Chapter 13 — A Controlled Loss (Rewritten, Human-Prose Version)
The second village did not disappear quietly.
The report arrived just before sunset, and Aldric knew something was wrong before he finished the first line. The parchment smelled faintly of smoke. Not enough to stain it. Just enough to notice.
He didn't sit down.
He stood by the window, the city stretched beneath him in soft gold light, and read.
Then read it again.
Then folded the paper carefully, because his hands had started to tighten without him noticing.
Dunmere.
The name sat wrong in his chest.
Not gone.
Not intact.
Something in between.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Just a moment. Long enough to let the noise in his head settle into something usable.
So you changed, he thought. Already.
When he turned back toward the council chamber, the voices inside fell into an uneasy hush. Someone must have seen his face.
Count Velis spoke first, carefully. "Your Majesty?"
"We lost Dunmere," Aldric said.
The words didn't echo. They didn't need to. They landed and stayed there.
"Lost?" Tolen said, too quickly. "As in—"
"Damaged," Aldric corrected. "Interrupted. Not erased."
Haveron pushed back his chair. "Was there fighting?"
"Yes," Aldric said. "Which is why there are survivors."
That stopped them.
For a heartbeat, no one spoke. Aldric watched it happen — the moment when fear rearranged itself into something sharper.
"How many?" Velis asked.
"Enough," Aldric said. "And not enough."
---
The truth leaked out anyway. It always did.
By nightfall, the palace corridors felt tight, like the air had been used too often. Servants whispered. Guards stopped pretending not to listen.
Nearly half of Dunmere had been evacuated. Not cleanly. Not fast enough. Wagons turned back when the roads became wrong. People left behind things they shouldn't have had to.
The rest—
Some returned.
Some didn't.
Some came back with eyes that refused to focus.
Aldric stood alone in the map room long after the lamps were lit, staring at the eastern border until the lines blurred. He rubbed at his sternum absently, the ache there sharper than it had been in days.
Queen Lysenne entered without a sound.
"You expected escalation," she said.
"Yes."
"But not this soon."
"No."
She stepped beside him, close enough that he could feel the heat from her skin. "You still moved people."
"I started to," Aldric said. "They moved faster."
Her gaze stayed on the map. "And stopped early."
"Yes."
She finally looked at him. "Why?"
Aldric exhaled slowly. "Because they met resistance."
Her expression shifted — subtle, but real. "You're certain."
"They adjusted," he said. "Which means they're measuring, not consuming."
"That's not reassuring."
"No," Aldric agreed. "It's informative."
---
They rode to Dunmere at first light.
The village smelled wrong. Not rot. Not fire. Just… absence. As if something had passed through and taken urgency with it.
Aldric dismounted slowly. His boots crunched on gravel that hadn't been there yesterday.
A farmer approached him, hands shaking, beard dusted with ash.
"It stopped," the man said. "Just… stopped."
Aldric nodded. "Did it leave?"
The man frowned, struggling for words. "It decided."
That was worse.
Rovan crouched nearby, running his fingers over a mark in the earth. "No pattern I recognize."
"That's because it wasn't meant for you," Aldric said.
Lysenne stood apart from them, very still. Too still.
When Aldric approached, she spoke without turning. "They felt me."
"Yes."
"They didn't like it."
"No."
"But they didn't push."
"No," Aldric said quietly. "They withdrew."
She turned then, eyes sharp. "Which means they know where the line is."
"And that it exists," Aldric said. "Which they didn't before."
---
The council did not take nuance well.
"We must respond," Haveron said. "This cannot—"
"This is not something we can win by force," Aldric cut in.
Tolen's voice wavered. "People died."
"Yes," Aldric said. "And more will, if we pretend otherwise."
The room went silent.
He hadn't raised his voice. That was what unsettled them.
"They wanted clean data," Aldric continued. "Silence. Patterns that repeat."
"And we disrupted that," Velis said slowly.
"Yes," Aldric said. "At cost."
Haveron stared at him. "You're calling this a victory?"
Aldric met his gaze. "I'm calling it positioning."
---
That night, Aldric addressed the kingdom.
Not from a balcony.
Not with banners.
From a plain hall, with guards at his back and nothing in his hands.
"We were tested," he said. "And we were hurt."
The silence that followed was thick, uncomfortable.
"We did not stop it," he continued. "And I will not pretend we did."
Fear rippled outward.
"But we learned," Aldric said. "And that knowledge saved lives."
He spoke of evacuation routes. Of preparation. Of limits.
He promised nothing absolute.
And for the first time, the people listened without comfort.
---
Later, when the palace finally slept, Lysenne found him in the map room again.
"You let them see the wound," she said.
"Yes."
"That makes you vulnerable."
Aldric looked east, where the land still felt bruised. "It makes me honest."
"And the thing that did this?"
Aldric's jaw tightened.
"It now knows I won't hide," he said. "And that I can't stop everything."
She studied him for a long moment. "That makes you dangerous."
"Yes," Aldric said softly. "To everyone."
He closed his eyes briefly.
Not a clean victory.
But a real one.
And somewhere beyond the border, something adjusted its calculations — not because it had won, but because Aldric Vaelor had not broken.