CHAPTER 149

  TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT

  No one spoke as they regrouped.

  Delimira stood where she had been left. She didn’t look at Zilong.

  Zilong noticed anyway.

  He turned his attention elsewhere—toward the Deadlands horizon, toward the barrier, toward anything that wasn’t the space between them.

  Hans felt the strain in the silence.

  It followed him like a shadow.

  Agreements had been made. None of them felt settled.

  He stepped forward before the quiet could fracture further.

  “We don’t have time,” he said.

  That pulled their attention back to him—Eclipse, Concordia, the infected.

  Different factions. Same target.

  Behind them, the infected shifted.

  They had marched here roaring.

  Now they waited.

  That was worse.

  Hans felt the time slipping.

  “This ends at the Council Node,” Hans continued. “Everything else is noise.”

  He let the silence stretch a little longer than was comfortable. Didn’t speak until every gaze was fixed on him.

  The right time hit.

  “First problem,” he said.

  That alone was enough to get serious. Forget the drama.

  A reset before Delimira and Chris intervened.

  “If Anfaleen gets reinforcements, this turns into a massacre.”

  None argued.

  He turned to Xandor.

  “You said the remainder of your people already plan to redirect the traffic from neighbouring Nodes?”

  “Friends or enemies,” Xandor said mildly. “It makes no difference.”

  Bryan smiled. Adrian didn’t.

  Hans met Xandor’s obscure gaze.

  “It will when someone asks who ordered it.”

  Xandor’s smile thinned. “They won’t.”

  “Good,” Hans said, “I trust nothing reaches the Council node from either side?”

  The silence affirmed.

  “Second problem,” he continued.

  A murmur rippled through the group.

  Someone near the back whispered the name Atelier.

  Hans ignored it.

  Reputation was useful. Belief was dangerous.

  His face fixed on Zilong.

  “The node Shield.”

  Zilong’s face tightened.

  “It only opens from inside,” Hans gestured, “Which means we can’t break from the outside. A mere try will alert the inside people.”

  His eyes trailed to Adrian.

  “We break it in the first try. From within.”

  That put a smile in Adrian’s face.

  But not on his.

  “Third,” he said, his gaze moving last to Delimira and Chris.

  “If we fight everyone at once, we’ll lose. That’s their territory.”

  He unfolded a map.

  “So we don’t.”

  The leader of each faction surrounded him, their eyes grounded on the map.

  Silence held for half a breath.

  Then Xandor mocked.

  It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t amused.

  “Before we go any further,” he said, eyes drifting past Hans and toward the waiting mass, “you’re going to explain something to me, Atelier.”

  The word carried weight now.

  “Those things,” Xandor continued, voice mild, “are not soldiers.”

  A few of the infected shifted. One growled low in his throat.

  “They’re unstable,” Bryan added. “Angry. Sick.”

  Adrian folded his arms. “And you want us to put our backs to them?”

  Hans didn’t answer immediately.

  He turned instead, slow and deliberate, and gestured toward the largest figure among the infected.

  The one who didn’t need to snarl to be felt.

  “More than a decade ago,” Hans said, “that one was captured by Anfaleen.”

  Zilong didn’t move.

  But the air around him did.

  “A foreign body. Corrupted to a Commander-grade red demon. Too interesting for Anfaleen to waste.”

  Hans’ hand shifted, indicating the rest.

  “Some of them came willingly. Red demon trials. Promises of glory. Power.”

  His voice hardened.

  “The rest were taken.”

  He let that settle.

  “They’re not possessed,” Hans continued. “They’re contaminated. A sustained exposure. Red demon poison, if you want a name for it.”

  Xandor’s gaze sharpened. “Transferable?”

  “No,” Hans said. “Slow. Degrading. Unstable.”

  He met Xandor’s eyes.

  “And also not your concern.”

  A flicker of irritation crossed the warlock’s face.

  Hans pressed on before it could grow.

  “They’re here because they want Anfaleen dead,” he said. “Same as you.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He turned back to the map.

  “And because once this is over, it will fix everything.”

  A low murmur spread through the infected. A self-preserving motivation.

  “Parv didn’t abandon us,” someone said.

  Another voice followed, louder this time. “The Parvian prince sent him. That must be something, right?”

  “Yes.” A lot of them nodded.

  “He must trust these people. His promise of freedom was true.” Someone added.

  Their faces lit a little.

  Hans didn’t turn.

  He let the words exist.

  Xandor watched him carefully.

  “You don’t correct them,” the warlock noted.

  Hans’ gaze stayed on the map.

  “They don’t need correction,” he said.

  Adrian scoffed. “You’re letting them think you’re something you’re not.”

  Hans finally looked up.

  “No,” he replied. “I’m letting them think I’m enough.”

  Xandor’s gaze lingered—not on Hans, but on the infected.

  Too long.

  “You’re careful with your words,” he said lightly. “You tell us how they broke.”

  His eyes flicked back. His voice quieter.

  “Why are they like this? What Anfaleen gets by creating these?”

  The air tightened.

  Hans didn’t look at him.

  “Because why doesn’t change what we do next,” he replied.

  A pause.

  “And because you’re disciplined enough not to ask again.”

  Xandor smiled.

  Not because he was satisfied.

  Because he understood Theodred was not telling everything.

  “You remind me of a Parvian fool.”

  Chris frowned.

  Delimira didn’t.

  She was watching the way Theodred stood — something was different. Something she couldn’t just pinpoint yet.

  Hans was quiet, no reaction.

  “If the idle chatter is done. Shall we focus on this?” He stretched the map again.

  “There are three ways this goes,” he said.

  He didn’t sound confident.

  He sounded precise.

  “One ends with half of you dead before we reach the core.”

  No one spoke.

  “One ends with the great barrier collapsing and the Deadlands opening up to Genas.”

  A ripple moved through the gathered group.

  Someone laughed—short, sharp, disbelieving.

  “The Deadlands barrier?” a voice muttered. “That thing has lasted decades. Imprisoning the unthinkables.”

  Another shook his head. “You’d need a calamity.”

  Hans didn’t respond.

  He didn’t need to.

  Xandor’s expression shifted first. Not surprise—calculation.

  “Ateliers,” he said quietly.

  The word travelled.

  Others grew very still.

  The infected had nothing but stories to tell. And someone among them knew what Ateliers were capable of.

  And stories had a way of resurfacing when they were needed least—

  the owl-spirit blotting out the sky,

  three warlords falling in succession,

  a Light-aura knight who shouldn’t exist. But exist. Shouldn’t have won but did anyway.

  Delimira watched him then. Really watched.

  This wasn’t bravado.

  This was a line he’d already crossed before.

  “How?” she asked at last.

  The question wasn’t defiant.

  It was earned.

  “How are you planning to do this?”

  “We’re choosing the third,” Hans said.

  His eyes affixed on the Council Node mark on the map. A long distance away.

  “Because it hurts the least.” He continued, his voice low.

  “Eclipse isolates the node already. Sunfall. Clandor. Nothing comes in.”

  Xandor nodded slightly.

  Hans didn’t thank him.

  He turned to Zilong.

  “You draw their attention,” he said. “But not before we’re inside.”

  Zilong’s lips curled, not in anger—anticipation.

  “You want noise,” he said. “I can give you an extinction event.”

  A few of the infected straightened at his intent.

  Hans met his gaze. “Not yet. When you move, every red demon within hearing distance follows. You must use that mad army.”

  Zilong’s eyes flicked—briefly, involuntarily—toward Delimira.

  Hans didn’t miss it.

  “A moment,” he added. “That’s all we need.”

  His gaze shifted.

  “Adrian.”

  The fourth-rank knight smiled.

  “They think the shield makes them untouchable,” Hans said. “I’ll get you inside. You destroy it from within.”

  Adrian rolled his shoulders once.

  “Fractional entry?” he asked.

  Hans nodded. “A breath. Less.”

  The warlord’s grin widened. “That’s enough.”

  Zilong frowned. “If the shield seals—”

  “It won’t,” Hans cut in. “Because he doesn’t need it open. He needs a tear in it. His dimensional skill is what we need for this.”

  “Once it has a hole, they’ll try to fix it,” Hans went on. “By then, they’re dealing with Zilong. A catastrophic distraction. They can’t ignore it. Divert the manpower needed for repairs on the other side of their shield.”

  He paused.

  “And whatever comes to repair will meet us. We will be inside. Sandwiching them between”

  Xandor exhaled slowly.

  “A six-handed and a red demon army from the front. We and these infected from the back,” he affirmed. “A pincer.”

  “NO. A mess,” Hans corrected. “One they can’t control.”

  Xandor released a breath he hadn’t meant to hold. “And when the guardians respond?”

  Hans turned to him.

  “That’s why you’re inside,” he said. “Warlords. Warlocks. Nodestone sentinels.”

  Adrian cracked his knuckles.

  Bryan’s smile faded.

  Xandor studied Hans for a long moment. Then nodded once.

  “So we bleed,” he said.

  “Yes,” Hans replied. “So they don’t have time to think.”

  Hans turned last to Delimira and Chris.

  “You don’t join the chaos,” he said. “You remove its spine.”

  Delimira nodded instantly.

  Chris doubted.

  Hans saw it. “The people there. The researchers. They chose Anfaleen’s side,” he said. “You choose how clean this ends.”

  A pause.

  “I’ll carry the rest.”

  They moved before the Deadlands could notice them.

  No horns.

  No banners.

  No victory cries.

  Just motion.

  The infected spread out instinctively, old habits rising where discipline had never been taught. Zilong kept them in line with presence alone—every step he took bending the air around him, red demon blood answering to something older than command.

  Hans walked at the front.

  Not because he needed to.

  Because everyone needed him there.

  The land changed as they advanced.

  Delimira passed the Eclipse flank without looking at them.

  One of the captains shifted anyway.

  Another’s hand drifted, then stopped, just short of a spell-form.

  Old instincts.

  Old grudges.

  Chris felt it too—the tension coiled tight beneath discipline. These weren’t allies. They were enemies pretending not to be.

  For now.

  Ahead, Hans kept walking, unaware of the exact shape of the hatred trailing behind him.

  It didn’t matter.

  Not yet.

  There was something larger pulling at all of them now—something that made past blood feel small by comparison.

  Far beyond the ridgeline, where the Deadlands curved into shadow, a pair of slit pupils opened.

  They watched the column move.

  Counted.

  Waited.

  The horn had not sounded yet.

  Stone turned brittle beneath their boots, blackened veins running through it like scars that never healed. Towers half-buried in ash jutted from the ground at odd angles—once watch-posts, now markers of where Utar had tried to stand.

  And failed.

  Delimira slowed, eyes scanning the horizon.

  She’d read about this. Everyone had.

  The Deadlands hadn’t always been this way.

  It had been Star—fertile, alive, loud with cities and rivers—until the Red demons came. Until half the nation had been sealed behind the barrier and the rest turned into a proving ground.

  Now it was a hemisphere of quiet violence.

  No birds.

  No wind worth naming.

  Only distance.

  They passed the outer trial zones without incident.

  Too easily.

  Tracks lay abandoned. Traps left untriggered. Observation pylons dark and cold.

  Chris noticed first.

  “This feels wrong,” he muttered.

  Hans didn’t look back.

  “It’s intentional,” he said.

  Far behind them—miles away, unseen and uncelebrated—Eclipse’s remaining captains were already at work. Routes redirected. Signals drowned. Anyone moving towards the Council Node gently… or not so gently… turned away.

  Nothing reached ahead of them.

  Nothing followed.

  That worried Hans more than an ambush ever could.

  By the time the Council Node’s silhouette finally cut into the horizon—a dark ring against a red sky—hours had passed.

  Hundreds of kilometres swallowed without a single alarm.

  Zilong halted the group with a raised hand.

  Even the Eclipse obeyed.

  Hans stopped beside him.

  The shield of the Council node shimmered faintly in the distance, immense and patient, as if holding Deadlands in its breath.

  Somewhere beyond it, Anfaleen waited.

  But there was still much to cover.

  So did the truth.

  Hans exhaled slowly.

  The plan was already in motion.

  And nothing, once started, ever stayed contained.