Most dreams vanish before boots even hit the ground.
Eleven days marked the northern advance, during which four clashes unfolded, yet every single one saw initial plans fade faster than the last. Starting strong, the opening fight kept structure for about two hours - then landscape shifts and enemy motion made orders meaningless. Next time? Less than an hour held together. By the third encounter, coordination collapsed even before combat began, thanks to scouts misjudging a river passage while commanders wasted precious moments bickering over charts.
Fourth time around, there wasn't any official strategy. Instructions arrived as a broad push forward - army code for we're not even faking a plan anymore, figure it out yourself, hope for the best.
Kael began to sense things differently. Not like the books said. More like how Orren understood land - not with eyes, but through shifts in air, tiny vibrations underfoot. The cries around him told stories - where force gathered, where it would break next. Skill came easily. That ease sat wrong inside him.
Shouting louder, the officers gave directions less surely - exactly backward when it came to clarity and calm. What Kael noticed wasn't strategy but show: commands meant less to guide than to prove someone still held control, since admitting frontline soldiers saw better truths would mean those on horseback had lost their grip.
That third fight changed something. When rules lined up with what was actually happening, he followed them. If they did not fit, he moved based on need instead. Guilt used to creep in until then - but not after.
Earlier, guilt had simply left Ysse behind. Not once did Orren carry such weight, his nature refusing paths he saw as flawed. What Bren turned into? That often caught Kael off guard, if only for a moment. From the shaking youth of the Low Quarter, now stood someone shaped by necessity: skilled where it counted, shifting like water, clear-eyed about what survival demands. Out here, silence spoke louder than screams. Something new stood where a child once did - steady, pared down by loss, shaped by what no coin can cover.
Later that morning, past noon, smoke still rising from blackened homes nearby, they rested inside an old storage room taken days before. With quiet hands, Orren began arranging small stones along faint lines drawn in ash - each mark standing for one clash, each stone a moment pulled forward from memory. The fourth fight had ended just hours earlier. Now, sitting close, eyes low, they studied what those shapes revealed.
"We're not advancing," Orren said. "We're cycling. Each engagement takes ground and each repositioning gives most of it back. The net movement north is negligible."
"So the plan isn't working," Bren said.
"The plan," Orren said carefully, "may not be to take ground."
Stillness settled between them as they held the moment.
"Then what is it?" Bren asked.
Still, silence held the room. Each person shaped their reply slowly, waiting on facts not yet gathered. Kael drifted toward memory of the ledger. Position at the edge meant something - value or risk, hard to tell. Rows pushed forward did the dirty work: find, wear down, flush out. Words promised together we stand. Yet every move played by count and measure.
Maybe it was the way the ink looked, sharp under glass. A pause lingered - not silence, but weight - when that officer studied him.
Ground was never meant to be taken. The idea had always been different.
Something felt off about the story they'd heard. Still, he hadn't figured out the real intention behind it.