathetic." Rodrick kicked me as he passed. "Can't even kill a little monster."
The battle—if you could call it that—lasted maybe twenty minutes. When it was over, the entire village was burning. Bodies lay everywhere. I counted forty-three. Not one warrior among them.
Our casualties? Zero. Not one human even injured.
Because it wasn't a battle. It was an execution.
That night, they celebrated.
The camp was full of laughter, drinking, soldiers bragging about how many orcs they'd killed. Radiant Shield knights walked among them, praising their "courage" and "service to humanity."
I sat alone at the edge of camp, staring at my hands. They were covered in ash. I kept washing them, but the ash wouldn't come off.
Tom found me. He sat down without speaking, and I saw his hands were shaking.
"I killed a child," he said finally, his voice breaking. "I killed a little girl."
"She would have died anyway," I said, but the words tasted like poison. "The knights would have—"
"I killed her, Kael. Me. I can still feel it. The sword going through..." He covered his face. "Oh gods, what have we done?"
We sat there in silence, two boys pretending to be soldiers, covered in innocent blood.
Captain Markus stumbled over, drunk and grinning. A bottle dangled from his hand.
"There's our heroes!" He clapped us both on the shoulders, making me flinch. "First battle! How'd it feel?"
"Where were the warriors?" I heard myself ask.
"Hmm?"
"The orc warriors. You said they attacked our villages. Where were they?"
Markus laughed, taking a long drink. "Oh, them! We killed 'em last week. Ambushed their hunting party up in the mountains. Slaughtered the lot—maybe sixty warriors." He belched. "This village was just cleanup. Can't leave future soldiers alive to seek revenge, right? Kill the children before they grow up to kill us. Basic strategy."
My blood turned to ice. "So... none of the people in that village attacked humans?"
"'Course not! They were families, farmers. But their warriors? Different story." He leaned close, his breath reeking of alcohol. "Want to know the beautiful part? The warriors we killed? They were coming to our border under a peace flag. Trying to talk about the 'misunderstanding' of the village attacks." He laughed harder. "We shot 'em full of arrows before they could say a word! Can't have orcs spreading lies about how we attacked first, can we?"
"We attacked first?" Tom whispered.
"Well, yeah. How else do you start a war?" Markus seemed genuinely confused by our horror. "The High Council needed a reason to unite the human kingdoms. Nothing unites humans like a common enemy. So we dressed up in orc armor, hit a few of our own border villages, made it look like an invasion. Boom! Instant war! Instant unity!" He raised his bottle. "Genius, really."
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.
Everything—the dead villages, the murdered children, the draft, the war—all of it was planned. All of it was lies.
And we'd just killed innocent families to cover up those lies.
"You're saying..." My voice cracked. "Everyone we killed today was innocent?"
"Innocent?" Markus snorted. "They're orcs. They're all guilty of existing." He stood up, swaying. "Get some rest, boys. Tomorrow we hit another village. Bigger one this time. More targets." He wandered off, singing a victory song.
Tom and I stared at each other, horror written on both our faces.
"We have to tell someone," Tom said. "This is... this is evil. This is genocide."
"Who do we tell? The Radiant Shield is running this. The commanders know. The knights know." I grabbed his arm. "Tom, if we talk, we're dead. You heard Markus—they killed a peace delegation. They ambushed our own draft. They'll kill us without blinking."
"So we just... keep killing innocent people?"
I didn't have an answer.
A commotion erupted near the command tent. Soldiers were gathering, pointing at something.
We pushed through the crowd and saw it.
Three bodies hanging from a wooden post. Three men from our unit—guys who'd survived the ambush with us.
"Deserters!" A Radiant Shield commander announced. "Caught trying to flee! Let this be a lesson—cowards hang!"
But I recognized those men. One of them was Marcus, who'd talked at breakfast about writing a letter to his mother. Another was young Pip, barely sixteen, who'd cried himself to sleep last night.
They weren't deserters.
They'd been murdered.
"Why?" Tom breathed. "Why kill our own men?"
Then I saw it. Pinned to Marcus's chest was a piece of paper. I was close enough to read it:
"TALKERS HANG. WATCHERS HANG. THINKERS HANG. STAY SILENT OR JOIN THEM."
My heart stopped.
This wasn't a warning about desertion.
This was a message. For me. For Tom. For anyone who'd witnessed the truth.
Stay silent about the massacre. About the conspiracy. About everything.
Or hang.
"Kael," Tom's voice was barely a whisper. "We're next, aren't we?"
Before I could answer, Captain Markus appeared beside us, perfectly sober now. His drunk act had been fake.
"Smart boys," he said quietly, his hand resting on his sword. "Smart enough to solve battle strategies. Smart enough to ask dangerous questions. Smart enough to recognize human arrows during an ambush." His smile was cold. "Question is—are you smart enough to keep your mouths shut?"
The crowd was dispersing. Soon we'd be alone with him.
"Tomorrow," Markus continued, "we attack a fortified orc position. Very dangerous. Lots of casualties expected. Would be a shame if two promising young soldiers died heroically in battle, wouldn't it?" He patted my shoulder, fingers digging in like claws. "Sleep well, boys. You've got a big day ahead."
He walked away, leaving us standing beneath three hanging corpses, the message clear:
Shut up and kill for the conspiracy.
Or die.