CHAPTER 112: THE SPLINTERED DAWN.

The night did not end.

Ryon felt it bleeding into his veins, a darkness that was not the absence of light but the saturation of it, heavy and alive, pushing against the edges of his skull. His body ached as if every nerve had been scorched, his ribs tightening with each breath, and yet he refused to sink. He had caught the assassin’s blade. He had chosen blood over mercy. He had raised the severed head before the fire and forced his men to look at it.

Now, in the hollow silence that followed, the true battle began.

The camp did not sleep. He could hear them beyond the thin walls of the command tent—boots scuffing dirt, voices clipped and hushed, a ripple of unease that no orders could silence. When he closed his eyes, their whispers wormed into him, fragments that cut deeper than steel.

"He’s cursed."

"No man survives that duel."

"Not even Garron can keep him from breaking."

He lay there on his cot, staring up at the canvas ceiling, his hand clamped over the bandaged wound at his side. The system stirred inside him, as it always did when silence pressed too thick.

"The fracture deepens," it whispered, a voice both like his own and not. "You are not holding them together. You are holding them down."

Ryon clenched his jaw until pain bloomed in his temples. "Shut up."

The system did not obey.

"Authority built on fear splinters faster than authority built on loyalty. Which will you choose? Break them before they break you."

The words crawled into his chest, anchoring themselves in places already raw. He knew the men were afraid. He had seen it in their eyes when the assassin’s blood sprayed across the firelight. Some had flinched, others had stared as if looking upon something less than human. Garron had stood steady, but even Garron’s silence had been heavier than iron.

A shift in the air drew Ryon’s gaze. Garron was there now, seated on a stool just inside the tent’s entrance, his massive frame hunched forward, elbows on his knees. He looked like a statue carved out of stone—unmoving, unblinking, yet heavy with the weight of thought.

"You should sleep," Ryon rasped, his voice breaking against the dryness of his throat.

"You should still be lying down," Garron countered, not looking at him. His voice carried none of the warmth it once had. Only flatness, like a blade laid against stone.

Ryon pushed himself upright anyway, every tendon screaming in rebellion. Sweat slicked his skin, the fever burning hotter than the fire outside. His body was wreckage, yet his pride forced him higher, forced him to meet Garron’s shadowed eyes.

"I won’t give them the sight of me broken," Ryon said.

"They already saw it," Garron replied, finally turning. His gaze was sharp, too sharp, cutting through every veil Ryon tried to wear. "They saw you bleed. They saw you fall. And tonight they saw you kill one of our own."

Ryon’s hands curled into fists. "He tried to put steel through my throat."

"Aye," Garron said, voice like gravel. "And so you killed him. Maybe that was right. Maybe it wasn’t. But what you did afterward..." He paused, exhaling slowly through his nose. "...some of them will never forgive you for it."

The firelight outside flickered against the canvas, shadows warping like specters. Ryon felt their shapes pressing closer, listening, judging.

"They don’t need to forgive me," he said, voice low. "They need to follow."

Garron’s silence was heavier than argument.

The system stirred again.

"Good," it whispered. "Strength demands spectacle. Mercy breeds weakness. Break them, and they will kneel. Do not listen to the old dog’s doubt."

Ryon pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to steady the pulse pounding in his skull. The commander’s voice slithered beneath the system’s, a second serpent in the same pit.

You’re mine now, boy. You carry my ash in your veins. Every choice you make feeds me. Do you feel them slipping? Let them go. Let them fear.

"No," Ryon hissed, the word barely more than breath.

Garron tilted his head. "What?"

"Nothing," Ryon muttered.

But it was not nothing. It was never nothing.

The night bled into dawn. He did not sleep. He sat in silence, sweat soaking through bandages, while the camp beyond his tent simmered like a cauldron left too long on the fire.

At first light, he rose.

Every step was agony. His legs trembled, his lungs scraped raw, his side felt as if iron hooks dragged against the wound with each motion. Garron tried to stop him, but Ryon brushed the man’s hand away.

"They need to see me," Ryon said.

"They need a commander, not a corpse," Garron growled.

Ryon ignored him.

He pushed open the tent flaps and stepped into the cold breath of morning. The camp fell into stillness at once. Men froze mid-motion, heads turning, eyes catching on him like iron drawn to a lodestone.

He looked like death. Pale, sweat-soaked, wrapped in bloodied cloth. But he stood.

And that was what mattered.

"Southerners," he called, his voice hoarse yet carrying, slicing through the air. "You think me broken. You whisper of curses. You look at me and see the shadow of the North’s commander still clinging."

The murmurs stilled. A thousand eyes fixed on him.

"I am broken," Ryon continued, stepping forward, each pace driving nails deeper into his bones. "But so is every one of you. We are all vessels cracked by this war. We bleed. We fail. We falter." His hand rose, trembling but steady enough to point at them. "The difference is this—I do not shatter. I will not. And neither will you, if you follow me."

His chest burned, his vision swam. The commander’s whisper curled at the edge of his mind—Yes, let them hear the fire. Let them taste fear dressed as resolve.

"I killed the North’s scarred beast," Ryon thundered. "I broke him where none of you believed it possible. And I’ll break any man—north or south—who thinks to put a blade to my throat in the dark. That is my vow. That is the weight I bear."

The silence that followed was heavier than roars. Some eyes gleamed with renewed fire. Others narrowed with mistrust. He felt the divide as keenly as a blade’s edge.

Garron’s shadow loomed behind him, silent witness.

The system stirred once more.

"Balance held. For now. But cracks spread unseen. How long before vessel and army alike collapse?"

Ryon stood tall against the dawn, his body a ruin, his mind a battlefield, his soul a furnace that refused to go out.

But deep inside, he felt it—the splinter. Tiny. Sharp. Growing.

And he knew the day would come when even fire could not hold him together.