Morning did not arrive with light.
It arrived with steel.
The second day of the campaign began with a coordinated collapse. The scavengers—numbering twenty-three now—found themselves surrounded, routed, and isolated. Fornos had repositioned his units during the night, without verbal command or torch. Signals alone governed the march. No songs, no chants, no fires. Only the rustle of cloaks and the quiet snap of flagcloth in the wind.
It was war by design, not instinct. Mechanical. Precise.
From the jagged slope of a ridge, Fornos observed the battlefield with the same blank mask he'd worn the day before. His silhouette was a phantom in the dawn haze, unchanging. The firelines from last night still smoldered in distant woods, casting intermittent sparks into the gray sky like dying stars.
His sub-commanders relayed signals across elevated points, armbands dyed with ochre and ash for identification. Their voices were not heard. Their presence was barely noted. They were extensions of the command structure, not leaders—only interpreters of the system.
Smoke columns drifted into view at measured intervals, marking the controlled perimeter. A chain of discipline wrapped the scavengers, shrinking the field like a noose.
One group of scavengers—maybe seven—attempted to break through the eastern tree line. Their movement was desperate, clumsy. But they ran fast, hoping the speed of fear might outrun structure.
It didn't.
A green flare burst upward.
Red flag—three strokes.
Pursuit.
Thornjaw leapt from concealment like a black dagger hurled by fate itself. Its long limbs and smoke-slicked armor glinted once before vanishing into the thickets. Seconds later, screams tore through the woods. Bark split. Bones shattered. The fleeing group scattered—two tried to climb a deadfall tree. Thornjaw climbed faster. One man was impaled on a branch; another crushed beneath the golem's clawed foot with a sound that silenced the wind.
Elsewhere, another squad—fewer now—had taken refuge in an old watchtower. Imperial stone, half-collapsed, and marked with old runes faded by weather and war. A poor choice.
Craterhoof, massive and deliberate, adjusted its position to face the tower. The first shell blew the upper floor off entirely, sending stone and body parts cascading down the slope. The second was unnecessary—but Fornos fired it anyway.
He wanted them to know: nothing they touched was sacred. Not even history.
By midday, it was over.
The remaining scavengers—ten in total—stood bloodied and without coordination, kneeling in a ravaged clearing. Their weapons had been thrown down. One had ripped his own shirt to tie a tourniquet around another's leg. Another wept silently, lips trembling with prayers to gods that hadn't answered in years.
The Ash Company did not jeer. They did not threaten. They simply encircled the prisoners with the same stillness they carried into battle. No order had been given to disarm them. No ritual speech. The prisoners had dropped their weapons on their own.
Fornos arrived an hour later, descending the ridge on foot, not flanked by fanfare but by the whistle of wind through burnt trees. His steps were slow, deliberate. The kind of pace only men who knew they were in control could afford.
Roa followed a few paces behind, her blade still faintly stained. A group of auxiliaries brought forth ten collars—custom-made in the night by the logistics team using leftover chain segments, old control rings, and salvaged codex fragments embedded at the spine.
As Fornos approached the circle, no one moved. The scavengers kept their heads bowed. One of them, a woman with a missing ear and a black eye swollen shut, raised her face as if to speak—then thought better of it and looked away.
Fornos knelt in front of the eldest among them. A veteran by the look of his gear—worn armor, faded tattoos of a now-extinct mercenary band. His left pauldron was shattered. Cracked lips. Eyes ringed with fatigue and defiance not yet extinguished.
"Do you understand what you lost to?" Fornos asked, voice low but unwavering.
The man's head tilted slightly. A moment of contemplation.
He shook his head slowly. "Not… not a man. We fought a goddamn system."
Fornos stood. There was no visible satisfaction—no pride. Only recognition.
"Then you understand."
He turned slightly and gestured. The auxiliaries moved with practiced speed, snapping the collars into place. None of the prisoners resisted. Even the youngest, a boy barely past sixteen, remained still as metal was clasped around his neck. The codex fragments lit with faint glyphs—symbols of bond, not obedience. Not yet.
"Will they serve?" Roa asked quietly.
"They will function," Fornos replied. "If they fail, they will feed the line."
Her expression was unreadable, but she didn't press further.
They walked away, leaving the auxiliaries to finalize containment. As they ascended the slope once more, Roa finally broke the silence.
"You're not building an army."
"No," Fornos said, eyes fixed on the horizon. "I'm building inevitability."
Below, the clearing filled with motion—combatants securing prisoners, handlers checking mana residue from fallen golems, scouts reporting new tracks to the south.
The trail behind them was scorched. But ahead? Opportunity.
The campaign wasn't over.
It had only begun.