Chapter 424: The Day of Reckoning
The Day of Reckoning
His eyes turned away from her face, and then came to rest on the chest. Words, cut deep and sadistic into the flesh, shone with a ghastly accuracy. One of the soldiers hunched forward, voice hardly above a breath, shaking as he read from it:
"King Gary, you gave this gift to me. From my Moonstone’s view, I give your gift back to you as a gift. Understand this: beginning tomorrow, this will belong to you every day. Be ready. Take it. You have no choice. And understand, each day from now forward, this will repeat. Be ready."
The words cut the air, sharp and unforgiving, leaving such a silence behind that it pushed against their eardrums. Gary’s knuckles blanched as he clutched the edge of the table, teeth clenched together. Cold, inexorable fear writhed in his belly, rising steadily into his chest, until the burden of it seemed to hold him immobile. The message was straightforward—but the ramifications were infinite, a nightmare that would recur, day after day, without mercy, without respite.
Around him, the officers stood frozen, as if the air had become solid. Throats swallowed hard, eyes darted, faces bleached of blood. The room stank of dust and coppered blood, but underneath that was something colder, something more calculated—the smell of premeditated cruelty, the type which knows the wound before the blade is unleashed. None of them wanted to be near it, none of them wanted to experience the stark nakedness of death so meticulously choreographed.
Edric moved nearer, jaw clenched, his voice uncertain against the tempest raging in Gary’s heart. "Who is this man? We don’t know him. None of us have seen him. And yet—" He stopped, the rest suspended between them like smoke winding through a windless air, unspoken yet full of meaning.
The room breathed. Gary’s eyes did not leave the message; the threat of unremitting torment carved in flesh. In that instant, all the burdens of responsibility, all the jagged shards of fear, all the flash of anger and calculation fell squarely on his shoulders. And he knew it well enough: this was no common enemy, no minor threat. This was a power that would haunt his every move, a constant reminder that in this game, even kings could not be touched.
Gary’s fingers curled into fists until the knuckles were white. Every breath exited thin and sharp, a contained thing that hardly restrained the fury from tearing loose. Only he knew what lay behind the red smear on the ground. The corpse—mangled, deliberate, like a cruel signature—wasn’t a nameless soldier selected at random. It was his shield, his shadow, the man who had been at his right hand for years. Jim.
For an instant, the world halted. Jim had risen with Gary through ice and flame, sharpened his training to a point that reduced whispers of doubt to silence. Loyalty had been his shield; skill, his tongue. Now he was broken, a word etched in blood and bone.
Gary’s voice was low, raw, as if every word was paid for. "Jim." The name was a prayer and a curse rolled into one.
Edric’s hand went to his chest, his knuckles shaking. "Inside, Your Majesty. inside he—he would not take the trap. He chose. he chose to guard you." The admission shook on the air and weighed more than any indictment.
Gary swallowed the hard knot in his throat and compelled his eyes across the plain to the dark line of Aurelian’s men. Where other men saw only banners and lines, Gary now saw the man behind them, and the knife which had killed Jim. His jaw hardened like stone, and something colder, worse welled in his eyes.
"You killed my brother, Aurelian." The words were controlled but deadly. Now you and your folk will pay." He strode the narrow ground between sorrow and rage with cold death. "I will bring you down—king to king, soul to soul. Slowly. Steadily." Each of those adverbs was an offer of patience with brutality. "With every one of my generals and commanders at my back, your house will die. Every one of your family. Every name of your house.". I swear it—by the ancestors, by my honor, by the blood spilled today."
Around him, the commanders bowed their heads in grim agreement. No one laughed. No one questioned. The oath had made itself real on the body before them and in the tone of their king. Gary’s pain was the drumbeat now. Their loyalty matched it.
He faced the camp with a economy of movement that still had menace. "Prepare yourselves. Tomorrow, we fight. Every formation, every unit. Every soldier will be prepared. Aurelian might think his armies can outmaneuver us, but tomorrow, we will teach him the price of betrayal."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the commanders answered as one, their voices ringing out through the crisp evening air, hard and unshakeable. Gary’s eyes stayed trained on the horizon, where Aurelian’s figure hung like a shadow cut from steel and determination. The space between them grew wide, but he could still see the stiff stance, the manner in which the other king stood in silence, immobile, as if challenging the very night to bow down to him. Moonlight on the rims of his armor, faint glimmering, a hesitant promise of light that was about to disappear with the world’s engulfment into darkness.
A quiet stirring—a command, slow and calculated—traveled from Aurelian to his men. Gary saw the Moonstone banners rising from the fading radiance, billowing with determination. The camp awoke like a living entity rearing from sleep, every soldier moving in careful, synchronized unison. Gary’s own men echoed the tension, a contained whisideness among them that rivaled the pressure against his own chest. He could sense it there, heavy and relentless: the weight of what tomorrow would take, the certainty of blood spilled in the name of honor and duty.
Tonight, the kings made ready. Tonight, each deliberate move, each honed edge, each hushed plan would chart the path of what was to be. Loyalty and vengeance entwined like serpent twins, each curled and waiting to strike. And when the dawn came up, the fields would not forget; they would drink heavily of steel and flame, offering only the shadow of war and the taint of red upon earth that had known peace.