The castle was still learning how to breathe.
Fresh stone steamed along the courtyard seams; the Crimson Spires cast thin shadows like spearheads along the inner walls. Far below, the kennels clicked as bone met bone, a patient metronome counting out the new rhythm of the Night Crypt. Flags of dried wine and windless cloth hung in the Red Gallery, their threads whispering sigils that preferred not to be pronounced aloud.
Lucas crossed the threshold into that gallery, and the banners stilled. The air was cool, dense—the sort of cold that keeps memory intact. A long table of black stone ran the length of the hall, its surface not polished to a mirror but to a famine, swallowing reflection. Chairs—if they were chairs—waited like traps that had learned to be furniture. The throne at the far end was not his; it was a thinking seat, set just below the banners where command could hear its own echo.
He did not sit.
A soft chime breathed across his vision.
[Ding!]
[War Council Protocol — Tier E unlocked.]
[Eligible Officers detected: Selena Draculea (Commander), Darkblood Sentinel Triad, Ghoul Veterans (Mirk, Var), Bone Pack Alpha, Ossuary Scour (Vicarius).]
[Optional: Summon Shadow Banshee (Scout) / Death Knight (Vanguard) via Blood Altar (cost).]
The doors answered his choice before he made it. Selena entered first—because the hall understood stagecraft—her bare feet noiseless on the stone, her hair a pale spill that the lanterns tried and failed to own. Her eyes skimmed him, caught, held, and the tiniest curve vexed the corner of her mouth.
Behind her, three Darkblood Sentinels filed in and stopped as one, their crimson gazes leaving cold afterimages along the banner-cloth. Mirk and Var followed, shoulders rolling like wolves that had learned to walk on two legs as a courtesy. Bone rattled—deliberate—then still: the pack's alpha slid from the shadow under the table, a larger Bone Dog whose skull bore a hairline fracture like a crown. It sat with composure, tail vertebrae tapping twice, as if taking attendance.
The last to arrive did not bother with doors. The lantern flames leaned away from the ceiling, and something cut loose from the dark between banners and descended like a slow blade: a figure in black plate the color of haunted water, a dead man's geometry done over as ceremony. His face was a ruin of smooth bone; his eyes were two coals that had learned to be coins. His gauntlets left a faint frost where they rested on the table.
"Vicarius," Selena said, pleased. "The castle had the decency to wake one knight on its own."
The Death Knight inclined his head to Lucas. Not a bow. A recognition: predator to predator.
"Report," Lucas said, and the hall fell into the shape of a response.
Mirk went first, because he had learned the rhythm of Lucas's thinking. His words were broken glass, but their arrangement pleased the ear. "Peri… meter holds. Ribs—fence," he gestured, "good cover. Dogs patrol. Scent fear pulls north ridge. Scouts sniff. None enter."
Var added, "Slaves dig. Grave feeds. Dust steady. No revolt. One sings. We break song." His mouth worked around the last sentence, proud of the cruelty that didn't require teeth.
The Bone Pack Alpha only turned its skull toward Lucas and waited for orders as if the words were meat. It smelled like old rain and recent knives.
The Sentinel Triad made no sound. Their aura did. It pressed the air down gently, a warning that pretended to be hospitality.
Selena leaned a hip against the table. "Ramius is huddled, not sleeping. He sent scouts to count how many we left uncounted. Then he sent men to count the scouts." Her smile widened; there was nothing gentle in it. "They've started tying bells to one another. Adorable."
"Disposition?" Lucas asked.
"Three camps in a triangle," she said, tipping a finger. "Forty, forty, fifty, with a hard knot of ten cavalry that thinks hooves solve philosophy. A smith tent, three cauldrons, four banners, and a man in a black coat who holds his back too straight. That one has a horn. If I were petty, I'd take the horn first."
"Be petty later," Lucas said. "Be surgical first."
Her eyes brightened with praise she didn't need. "As you wish."
Lucas looked to the banners. They stilled further, as if the sigils were listening. "We will not be bled in the open. We write the opening shape from our walls, with arrows, fear, and the dog's hunger. Blood Moon Archers."
He tasted the new term. The spires above seemed to hear it.
[Ding!]
[Queue opened — Blood Moon Archers (0/?)].
[Inputs required: Bone Dust ×500, Carrion Tithe ×20 (fresh), Vile Spark ×100, Sovereign Resonance daily.]
[Projected integration time: 4 hours (first volley), decreasing with cadence.]
Selena's gaze slid up toward the stone slots in the spires; a lover deciding which balcony to haunt. "I will give them hands that know where the heart is."
Lucas fanned the menu of costs with an inward gesture. Arithmetic checked itself. Inventory rebalanced. He nodded once: "Approved."
"Vicarius," Lucas said to the Death Knight. "Stand the Sentinels on the Blood Gate and the eastern spur. If they probe, don't push. Let the aura do the first hour's work."
The knight's voice was a blade drawn in a chapel. "Acknowledged." Something paused and then moved behind his eyes, as if the word had to pass through several small graves to get out.
"Bone Pack on the west gully," Lucas continued. "We herd, not chase. Knees first, then throats if disobedience is a problem."
The Alpha's tail clicked once. Agreement.
"Mirk, Var," Lucas went on. "Overseers at the Slave Grave. Rotate labor to the kennels. No waste. If a man tries to keep his name, take it. Names make screams disobey."
The veterans hissed delight. Orders were knives; they liked knives.
Selena watched him parcel out reality with a predator's calm and a queen's pleasure. Her voice lost its velvet for iron. "And me?"
"You," Lucas said, "do not go where the arrows will write. You go where the horn will be."
She laughed softly, truly pleased. "Oh, good. I do enjoy men with instruments."
"The spires will speak first," Lucas said. "Then the dogs will translate. Then you will send the conclusion. I'll sit the throne and borrow your hands if silence needs help." He tapped the table. "We show them how a castle teaches. We keep our elite fresh. We don't chase triumph. We trap it."
The banners trembled, approving of the grammar.
A flicker at the edge of his sense—like a touch on glass—pulled Lucas's attention to the altar below. The Resonant Forge had finished its first act. The thought tasted like bone dust and oil.
[Ding!]
[Forge Output — Crimson Filigree applied.]
[Sentinel Plate (E) +7% deflection. Ghoul Halberd blueprint unlocked. Hound Spurs crafted.]
[Sovereign Imprint recognized: Selena Draculea — Arrow Vein pattern available for Blood Moon bows.]
"Arrows that learn," Selena murmured. "Good. Teach them cruelty."
Lucas did not smile. He moved to the head of the table; not to sit—his hands pressed the stone as if verifying that it had learned him. The Crypt Sense rode his spine. The map unfurled in him like a held breath released: three enemy camps, their fires breathing at different rates; the line of the ridge; the way fear would puddle and then run when they kicked it.
"Enemy timetable?" he asked.
"Before night," Selena said. "Men feel braver when they can pretend the sky has a face."
"Then we ruin their noon," Lucas replied.
He let silence fall. Not empty—constructed. In that space, the council took its final shape; orders welded to the units that would bear them. Mirk's fingers twitched with happy violence. Var cracked his neck as if aligning it with the axis of cruelty. The Alpha watched the door like a poem that wanted a reader. The Sentinels breathed their slow cold.
Selena did not fidget. She listened to the castle breathe and timed her own to it. Her eyes on Lucas were almost affectionate—a word that, when she used it, arrived with knives.
"Dismissed," Lucas said at last. "Hold ready."
The officers left the way proper shadows leave: correctly. Vicarius peeled back into the dark that had dropped him off. The Alpha slid beneath the table and was not there anymore. Mirk and Var melted down the corridor, muttering their litany of knees first. The Sentinels turned in one motion and went to become parts of walls.
Only Selena remained.
She pushed off the table and crossed to him, close enough that the lanterns had to choose whose face to gild. He did not step back. Neither did she. Up close, the red in her eyes contained a deeper black, like a pupil that understood hunger as mathematics.
"You're enjoying this," she said softly.
"I prefer accurate machinery," Lucas answered.
Her laugh moved like a blade sheathed in silk. "And the world finally gives you a proper tool. You'll carve your name into its underside." She leaned past him, palm flattening on the table near his hand, as if pinning the castle's attention to their exchange. "You know what comes next."
"Ramius will not stop at fences," Lucas said. "He will bring the horn and ask the afternoon to be history."
"Mm," she said. "Little men always blow on things when they are frightened."
He let that sit. Beyond the walls, the castle's newborn lines gathered themselves for a first song. The spire slots waited for hands that had not yet been shaped into archers. The forge hummed like a low threat. The kennels talked to themselves.
Lucas looked up into the banners, and the banners looked down into him. The decision was already made. He was not asking the castle for permission. He was telling it what its name would mean.
He tilted his head a fraction. "After we break his horn, we take the ridge. After the ridge, the riverbed. After the riverbed…"
"Cities," Selena said, not as a dream, but as data. She straightened and stepped back, watching his face the way a general watches weather become an ally. Her smile didn't reach her eyes because her eyes were busy sharpening. "You propose a war. I propose something prettier."
He waited.
"Expansion," she said, the word a purr and an ax. "Not skirmish. Not defense. We grow like a disease. We do not wait for visitors. We become the country men talk about instead of sleep. We plant spires in their lungs and call them towers."
She let the quiet after ring like a bell.
Her hand slid to the banner's hem and tugged once, a gesture that felt like pulling a noose to the right height.
"Massive," Selena added, delighted. "Let's expand properly."