[Time Remaining: 3 Hours, 22 Minutes]

The mess hall was quieter than it should be.

Forty demons sat in small clusters, eating what might be their last meal. Just... eating. Fueling bodies that would be pushed to their limits in a few hours.

Skel'var sat alone in a corner, staring at food he wasn't consuming.

Liam joined him uninvited.

"You should eat," he said. "You'll need the energy."

"I've spent three months watching soldiers eat their last meals," Skel'var said without looking up. "I know what it looks like when someone's made peace with death."

"Have you?"

The young commander finally raised his eyes. They were less dead than before, but not alive. Something in between. Like embers that might ignite or might fade, depending on the wind.

"I keep thinking about the first soldier I lost," he said quietly. "Grath. Big demon, jovial, always had a joke. Took an arrow through the throat on a routine patrol. Bled out before we could get him back."

He pushed the food around his plate.

"I told myself it was chance. Bad luck. That it wouldn't happen again if we were just more careful. Then it was Mira. Then Tol'ken. Then three more whose names blur together because I started learning not to learn names." His clawed hand clenched. "By the end of the first month, I'd become efficient at grief. By the second, I'd stopped grieving at all."

"And now?"

"Now I'm feeling again." Skel'var laughed, but it was hollow. "I'm terrified, Lord Azra. Not of dying—I made peace with that months ago. I'm terrified of hoping. Because hope is what killed my soldiers. Every time I thought 'maybe this time it'll be different,' more of them died."

He looked up, and those ember-eyes held a desperate question.

"So tell me honestly. Not as the Demon God. Not as propaganda. Tell me as one commander to another—are you going to get my remaining soldiers killed for nothing?"

Liam could have lied. Could have summoned the False Sovereign's Presence and crushed the doubt with overwhelming certainty. Could have performed confidence he didn't feel.

Instead, he met Skel'var's gaze and told the truth.

"I don't know. The odds are terrible. The plan is desperate. We might all die in that ravine, and the only thing we'll have accomplished is adding forty more corpses to your count." He paused. "But if we do nothing, you lose ten soldiers a day until there's nothing left to lose. At least this way, you die fighting instead of drowning."

Skel'var stared at him for a long moment.

Then he laughed, a real laugh this time, rough but genuine.

"You know what the worst part is? That's the most honest thing anyone's said to me in months." He picked up his fork, finally started eating. "Everyone else kept promising victory. Salvation. Divine intervention. But you? You just promise a better way to die."

"And you find that comforting?"

"I find it real." Skel'var met his eyes. "I can work with real. It's the lies that kill you."

They ate in silence for a while. Around them, other demons were finishing their meals, checking weapons one last time, saying quiet goodbyes to those who would remain behind to hold the outpost.

"I had a dream once," Skel'var said suddenly. "To be a scholar. Study the old texts. Learn about demons who lived before the wars. Before we became this."

"What stopped you?"

"The wars needed soldiers more than they needed scholars. So I learned to kill instead of read. Learned command instead of philosophy." He set down his fork. "I keep wondering if there's a version of me somewhere who chose differently. Who's sitting in a library right now instead of preparing to die in a ravine."

"Would you trade places with him?"

Skel'var considered. "No. Because he wouldn't know what I know. Wouldn't have seen what I've seen. Wouldn't understand..." He struggled for words. "Wouldn't understand that sometimes the only way to honor the dead is to refuse to join them quietly."

He stood, leaving his half-finished meal.

"Thank you, Lord Azra. For making me angry again. For reminding me that resignation is just another way to die."

He walked away, and Liam noticed his posture had changed. Still wounded. Still carrying the weight of three months of slow death.

But no longer bowed by it.

[Skel'var - Belief: -89% → -34%]

Still negative. But climbing.

---

[Time Remaining: 1 Hour, 3 Minutes]

The final preparations were complete.

Weapons sharpened. Armor adjusted for silent movement. Routes memorized. Fallback positions designated.

The forty demons who would assault the ravine gathered in the courtyard, their faces showing various degrees of fear and determination. They knew the odds. Knew what they were being asked to do.

They came anyway.

Liam stood before them, these soldiers who'd decided that fighting with him was better than dying without him.

He should have given a speech. Something inspiring. Something to make them believe victory was possible.

Instead, he told them the truth.

"In one hour, we're going to climb a route that's designed to kill anyone stupid enough to try it. We're going to assault a position that's defended by fifty trained paladins who think they're safe. We're going to do all this in the dark, in silence, with no room for error."

He paused, letting the weight of it settle.

"And most likely, some of us—maybe all of us—are going to die."

The soldiers shifted uncomfortably. This wasn't the rousing speech they'd expected.

"But here's what I can promise you. If we succeed, Dra'kul stops bleeding. The ten-a-day death toll ends. The garrison that's been drowning for three months finally gets to breathe."

His voice hardened.

"And if we fail? If we die in that ravine? We die as demons who refused to accept slow death. We die taking the fight to them instead of waiting for them to take us. We die as predators, not prey."

He drew Igar's Shard, the black blade drinking what little light remained.

"So I'm not going to promise you victory. I'm not going to lie and say this is safe or easy or that we'll all see sunrise."

He raised the blade.

"I'm only promising that tonight, we make them bleed. Tonight, we remind the Radiant Empire what it costs to hunt in these lands, and how good demons are at it."

[False Sovereign's Presence Activated]

The aura rolled out, cold. Certain. The presence of something greater than a bluff.

"Who's with me?"

Every hand went to a weapon. Every voice rose in a wordless roar that was part war cry, part release of three months of pent-up rage and fear.

Koth appeared at his side, armor blackened for night work.

Zara materialized from shadow, her weapons invisible but felt.

Skel'var stood among his soldiers, looking more alive than dead for the first time in months.

And Varg, leading his ten, gave Liam a salute that was equal parts respect and goodbye.

[Current Time: 23:47]

[Operation Commencement: 13 Minutes]

Liam sheathed his blade and turned toward the eastern gate.

"Let's go hunting," he said quietly.

The demons followed him into the darkness.

Somewhere in the distance, in a ravine that thought itself safe, fifty paladins were finishing their evening meal. Posting guards. Settling in for another routine night of siege warfare.

They had no idea that the rules had changed.

That the slow war of attrition was about to become something faster, sharper, and infinitely more brutal.

[Time Remaining: 13 Minutes]

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