They reached Windas three days after Waycrest burned.
Not in ranks.
Not in wagons.
As what was left.
Ash clung to their clothes. Blood had dried black along hems and sleeves. Some walked blind beneath bandages. Others were carried on doors torn from their homes. No horns announced them. No bells rang.
The eastern gate opened without ceremony.
Healers moved among them, cutting away ruined cloth and pressing clean linen to wounds that had begun to rot. Clerks tried to count them and stopped when the numbers would not hold still.
Someone said the dead were in the hundreds.
No one argued.
From Windas's walls, the east was a smear of smoke against the sky.
Waycrest no longer answered the horizon.
~~
Lore did not see them arrive.
Captain Riven found him in the barracks yard.
Lore was still in armor. The dents had not been hammered out. His cloak smelled of river water and smoke. His sword was not at his side.
"Report," Riven said.
"We held the river. Evacuated civilians from the market and south streets. Encountered a fused construct near the quay. It broke our line."
"Casualties."
"Bram lived. Seris is uninjured. Nessa…" Lore paused. "Nessa is blind."
Riven studied him. "And the city?"
"Lost."
Silence.
"You were ordered to contain," Riven said.
"I was ordered to protect civilians."
"And you abandoned the field."
"There was nothing left to hold."
Riven stepped closer. "You saved lives. But you lost ground."
Lore met his gaze. "Then I'll take it back."
"That is not your decision."
Another pause.
"High Command will determine our response," Riven said. "You will wait."
Lore nodded.
"Dismissed, Head Squire."
~~
Far to the north, High Castle FirWul lay buried in stone and frost.
A relief map of Internia filled the council table—mountains carved in ridges, rivers cut into grooves, cities marked in metal.
An iron spike had been driven into the eastern edge.
Waycrest.
"Confirmed," Grandmaster Thalra said. "Occupied. Not destroyed. Their structures are grown from flesh and stone."
Sir Gareth rested both gauntlets on the table. "So MalWar is planting roots."
"They always intended to," Lord Malden replied. "Waycrest was small enough to test and large enough to matter."
Lady Nirelle traced the border. "And the people?"
Thalra did not soften her voice. "Used."
Silence pressed in.
"They are converting human bodies into Daemon frameworks," Thalra continued. "Early constructs. Iterative."
"They are learning," Malden said.
"Then we strike now," Gareth growled.
"Not yet," Nirelle replied. "They want to see what we commit."
Bartholomew the Infinite Chrome had not spoken.
"They took Waycrest to hear us scream," he said at last.
"And did we?" Gareth asked.
"Windas bleeds," Bartholomew said. "But it has not roared."
Malden folded his hands. "If we answer with Dragon Lords, they will know our ceiling."
"Which is why we answer with doctrine," Thalra said.
"The Holy Knights," Gareth said.
"Yes."
"They were an experiment," Nirelle said.
"They are now a necessity," Thalra replied. "MalWar is no longer breeding beasts. They are cultivating commanders."
Malden touched the spike. "Then this becomes the proving ground."
"You would leave it?" Gareth asked.
"For a time," Nirelle said.
Bartholomew lifted his head.
"No. We will not let them grow unchallenged. But neither will we descend."
Silence deepened.
"Windas will prepare," Bartholomew said.
"The Holy Knights will be named."
"And MalWar will learn what it means to take Internian soil."
The spike remained.
Not a wound.
A claim.
~~
The forge smelled of oil and rain.
Lore stopped at the threshold as heat rolled over him. Sparks leapt from the anvil where Garron worked.
"You're late," Garron said.
"I wasn't summoned."
"Never stopped you."
Behind him, Lore's old gear lay in pieces. At the center of the table rested two finished gauntlets.
Dark steel. Layered plates. Channels etched through the metal to guide magic rather than trap it.
Lore slid them on.
The metal tightened to his wrists and fingers.
"They won't make you stronger," Garron said. "They'll keep you from burning yourself apart."
Lore summoned fire.
It formed smaller. Tighter. Controlled.
"Not firebound," Garron added. "Not frostbound. Just tuned to you."
"And the sword?"
"Still becoming. Don't rush it."
Lore nodded and left.
The gauntlets felt heavier than steel.
They felt like restraint.
Lore learned they punished impatience.
When he forced his magic, it bled into the channels and died. When he shaped it, the fire obeyed.
Not louder.
Clearer.
The yard smelled of scorched stone instead of ash.
His hands trembled.
Not from exhaustion.
From discipline.
~~
The infirmary was quiet.
Nessa lay near the wall, bandages over her eyes. Her staff rested across her lap.
"Captain," she said as he approached.
"You knew it was me?"
"You walk heavier. Your magic is steadier."
"They say I can return," she said. "Backline only. Barriers. Wide-cast light."
"You don't have to."
"Yes, I do. This is still my war."
Silence settled.
"You're wearing new gear."
He guided her hand to his wrist.
"They're guiding you," she murmured. "Not amplifying."
"That's what Garron said."
"That's good," she said softly. "You needed that."
"I lost Waycrest."
"You lost a city," she said. "You saved a people."
She tightened her grip on his gauntlet.
"Don't let this turn you into something cold."
"I don't know what I am yet."
"Good," she said. "That means it's still yours to choose."
At the door, he paused.
"When I return… I want you better and healthy."
She smiled faintly. "Then come back alive. So I can hear about it."
~~
The war did not slow after Waycrest.
It narrowed.
Orders changed in tone.
No longer hold this road.
No longer secure this town.
Instead:
Go where maps ended.
Go where scouts did not return.
Go where the line had already failed.
Lore was sent to places Legions no longer marched—river crossings choked with bone, villages reduced to growth and shadow, stretches of road where silence felt shaped instead of empty.
There were no banners.
Only coordinates.
Only work.
No one called it selection.
But everyone felt it.
Knights who froze when they saw corrupted civilians were reassigned.
Knights who could not burn Daemon growths did not receive another mission.
Knights who survived and adapted were sent again.
Lore was sent again.
And again.
And again.
He learned to fight without formation.
Without reinforcement.
Without the comfort of retreat.
He learned to destroy nests instead of hunting stragglers.
To sever growth instead of slaying symptoms.
To leave nothing that could be shaped again.
His fire no longer spread.
It carved.
The gauntlets became part of his magic instead of something he wore. They guided his mana when exhaustion blurred his control, forced precision when instinct begged for excess.
~~
Bram stayed with the Legions.
Where shields still mattered.
Where lines were still drawn.
Where people could still be held instead of erased.
He returned bruised and furious, cursing supply routes and commanders and how none of it felt like fighting anymore.
Seris remained with the rapid-response squads.
Fast strikes.
Clean retreats.
Hit and vanish.
She grew sharper and quieter, speaking less of glory and more of timing.
They met when roads aligned.
Shared meals.
Shared silence.
But Lore began returning from places they were never sent.
Places with no survivors to thank them.
Nessa did not go with him.
She remained in Windas.
Where wards were raised and never lowered.
Where maps were redrawn nightly.
Where magic was taught without sight.
They saw each other between marches.
Sometimes for hours.
Sometimes only long enough for him to hand her a report and hear her voice.
They did not name what formed.
But when he left, she touched the gauntlet at his wrist.
And when he returned, she always asked the same question.
"Are you still you?"
And he always said yes.
Even when he wasn't sure.
The creatures changed.
Some fled instead of charging.
Some guarded their dead.
Some laid traps.
Lore learned which ones were new by how they watched him.
He stopped counting kills.
He started counting growths erased.
Riven said it first.
"FirWul is watching."
Lore did not ask how he knew.
He only noticed that missions were no longer assigned by region.
They were assigned by outcome.
Survive this.
End that.
Do not let it spread.
By the end of the season, Lore no longer fought beside ordinary squads.
Survivors were placed under him.
Not by rank.
By pattern.
Those who could move when retreat meant nothing.
Those who could strike when holding ground no longer mattered.
Those who did not look away when the work was done.
Bram was never assigned to him again.
Seris stopped being offered.
They were too useful where war still looked like war.
Lore was useful where it didn't.
~~
When the summons came again, it did not call thousands.
It called the ones who had not been sent home.
Lore stood among them beneath Windas's darkened banners and understood what the months had truly been.
Not training.
Not preparation.
But filtration.
Waycrest had not begun the Holy Knights.
It had fed them.