CHAPTER 110: THE EDGE IN THE DARK.

The night pressed close, thicker than cloth, heavier than chainmail. Even the wind seemed to die when it reached the hollow where the southern camp had sunk its stakes. Fires guttered low, reduced to smoldering bowls of red and orange glow, their smoke curling in threads like fading prayers. Beyond them, shadows stretched wide and deep, swallowing the shapes of tents and men until only silence remained, broken only by the occasional cough, the restless roll of a dreamer in his bedroll, or the far-off call of some hungry crow bold enough to circle a battlefield long after blood had dried.

Inside his tent, Ryon lay still.

But stillness did not mean peace.

His body ached with the weight of wounds half-healed, with the slow fever that still burned through his marrow. His skin was slick with sweat despite the chill. Each breath scraped, ribs grinding against one another as though they sought to splinter from within. The duel had carved him into something less than a man yet demanded he rise as something more. The South whispered his name with awe and fear, but beneath that, he could hear the other tone—the one men tried to smother, the one spoken in shadows: cursed.

He could feel it on him like a second cloak.

The commander’s voice haunted the silence, not loud, not insistent, but always there, beneath thought and breath: You will break again. You will break because they need you to, because you were forged brittle, not unyielding. And when the time comes, you will beg me for the fire to hold you together.

Ryon shut his eyes tighter, though the dark inside was no better than the dark without.

He remembered the commander’s face, twisted with rage and finality, the moment the blade went home. But he also remembered the way the body had not simply died—it had lingered, left behind an echo, and that echo had wrapped itself around his soul like iron bands. Killing the man had not destroyed him. It had planted him. And Ryon was the soil.

The camp shifted beyond the tent walls. Voices, hushed. Footsteps crunching on frost-hardened dirt. Too many patrols, too much vigilance for men already exhausted. The South was tired, stretched thin by fear as much as by war. Victory had come, yes—but it had not brought relief. Instead, it brought the silence of waiting for the next blow, the knowledge that tomorrow’s dawn might yet bloom red.

Ryon turned in his cot, every movement dragging sparks of pain through his muscles. He had commanded men in worse states, but lying still gave him too much time to listen. The whispers came first as scraps:

"...can’t last..."

"...blood runs wrong in him..."

"...no man should have stood after that..."

"...Garron says he will rise. Garron says he still leads..."

"...but should he?"

The voices faded as their owners moved further down the row, but the weight of their words did not. Ryon’s hand twitched where it rested across his chest, fingers curling against the phantom grip of a sword. But his blade was gone, lying outside in a chest Garron had locked himself. His friend feared Ryon might wake delirious and cut down anyone who drew too near. Perhaps Garron was right.

Perhaps Garron was wrong.

The fever thickened. His vision swam even in darkness, red and gray threads weaving patterns he could not unsee. Ash landscapes rose up behind his eyelids, stretching endless, and from their horizons the commander walked—always toward him, never faster, never slower, but inevitable. Ryon’s breaths grew shallow. He whispered once into the silence:

"I will not break."

The darkness smiled back.

Time became strange after that. Minutes folded like paper, stretched long enough for hours to drip through. He drifted in and out of shallow sleep, each dream a battlefield, each breath a struggle. Sometimes Garron’s voice reached him, gruff but steady, issuing orders to the sentries. Sometimes it was the murmur of healers outside, grinding herbs, whispering prayers. Sometimes he swore he heard the commander’s voice slip free of his skull and curl around the tent like smoke.

But then came another sound.

Quieter. Different.

Not Garron’s heavy stride, not the clumsy boots of soldiers, not the drag of healer’s sandals. This sound was measured, careful, like rain falling where no storm raged. A hand against leather. A shadow against canvas. The tent’s flap whispered open, just enough for the night to spill in.

Ryon’s eyes snapped open though his body did not stir. Instinct, sharper than fever, held him still. His breaths slowed, shallow enough to feign the deep rhythm of sleep. His hand did not reach for a weapon—because there was none. His ears strained instead, mapping the soft sound of steps crossing the floor.

He smelled oil. The faint tang of steel freshly whetted.

The shadow leaned closer.

Through the blur of fever, the glint came clear: a knife, thin as hunger, sharp enough to drink breath before sound. It caught what little light the coals gave, gleaming once like a star swallowed by cloud.

The whisper of steel came down toward him.

Ryon’s heart did not race. It steadied. His body, torn and burning, still remembered battle, still remembered survival. The commander’s voice rose in him like a tide: Let it fall. You are too weak. Let it end. Better broken now than broken before them all.

But something else burned hotter than the fever, hotter than the whisper: the stubborn refusal, the marrow-deep truth that had carried him through Hollow Pass.

Not yet.

The blade fell.

And his hand shot up.

Fingers closed around the assassin’s wrist, iron in the dark. The knife stopped a breath from his throat, its edge grazing skin, cold fire burning across flesh. The shadow jerked, shocked, but Ryon’s grip only tightened, tendons standing out, muscles screaming, but unrelenting.

His eyes opened wide, fever-bright, stormlit. He looked straight into the hooded shape above him, breath rasping through clenched teeth.

"Not me," he whispered, voice low, raw, alive.

The tent was silent, the world holding its breath as steel trembled against his neck, caught in the hand of a man too broken to rise, too strong to fall.

And the assassin froze.