The fire was ahead of them, not behind.

That was the first thing GSS Lieutenant Richard Seliek noted when the smoke appeared on the horizon—smeared and wrong. It wasn’t the column of a fresh burn or the drifting haze of a careless camp. It lay pressed into the folds of the land, clinging to the valleys like something wounded and stubborn.

They had been on the Tharnens’ trail for six weeks. The Freeholds were only the last eight days of it. The moment they crossed into the Freeholds, trouble started. There were no border markers, no proclamations. Just the slow realization that every mile cost more than the last. Bridges collapsed after they crossed. Springs fouled overnight. Trails vanished where maps swore they existed.

No one had died. That, Seliek suspected, was intentional. But they were being blooded. Not by killing agents, but with near misses that one would think were accidental. Nothing about this country was accidental. Not the land. Not the people.

But there was enough harassment to force Seliek’s men east, their route bent by ambushes that never quite committed them to battle. Enough to prevent Seliek from catching up to the Tharnens as he’d planned.

Seliek raised a hand. “Hold.” Around him, the Blue Ridge mountains rose and fell like old scars, thick with timber and stone that swallowed sound and light alike.

The column stopped immediately, each squad freezing where it stood. Leather creaked softly. A horse snorted and was stilled with a touch.

Seliek dismounted and lifted his spyglass, sweeping the distant valleys. The smoke wasn’t near Triangle Garden. Not yet. It was too far northeast, too scattered. But they were controlled burns. Multiple. Coordinated. Blasted three-legged goats.

“Freeholders,” Beric murmured beside him.

“Yes,” Seliek said. “And not the loud kind. Report,” he said.

Beric checked his slate. “Three wounded who can’t keep pace. Arrow grazes, caltrop injuries, one cracked collarbone from that rockslide at the last crossing. Which we both know wasn’t natural. No fatalities, thank the Light.”

Seliek nodded. “Consolidate the wounded with Third and Fourth squads. Have them stay high and mobile. No heroics.”

“Yes, sir.”

This wasn’t meant to destroy them. It was a reminder. The Freeholders were saying: You are not welcome. And we decide how much blood gets spilled until you leave.

Seliek respected that, even as it angered him.

They pushed on. The message had been delivered. What came next was no longer a Freeholder problem.

The terrain shifted slowly over the next two days. There was less rockslide chaos now, but more managed ruin. Old access roads appeared beneath moss and pine needles. Service sheds collapsed in deliberate ways. One relay tower lay snapped cleanly in half, its upper section dragged downhill and smashed beyond repair.

That wasn’t the work of mountain folk protecting their land. That was denial. Planned, but no longer personal.

“Freeholders don’t do this,” Beric said quietly.

“No,” Seliek agreed. “Freeholders defend or raid. This is someone who knows exactly what they intend to blind.”

By the time the first Seals of Dominion came into view, their lines and circles worked directly into rock at the trail junctions, now visibly warped and damaged—the air itself felt wrong. Not hot. Not cold. Just… wrong. Like a place that remembered being sealed and resented what had been done to it.

They stopped again at the ridgeline overlooking the Dunhavens basin.

This time, the smoke was closer.

Not immediate. Not urgent. But close enough that Seliek could feel the pressure of it in his chest, the way old soldiers felt weather change before storms.

Triangle Garden lay somewhere beyond the folds of land ahead—still hours away on foot, perhaps a day if the approach routes had been compromised.

But whatever was burning now wasn’t waiting for them.

Seliek lowered the glass.

“We’re behind,” he said, without inflection.

No one contradicted him. No one needed to.

They had been tracking this group for weeks—deserters, hijacked routes, missing Valkyries, falsified manifests. The sort of work that never made it into speeches or sermons. The sort that rotted nations quietly if left unattended.

Joseph Tharnen sat at the center of it like a knot no one wanted to pull too hard. A deserter on paper. A ghost in practice. And somehow, still moving pieces on the board.

Seliek didn’t hate him for it. He understood the impulse to walk away from a bad war. He understood the exhaustion, the moment when duty curdled into something poisonous. But understanding wasn’t absolution. Someone still had to hold the line.

“Orders, sir?” Beric asked.

Seliek studied the valley again—the distant smoke, the way the land folded in on itself as if trying to hide what lay beyond it. Then he nodded once.

“We proceed,” he said. “Reorder the platoon.”

Beric straightened. “Sir?”

“Any wounded in First and Second swap out with unwounded from Third and Fourth,” Seliek said. “I want my forward squads at full strength. No liabilities once we’re inside.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Once the swap is complete,” Seliek continued, “First and Second move with me. Third and Fourth take the high ground and seal egress. Anyone trying to leave this place does so only because we allow it.”

Beric hesitated only long enough to acknowledge the weight of it. “Understood.”

Seliek gave a single nod. “Make it clean. We move in ten.”

Beric hesitated. “And if we run into Church assets, sir?”

Seliek didn’t answer right away.

When he did, his voice was level, stripped of comfort.

“We carry out the mission. We de-escalate if possible. We give them every chance to step aside.” He paused, then continued, each word chosen carefully. “But if they obstruct lawful apprehension—if they shelter deserters or interfere with a royal warrant—then they are no longer neutral.”

Beric’s jaw tightened. “Even paladins, sir?”

“Yes.”

A few heads lifted. No one spoke.

Seliek turned fully then, meeting the eyes of the men closest to him. Not challenging them. Not testing them. Acknowledging what he was asking.

“It is a mortal sin to raise a hand against a paladin,” he said. “Every one of you knows that. So do I.”

He let that settle.

“But you are not priests,” Seliek continued. “You are soldiers. You took the King’s salt. You accepted his coin. And when you did, you accepted the burden that comes with it.”

One of the corporals swallowed. “Even if it damns us, sir?”

Seliek’s expression didn’t change. “If that judgment comes, it comes to me first. I will answer for the order. And for you following my orders.”

He held Beric’s gaze. Then the others’.

“I won’t lie to you. If this goes badly, the Church will call us butchers. People will curse our names. History will smooth it all into something convenient and ugly.” A faint tightening at the corner of his mouth. “But the law will stand. And the King’s peace will stand with it. And those people cursing our names will live to do so because of you.”

He drew a slow breath.

“If you cannot follow me into that, say so now. I will not mark you for it.”

As one, the unit rose to their feet. Boots snapped together. Hands rose in salute.

Beric straightened. “Orders acknowledged.”

Seliek returned the salute, just as crisply. “Good. Then we proceed. And God forgive us for doing our duty.”

That was the price. Everyone here knew it.

They moved downslope in disciplined silence, the forest swallowing them whole. No banners. No drums. Just the quiet certainty of men and women who had done this too many times to need theatrics.

As they drew closer to the outer perimeter, the terrain began to change in ways Seliek didn’t like. Paths were too clear. Fallen debris had been dragged aside and stacked out of sight—not recently, but deliberately. Fire lanes cut where forest should have closed in.

The clearing was too clean to be accidental. Someone had shaped the approaches with violence in mind.

Seliek felt the familiar tightening settle in his shoulders like an old weight. The one that came when a battlefield had already been shaped by hands you couldn’t see.

“Contact,” came a whisper from the left flank.

Seliek raised a fist. The line froze.

Through the trees, he could see movement—shadows, quick and purposeful. Not Freeholder scouts. Too clean. Too ordered.

“Paladins?” Beric murmured.

“Unclear,” Seliek said. “Hold your fire.”

Seliek raised the spyglass again.

He saw figures moving in pairs along the treeline—disciplined, overlapping arcs, weapons carried low. Guards, not scouts. Their armor was matte, unadorned except for the mark on the upper breast.

Red. A spiral, cut sharp and deliberate.

Seliek lowered the glass. Thorns, he thought. Wonderful.

“Looks like guards on patrol,” he said quietly. “Which means the place is active, not abandoned.”

Beric frowned as he looked through his own glass. “Are those…Thorns?”

Seliek nodded once. “Yep. The sort that like to say free men serve no masters.”

His mouth tightened, just enough. “Funny thing,” he added. “They always seem to be taking orders.”

Seliek watched them go, eyes narrowed.

“They’re inside already,” Beric said.

“Yes,” Seliek agreed. “And they’re between us and the entrance.”

For a moment, Seliek allowed himself something dangerous: irritation.

Not because they’d beaten him to the site. Not because they were interfering. That was inevitable. It was because whoever was orchestrating this knew the rules well enough to weaponize them. To force lawful actors into each other’s paths while the real work continued unseen.

Seliek hated that kind of enemy.

“Lieutenant,” one of the agents said quietly, “I’ve got eyes on another Thorn element moving in from the culvert. That makes fourteen. Something’s got them on alert.”

Seliek nodded. “Sheep dip. Then a subtle approach is out.”

He reached into his coat and withdrew a narrow case, no larger than a cigar box. Inside, nestled in felt, lay a piece of pre-Scouring hardware that no one in this forest was supposed to acknowledge existed.

Seliek felt the familiar resistance settle in his chest. Not fear. Something heavier.

He opened the case. Inside lay a device old enough to have a name no one said aloud anymore. Not a weapon. Not exactly. Something designed for doors that refused to stay shut, and systems that had been buried instead of dismantled.

Every time it came out, someone lost ground they would never get back.

Usually, it was Richard Seliek.

The men watched him without comment. You didn’t serve long in the GSS without learning what certain containers meant—what they cost to use, and who paid for them afterward.

He met their eyes anyway.

“This stays off the books,” he said evenly. “It is deployed only to prevent greater loss of life. Anyone uncomfortable can step back now.”

No one moved.

Seliek closed the case and handed it to Beric. “You handle the deployment of the device. Carefully.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now can you do something about those guards standing between me and the entrance?”

Beric grinned wolfishly and gave Seliek a Buckner. He used hand motions to signal the men.

The Greybacks peeled away from the column as if pulled by invisible lines—two slipping left, two right, one forward, spacing perfect, movement swallowed by brush and shadow. No signals. No hesitation. Everyone already knew their role.

The Thorn guards never saw them.

The first went down with a hand over his mouth and a blade slid cleanly under the jaw—fast, precise, no wasted force. He sagged once and was lowered to the ground before his knees could strike stone.

The second turned just in time to register movement before a short haft struck the base of his skull. He folded without a sound.

Across the approach, pairs dissolved into shadow—Greybacks intercepting Thorn patrols before they could converge. Brief struggles followed and ended just as quickly: cloth rasping, breath cut short, a startled curse swallowed before it could carry.

One by one, the patrol simply ceased to exist. Fourteen guards. Gone.

No alarms. No shouts. No warning carried deeper into the Garden.

Beric completed a slow circuit of the perimeter, checking bodies, counting twice. When he returned, he gave Seliek a single nod. “Clear.”

They pushed forward, pace tightening but controlled. Stone began to show beneath the moss—old foundations, half-buried stairwells, access ports disguised as ruins.

Triangle Garden had never been meant to be found by accident.

Seliek stepped forward into the darkness of the open door, already counting what he’d lost—and what he was prepared to lose next.

Because that was the job. And someone had to do it.