# Chapter 340: The Bait is Set
From the wind-scoured ridge, the valley was a map of Kaelen's own design. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the heavy wool of his Synod-issue cloak whipping around his legs. The air up here was thin and cold, carrying the scent of pine and distant snow, a stark contrast to the greasy smoke rising from the village below. Greenfield. He had named the operation himself. A bit of poetic irony. Through a spyglass, he watched the ants scurrying. Soren's army. They weren't charging in a blind rage, as he'd anticipated. They were digging. Trenches. Barricades. They were turning his graveyard into a fortress.
A cruel smile touched Kaelen's lips, a subtle, private thing. It was better this way. He turned away from the ledge, his boots crunching on the loose scree. His commanders were waiting in the lee of a rock outcropping, their faces etched with a mixture of impatience and confusion. Commander Voric, a man whose jaw was as square and unyielding as his tactical mind, was the first to speak. "My Lord Vor," he began, his voice a low rumble. "They are not breaking. They are fortifying. The bait did not produce the desired charge."
Kaelen let the silence hang for a moment, savoring the tension. He walked to a large, flat-topped boulder that served as his campaign table. A detailed map of the valley was stretched across it, weighted down with stones. He ran a gloved finger over the contour lines, tracing the path of the river and the steep walls of the canyon. "Bait, Voric? You misunderstand the nature of the game. The village was not the trap. It was the lure. The valley itself is the trap."
He gestured to the map, his movements sharp and precise. "Look. Here, on the northern ridge, we have the first battery of Resonance Cannons. Their nullifying fields will blanket the entire valley floor. Any Gifted who tries to manifest so much as a spark will find their power ripped away, leaving them as helpless as newborns." He moved his finger to the southern ridge. "Here, two legions of Inquisitor Phalanxes, hidden in the caves. They will descend the moment the cannons fire. And here," he tapped the western end of the valley, where the river exited through a narrow gorge, "my heavy cavalry. The Ironclads. They are already in position, waiting to cut off any hope of retreat."
Commander Lyra, a sharp-eyed woman with a network of faint scars around her right eye, stepped forward. "But their fortifications… they will be prepared for an assault. They will have kill zones of their own."
"Of course they will," Kaelen said, his tone almost patronizing. "They are soldiers. They are doing what soldiers do. But they are doing it in a graveyard, Lyra. Every shovel of earth they turn uncovers a reminder of their failure. Every post they hammer in is nailed into the coffin of a child they could not save. They are not fortifying a position; they are building their own tomb. The psychological pressure is the true weapon. Soren's rage was the first key, but his despair will be the one that unlocks the gate."
He could see the understanding dawn on their faces. The plan was not a single, simple ambush. It was a multi-layered engine of destruction, designed to crush its victims physically, mentally, and spiritually. It didn't matter if Soren charged or held. The outcome was the same. The valley was a cage, and they had just willingly walked inside and locked the door.
"My lord," Voric said, a new respect in his voice. "The timing. When do we spring the trap?"
Kaelen looked back toward the village, his gaze seeming to pierce the distance and settle on the single, commanding figure moving between the newly erected defenses. Soren. He could almost feel the cold fury radiating from him, a palpable wave of hate. It was delicious. "We wait for the sun to touch the western peak," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Let them finish their work. Let them believe, for just a little while, that they have seized control. Let them taste the bitter wine of false hope. It makes the final despair all the more potent."
He turned back to his commanders, his smile gone, replaced by the cold, hard certainty of a predator. "Soren Vale believes he is hunting me. He has turned his pain into a spear and aims it at my heart. He does not realize he is merely tightening his own noose. He thinks he is turning my trap against me, but he has only chosen the manner of his own execution. He will die in the midst of his little fortress, surrounded by the ghosts of the people he failed, his power stripped from him, his army broken."
He picked up a small, carved raven from the edge of the map table, its wings spread as if in mid-flight. He tossed it into the air, and it hung there, shimmering with a faint, dark energy. It was a scrying construct, linked to his senses. Through its eyes, he could see the valley floor in perfect detail. He watched Soren pause, his head turning as if he could feel Kaelen's gaze upon him. Good. Let him feel it. Let him stew in his impotent rage.
"The Unchained," Kaelen scoffed, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. "A rabble of debtors and heretics led by a boy with a wound in his soul. They are a blight, a sickness that promises freedom but delivers only chaos. The Synod offered order. The Concord offered peace. They spat on it. Today, we cleanse the world of their filth."
He let the raven construct dissipate into motes of shadow. The light was beginning to shift, the long shadows of the eastern ridges stretching across the valley floor. Soon, the sun would hit the western peak as he had predicted. The moment was at hand. His commanders stood at attention, their earlier confusion replaced by a zealous readiness. They were instruments of his will, perfectly tuned to the symphony of destruction he was about to conduct.
Kaelen walked back to the edge of the cliff, the wind tugging at his cloak. He looked down at the village, now a hive of desperate activity. He could see the glint of steel, the dark shapes of soldiers moving behind makeshift walls. They were so small, so fragile. They had no idea of the scale of the force arrayed against them, of the technological superiority that was about to be unleashed. The Resonance Cannons alone were a secret weapon, a gift from the Synod's deepest forges, designed specifically to counter the threat of rogue Gifted. They had never been deployed on this scale before. This was their grand debut.
He imagined the moment the fields activated. The sudden, horrifying silence as the Gifted cried out, their connection to their power severed. The confusion, the panic. Then, the thunder of the cannons, not firing explosive shells, but waves of pure concussive force that would shatter stone and turn men to pulp. The arrows would follow, a black rain from the ridges. And finally, the charge of the Phalanxes, their shields locked, their spears leveled, marching in perfect, unyielding formation to finish the job.
It would be a slaughter. A beautiful, precise, and utterly necessary slaughter.
Soren Vale wanted to erase him. Kaelen chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. The boy had no concept of what true erasure meant. He would learn. In his final moments, as the life bled out of him on the soil of his own fortress, he would understand the futility of his rebellion. He would understand that power was not a wild fire to be wielded in passion, but a cold, hard tool to be shaped and controlled by those with the will and the right to do so.
The last ray of sunlight crested the western peak, a brilliant, golden spear that lanced across the valley. It illuminated the scene below, bathing the village of Greenfield in a final, beautiful light. It was time.
Kaelen turned from the view, his face a mask of serene, terrible purpose. He looked at his commanders, at the rows of soldiers waiting in the shadows of the rocks, at the silent, humming war machines that were the pinnacle of Synod engineering. Everything was in place. Every contingency had been planned for. Every variable, accounted for.
He raised a single hand.
"Sound the horns," Kaelen ordered, his voice carrying across the ridge, clear and cold as the winter air. "Let the hunt begin."