The sun rose sullen behind thick clouds, a dim red eye bleeding over the cliffs as the Ash Company stirred. While the engineers prepared their schematics and the combatants ran drills in silence broken only by clanking metal, a smaller group moved without ceremony or uniform.
These were the Architects—neither warriors nor engineers, but agents of perception, hand-picked by Fornos for their discretion, adaptability, and most importantly, their ability to lie beautifully.
Fornos watched from a ledge above the forward command tent, arms folded across his chest, the wind pulling gently at the dark layers of his coat. Below, Konos finished issuing satchels marked with differing guild insignias—merchant, courier, lesser noble houses, even itinerant scribes. To the untrained eye, these men and women looked like any other scattered vagrants or opportunists drifting across the mainland.
But they were seeds. And today, they would be sown into soil long prepared by Fornos's vision.
"You're sure about this?" Konos asked, his gravel-thick voice calm but probing. "Ornes isn't a house to take slander lightly."
"They'll never hear it from us," Fornos replied without turning. "And besides—this isn't slander. It's history, in the making. We're just helping people see it clearly."
Konos grunted, unimpressed.
Fornos continued, "Uru-Maul was public. Half the nobles in the south had scouts circling. Now they'll start wondering. 'Why did House Ornes take so long? Why did they pull back at first? Why did Uru-Maul go quiet only after outsiders arrived?' It doesn't need to be true. It only needs to echo."
Below, the Architects mounted nondescript pack animals or slipped into caravans. By sundown, they would be scattered across dozens of settlements, cities, and border markets.
Their orders were precise: sow the rumor that Gratham Ornes, the Southern War-King and head of House Ornes, had to beg for foreign assistance to bring down Uru-Maul. That strangers had done what noble steel could not. That whispers of a new force—strange, sharp, and silent—had turned the tide.
The Architects were not soldiers. They didn't carry swords. They carried stories.
In the smoky backroom of a tavern in Droughtfall, one Architect spoke with a caravan leader over shared whiskey.
"—must've seen it with my own eyes, I swear," the man said, voice rough from travel. "Big bastard, the behemoth. Was tearing through Ornes lines like they were made of reeds."
The Architect chuckled. "And they couldn't kill it?"
"Oh, they tried. For weeks. Then one night—poof. It's down. Just like that."
"You think Ornes pulled off something secret?"
The caravan man leaned in, lowering his voice. "I think someone else did the job. Rumor is, they brought in mercs. Strange ones. Not the usual dogs. Too clean. Too quiet."
"Interesting." The Architect smiled behind his cup.
At a roadside temple shrine in Lanthor Hollow, another Architect donned a humble robe, playing penitent before a low-rank priest.
"They say our Lady Adaman protects those who fight for just cause," the Architect whispered during confession.
"She does," the priest replied. "You seem burdened."
"I… I carry news from the border. About the great beast. Uru-Maul."
The priest tensed. "Go on."
"There are whispers. That Ornes begged foreign powers to send help. That the great beast fell not to House Ornes—but to outsiders, blessed by different gods."
The priest, scandalized, whispered prayers under his breath.
"Do not repeat this," the Architect added, voice barely above breath. "But… if it's true, should it not be known?"
The seed was planted.
In Tide's Mark, a dock city far from Uru-Maul's corpse, a merchant received a coded trade message etched in the margins of a routine ledger. The cipher was ancient, tied to a once-defunct network of saboteurs.
"Southern Iron bends. Foreign blade cuts true. Black Ash burns silent."
Three lines, and yet the merchant dropped his evening tea and immediately sent word to his guild superiors.
Within days, whispers had evolved into patterns. Tavern gossip turned into dinner speculation. Temple sermons subtly shifted, referencing "those outside noble lines who do the gods' work." Even minor noble scribes, desperate for relevance, began sending missives to their lords filled with questions.
"Did we confirm who killed Uru-Maul?"
"Were foreign handlers present?"
"Has House Ornes made a pact with outsiders?"
Gratham Ornes, of course, denied everything. His messengers spoke of Ornes pride and unwavering resolve. His public proclamations lauded the house's own sacrifice, never mentioning the strange mechs that had appeared and disappeared overnight.
But the silence, to many, was admission.
And through it all, the name "Ash Company" floated on the fringes. Never stated directly. Always implied.
A ghost of power.
Back at the Ash Company's mobile outpost, Fornos reviewed a pile of intercepted messages. Many bore the sigils of mid-tier houses, guilds, and clergy, all speculating in the same direction.
"Three days," Konos said, glancing over the growing stack. "And the fire's already spreading."
"Good," Fornos murmured. "Let them chase ghosts. Let them turn their eyes away from us and onto one another."
Roa entered with fresh logistical projections. "Supplies are stable. We can move within a week. Orders?"
"Let the heat rise first," Fornos said. "We're not done twisting the knife."
Peter walked in behind her, holding a roasted leg of some creature skewered hastily. "Why do all this? We already made our profit. We're ghosts, right?"
Fornos took the intercepted letter from Peter and tossed it onto the fire. "A ghost that can kill a god is still a threat. But a ghost that can humiliate a noble? That's terror."
He turned toward the night, where the wind howled low through the crags. Somewhere out there, across the dirt roads and city courtyards, his words were echoing.
The image of Gratham Ornes—the indomitable War-King, the steel shadow of the south—was cracking.
And Fornos, nineteen years old and masked in silence, was making sure the world remembered who wielded the chisel.