To avoid causing panic or giving anyone any ideas, the fact that Arthuria and her knights were going off to war against hellish demons was kept hidden from most people; only those who had to know were allowed to know.
The rest never caught even a whisper of news about the upcoming war.
But beneath the veil, nothing was as normal as it all appeared.
Camelot still gleamed in the morning light. Markets still opened. Children still ran through streets paved in white stone. The Holy Grail's blessing still flowed through the land, subtle and steady, ensuring prosperity and stability.
But security doubled quietly.
Knight patrols were rerouted.
Certain reports were no longer dismissed as coincidence.
And deep within one of the lower administrative wings of Camelot—far removed from the grandeur of the throne room—two former assassins studied Albion as if it were a battlefield.
The chamber of the Veiled Hand did not resemble a war room of knights.
There were no banners.
No heraldry.
No grand table carved from sacred oak.
Instead, there were screens.
Maps.
Data projections layered across the kingdom in overlapping translucent sheets of color and numbers.
Yelena Belova stood with her arms folded, her expression composed as always, pale eyes scanning the floating reports before her. Beside her, Sonya adjusted one of the overlays, narrowing the data to specific urban districts.
"Incidents?" Yelena asked.
"Minor," Sonya replied. "Three cases of clustered insomnia in Bristol. Two suicide attempts in Manchester with similar phrasing in the notes. A financial executive in York liquidated assets without explanation and disappeared."
Yelena's gaze sharpened slightly.
"Disappeared how?"
"Left his house at 02:17. Cameras lost him near the river. No body."
Not panic.
Not invasion.
Threads.
Yelena exhaled slowly.
"Pattern?"
"Not yet," Sonya admitted. "But it's too early for clean patterns. If this is what we think it is, it will start small."
Of course it would.
Demons did not begin with firestorms and brimstone.
They began with weakness.
Desperation.
Sleepless nights.
People who believed no one was watching.
Yelena had once belonged to such systems.
She understood how corruption seeded itself.
"The Knights?" Sonya asked carefully.
Yelena's jaw tightened just slightly.
"Limited."
That was the official term.
Limited.
Lancelot remained.
Agravain remained—though he was bound to Camelot itself.
Gareth.
Sir Dagonet.
Only four members of the Round Table remained, enough to be a fearsome force, no doubt, but to cover an entire nation—even the entire Round Table was stretched thin—and now reduced to just this?
Yeah, short on manpower didn't even begin to describe the current situation. At least the Enforcement Knights remained in number—those silent constructs of magic and steel, incorruptible and obedient. They did not tire. They did not doubt. They did not dream.
But the difference between those and the true Knights of their king was as vast as an ocean.
Enforcement Knights inspired order.
The Round Table inspired faith.
"How long before people start noticing the others are away?" Sonya asked.
"Not long enough," came Yelena's answer. "Which is why we have to do something to make sure they don't notice. At least for as long as possible."
And that was the real problem.
Each of the Knights was a public figure.
A symbol.
A celebrity.
Children dressed as them for festivals. Tourists waited hours to glimpse them during public patrols. Interviews were scheduled months in advance. The Veiled Hand maintained entire digital teams to curate their appearances, manage public messaging, and ensure the myth of Camelot remained both inspiring and accessible.
The Round Table was not hidden in towers like medieval relics.
They were visible.
Approachable.
Present.
The people had grown used to seeing them.
The Veiled Hand managed their social media accounts—carefully, strategically—well, except for Mordred. Mordred controlled her own, much to everyone's eternal frustration. There had been an incident involving a livestreamed sparring match and a broken training hall that still circulated as a meme.
If it were just one or two missing—a diplomatic visit, a foreign inspection, a mysterious but heroic "mission abroad"—it could be covered.
It had been done before.
But this many at once?
That was not a scheduling gap.
That was an absence.
And absence bred speculation.
Speculation bred anxiety.
And anxiety was fertilizer for despair.
Sonya began flicking through projected feeds—trending tags, regional chatter, harmless fan accounts speculating about upcoming appearances.
"Public curiosity spikes in about seventy-two hours if routines change," she said. "Five days if we start cancelling appearances. Less if someone notices Lancelot isn't at his usual training exhibitions."
Yelena's eyes moved across the projection of Albion, glowing faintly in layered light.
"We don't cancel," she said.
"We replace."
Sonya paused.
"With what?"
"With presence."
Yelena reached forward and expanded a cluster of mid-sized cities—Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Birmingham—overlaying them with stress indicators: economic pressure zones, flagged rhetoric clusters, insomnia spikes.
"Sir Dagonet."
Sonya stared at her.
"The jester?"
"The Knight," Yelena corrected evenly.
Dagonet was rarely taken seriously by the public.
He played the fool. The entertainer. The one who stumbled into court assemblies with exaggerated bows and theatrical sighs. He performed in market squares and schools. He mocked bureaucrats and teased knights. He made children laugh.
And he was, beneath all of it, one of the Round Table.
People relaxed around him.
Spoke freely.
Confessed more than they realized.
"You want him visible everywhere," Sonya said slowly.
"Yes."
Yelena traced a path through the kingdom.
"Public performances. Surprise appearances. Festivals. Community outreach."
"And?"
"And we schedule them exactly where our indicators suggest potential instability."
Sonya's eyes widened slightly as the pattern clicked into place.
"He entertains," she said. "But he also stands exactly where something might happen."
"Yes."
If cult rhetoric rose in Liverpool, Dagonet would perform there.
If despair clustered in Manchester, Dagonet would host a charity tournament.
If insomnia spiked in Bristol, Dagonet would stage a night performance beneath lantern-lit streets.
It was fine if nothing happened, but in the case that something did happen, he would already be there to deal with it, to assist the Enforcement Knights in cutting down any cults or demons.
A soft chime sounded from one of the terminals.
Sonya glanced at it, frowning slightly.
"Religious pamphlets circulating in Liverpool. Anonymous distribution. Promising protection from 'the coming fire' in exchange for pledges."
Yelena did not look surprised.
"How many?"
"Still counting. The language is subtle. Apocalyptic. Protective."
Fear framed as salvation.
Classic.
"Deploy Dagonet to Liverpool first," Yelena said.
Sonya nodded.
It was likely unnecessary; after all, few people would believe in nameless gods and cults when Albion had Arthuria on the throne, and the Church of Albion was Christian and had the full backing of the Vatican, despite not being Catholic.
If some unknown gods were to try and push their way into their domain, they would no doubt send people to help deal with the problem, despite the Exorcists and other Church personnel not being as strong as even the Enforcement Knights. They had dealt with things like this forever, so they at least knew what to do.
And in case they lacked the needed strength to deal with any demons or their cultists, they could get help, but just tracking down unstable elements would relieve some of the pressures on the Veiled Hand.
"Alright, what of Gareth? I assume both Agravain and Lancelot will stay back in Camelot, so that just leaves her to be deployed around as well," Sonya asked as they moved on to the last movable of the four knights.
Yelena did not answer immediately. Instead, she adjusted one of the projections, zooming outward until the entirety of Albion shimmered before them—a kingdom outlined in light and data, layered with economic charts, demographic breakdowns, social sentiment analysis, and flagged anomalies.
"Gareth is not suited for reactive deployment," Yelena said at last. "She is better used as a stabilizer."
Sonya tilted her head slightly. "I guess that makes sense. She is a ray of pure sunshine, that one—also the most popular of them all. Her socials are off the charts."
"That's exactly why she's dangerous," Yelena replied, eyes still on the map.
Sonya glanced at her.
"Not to us," Yelena clarified. "To them."
She expanded a series of sentiment graphs that pulsed in soft gradients of green and amber across the countryside. Gareth's presence correlated almost absurdly well with spikes in civic participation, volunteerism, charitable giving, and local engagement.
Whenever she visited a district, petty crime dipped, hospital donations rose, and community forums filled with people proposing projects rather than complaints.
It was as if sunlight itself followed her.
"She doesn't just inspire," Yelena continued. "She brings the best out in people, makes others do better on their own. Honestly, it's almost scary how popular she is." Yelena paused, then added, almost to herself: "We should have profiled that more aggressively."
Sonya blinked. "You think she's a liability?"
"No," Yelena replied. "I think she's a weapon."
She swept her hand over the map.
"Demons prey on despair. They need people to feel isolated, powerless, abandoned."
Sonya nodded. "Gareth does seem like a natural counter to something like that. Not to mention that, on the whole, Albion has few people that are truly abandoned. The people most likely to fall to demonic sway are already rotting in prison."
Her words made Yelena pause before she began pulling up data on the prisons. Arthuria was utterly ruthless toward people who broke the law; not only had she brought back the death penalty, but she was also more than happy to use it.
The number of people given a death sentence in just one year was more than the rest of the world combined, and it was very easy to get it.
Arthuria truly had no mercy for criminals. Though even she didn't kill them all; many were just thrown in prison to work off the debt they owed society.
Sure, by far the vast majority of criminals had not been killed or imprisoned, but exiled. Which was really just another word for deported. Entire families were rounded up and shipped out. It was brutal, but it worked.
It was better to be sent back to their original nation than killed or locked up forever, and since entire families were punished for the crimes of sons or daughters, it meant that the number of people who had suffered due to Arthuria's harsh laws was minimal.
But there were still some families who might hold a grudge due to their children getting put to death, or other such things.
Maybe… maybe this was the true threat?
Not a large army, but a small group of people who had lost everything, now offered revenge by demons?
"The prisons," Sonya breathed out, picking up on Yelena's thoughts.
Yelena's gaze remained locked on the new projections now floating before them. "Yes. We always profiled the general populace for susceptibility. The lonely, the desperate, the angry. We never seriously considered the already-punished."
Sonya began pulling up prison records. "But security is tight. Infiltrating a prison to sow demonic influence?"
"The influence doesn't have to start outside," Yelena countered. "It could target their dreams. We can only stop people from getting inside, but demons whispering directly into the mind? That isn't something we have dealt with before."
She gestured to the data. "These people are already broken. Many feel wronged by the very system that holds them. They have nothing left to lose."
She brought up a list of high-security facilities, marking those with inmate populations who had been convicted under the most severe statutes. Families with grudges. Individuals with histories of occult interest before their incarceration.
"Begin deep-screening all personnel with access to inmate housing," Yelena ordered. "Cross-reference backgrounds, financials, recent behavioral changes. I want anomalies."
"Already done," Sonya replied promptly. "That's standard protocol for any new threat vector. Nothing flagged. At least, not in the way we'd expect."
She swiped, and a new overlay appeared, highlighting a single ward in Albion's most infamous maximum-security prison, Blackgate.
"Warden's report from two weeks ago," Sonya said. "A sudden spike in 'group meditation' among the inmates in Block C. All voluntary. Warden dismissed it as a new coping mechanism."
Neither of them blamed the man for not reacting at all; after all, there seemed to be nothing wrong with it. Only because they had special insight into a world and threats most never knew about could they see more.
"Well, we can't exactly send Gareth in there," Sonya said. "No amount of sunshine is going to make those people forget that their families are either dead or rotting in some other cell, and if anything, she's the symbol of the kingdom that sent them there."
"We stick to the plan—have Sir Dagonet and Gareth move around, we try to keep the social media accounts active with the backup footage we have on hand, and we pray that the king finishes before things get out of hand," Yelena stated flatly.
"And we do what we can to protect our home," Sonya added.
"Yeah. Protect this place that freed us and gave us all that was taken from us," Yelena seconded.