The moon was low, bloated and silver, casting a ghostly glow over the torn fields of the South.Mist lingered along the ground like breath held too long — still, waiting.
At the center of it all moved three shadows.Shrouded.Noiseless.Exact.
Clara knelt low behind a broken wall, her gaze sharp beneath the edge of a soldier's helmet. There was no refinement in her now. Only steel.
To her right, Amelia slipped between shadows and brush. Her sword was buckled behind her; her limp hidden in the rhythm of a trained soldier. Her breath came steady. But her fingers curled with instinct. Each step was pain learned, cost paid.
Claude trailed behind.He watched them — not as a commander.Not tonight.But as someone who had finally seen the weight they carried. And now bore it with them.
They weren't in the diversion charge. They weren't meant to storm the front lines.They were deeper. Quieter. Darker.Headed straight for the ad hoc command post.The nerve.
The generals' strategy was simple: Disrupt the eyes. Blind the beast. Then cut the throat.They were the knife.
Clara gestured. Two fingers. Halt.
Collapsed stone from an old village wall gave them cover.Past it: firelight. Low voices. Enemy scouts.
Clara's whisper:"Two by the pit. One behind the barrels."
No hesitation.Amelia drew her blade. The steel whispered like a promise in the dark.
Claude moved to pass her. "Let me go first."
She stopped him, voice soft."We've all bled for this, Claude. Let me be the blade this time."
He looked at her. And stepped back.
They struck like ghosts.
Clara first — a blur of movement, sending one scout silently into the pit.Amelia, sword glinting just once, silenced the second.Claude took the third, clean and without flourish.
By the time the camp raised alarm, it was too late.
From across the ridge, Everthorne's forces surged.Steel and ash and fury.
The enemy reeled. Blinded. Surrounded.The ambush unfolded like a storm in their throat.
Amelia fought like reckoning. Her leg burned. Each step a scream. But she didn't stop.
Clara stayed near. Hot, fast, brutal.If Amelia faltered, she caught her.If Clara slipped, Amelia hauled her up.They fought like two sides of a blade — unanticipated and unstoppable.
Claude didn't lead this time. He followed.Grounded by their fire. By their fearlessness.No longer protector.Just a soldier in their storm.
And when it ended — when the screams fell into silence and the smoke began to settle —they had won.
The hollow was theirs.
Sweat, grime, blood — theirs and others — slicked down their arms.
But no one questioned where they stood.
Not anymore.
A passing soldier nodded toward them. Another mouthed the words that would echo across camp and memory alike:"Ghost-daughters of the South."
The name stuck.
Claude looked between them — the duchess and the courtesan, once dismissed, now triumphant.And for the first time,he didn't try to shield them from the war.
He stood beside them in it.