Reitz smelled smoke before he saw it.
Not the clean smoke of hearthwood—orderly, domestic, allowed.
This was the other kind. Wet straw and pitch. Burning that had crawled across thatch and beams and then sat there, satisfied, feeding.
His jaw tightened as he crested the last low rise.
Below him, the village lay open like a wound.
Half the roofs were still alight, orange tongues licking at blackened rafters. The rest had collapsed inward, steaming, as if the earth itself was exhaling. The road that cut through the center—packed dirt and cart-ruts—was littered with overturned baskets and scattered grain. Shattered clay crunched under boots.
The bandits had been bold.
Too bold.
Reitz's domain wasn't a soft orchard on some complacent lord's border. It was Imperial reserve land—granted to him by the Rex Imperia directly, taken from surrounding domains with a stroke of ink that had earned him envy, resentment, and a long list of eyes watching for weakness.
Bandits, normally, understood fear.
They stayed in the Badlands.
Farther west, past the last reliable wells and the last fields anyone bothered to till, the land broke into cliffs and jagged rock. There was an underground river down there—everyone knew it existed, a cold vein running beneath the stone—but no one had ever managed to make it a living place. Too harsh. Too exposed. Too little payoff.
So the Badlands remained a sorry territory: unclaimed in practice, protected in theory.
Brigands squatted there like ticks.
And the current Rex Imperia, for all his reach, had never sent a campaign to scrape them off.
No interest.
No appetite to reclaim a wasteland.
Reitz did not share that indifference.
He let the silence stretch as his two guards flanked him, their steps measured. He didn't speak to them. He didn't need to. His attention stayed on the village: the pattern of destruction, the places where fire had been set on purpose, the way the ransacked houses clustered—methodical looting, not random frenzy.
He walked forward.
The smell worsened.
It wasn't only smoke.
It was blood.
And the sweet-sour rot that began almost immediately when winter air met open flesh.
By the time he reached the village hall—a long timber building with a stone base meant to keep the damp out—he had already seen enough to know this wasn't "mere" banditry.
There were corpses on the side of the road.
Not hidden.
Displayed.
Some had been stripped naked, skin pale in the cold. Reitz's gaze snagged on small limbs, on faces that had never learned how to be cruel.
Children.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
It was an old trick: breathe like a duelist, not like a man.
It kept the fire from spilling out too soon.
He didn't want to burn the village down with his own rage.
Not yet.
A captain approached from the vicinity of the hall, boots muddy, posture stiff with the kind of strained discipline that came after hours of managing panic. His eyes flicked once to the bodies, then to Reitz, as if measuring the distance between duty and shame.
Reitz stopped in front of him.
"Report," he said.
The captain swallowed. "My liege. I posted ten guards here."
His voice was steady, but the tension in his neck betrayed him.
"This is the last village the bandits have pillaged. They struck before dawn and retreated toward the nearby caves afterward." He hesitated, then forced the next words out. "This was a peaceful village, my liege. I did not deploy more men.
"Seven of our guards were found." He glanced down the road, toward the stripped corpses. "Stripped. The other three… are yet to be found."
Reitz held his gaze.
"Treachery?"
The captain straightened as if the word itself was a lash. "That is doubtful, my liege. They were on rotation. The three missing include one of my veteran soldiers."
Reitz's eyes narrowed.
Veterans didn't vanish easily.
Unless they were made to.
"Is it possible they are still alive?" he asked.
The captain's throat bobbed. "It is possible, my liege. But unlikely. There were signs of a fierce battle. Survivors reported roughly thirty bandits."
Thirty.
Reitz looked back at the village.
Thirty men could burn houses and kill unarmed peasants, yes.
But this much precision? This much humiliation? This many dead guards?
Something was off.
He kept the thought behind his teeth.
"What were their weapons and armor?"
"Most wore leather, my liege," the captain said quickly, grateful for a question he could answer cleanly. "Two or three wore mixed chainmail and some armor pieces. Better than common thugs, but not soldiers."
Reitz tapped a finger against his gauntlet once.
Leather, mixed mail.
A campfire-bright aura, if there were mages.
He needed a sense of their capacity—if this was merely a raid, he could crush them without ceremony. If it was something else… he would need to treat it like war.
"Are any of the survivors capable of sensing the magic capacities of the scoundrels?" Reitz asked.
The captain hesitated, then nodded. "There is a boy, my liege. New to the village. His family moved in recently. His parents died in the raid."
Reitz's gaze sharpened.
"A child?"
"Yes, my liege. Around seven. But… promising." The captain's eyes darted away, as if he didn't want to admit he'd used a grieving peasant child as a tool. "The villagers told me he can cast a spell."
Reitz raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
Even a weak spell meant Awakening.
Awakening meant he could feel Fields—crudely, but enough.
And if he'd seen the bandits' auras in motion, that would give Reitz his first real data.
"What type of magic?"
"Water magic, my liege. His name is Caspian."
Reitz's expression went still.
Water.
In this region, water talent was rarer than fire, and those who had it were often drafted by lords hungry for irrigation, wells, and siege utility. A water child left alone in a burned village would be prey.
"Then summon him," Reitz said.
"As you command, my liege."
The captain turned and strode away.
Reitz watched him go, then looked back down the road.
He'd spent enough time around death to recognize something else beneath the ash: intent.
Bandits didn't just steal.
They made statements.
And statements had audiences.
Was this meant for him?
Or for someone higher—someone who wanted to see whether the Lord of Castle Blackfyre would respond quickly… and how.
He stayed where he was, a fixed point in the ruined village, while his guards stood silent behind him.
Minutes dragged.
Smoke crackled.
A beam collapsed somewhere with a groan like a dying animal.
Then the captain returned.
He had a child with him.
Caspian was small even for his age, scrawny in a way that suggested hunger had been a familiar companion long before the raid. Grey hair hung in uneven strands across his forehead. His eyes were an arresting azure, too bright for the soot-smudged face beneath them.
His clothes were a peasant's rags—shabby, patched, stained with something darker than mud.
The boy stumbled as he was brought forward, then dropped into a bow so deep his forehead nearly met the dirt.
"The boy is here, my liege," the captain said.
Caspian shook.
Not with cold.
With fear.
"Y-your L-lordship," he whispered.
Reitz's irritation—hot and righteous—softened into something heavier.
He knew what it was to be young in a world where power had teeth.
"Caspian," he said, keeping his voice level. "That is your name, is it not? Rise."
The boy did not immediately obey. His bow trembled. Finally, he pushed himself up onto his knees, still not lifting his eyes.
"Y-yes, y-your lordship."
Reitz let the boy's reluctance sit without punishment.
Fear, at least, meant the child still had the instinct to survive.
"Did you see the magic aura of the bandits?" Reitz asked. "How bright were they?"
Caspian swallowed hard. His lips moved soundlessly for a moment as if rehearsing the answer.
"Your L-lordship… th-they had… b-brightness of oil lamps," he stammered. "B-but two of them were… as bright as a campfire."
Reitz's eyes narrowed.
Oil-lamp bright: low-level Awakened, perhaps commoner-enhanced or weak nobles.
Campfire bright: knight-tier aura.
Not absurdly rare.
But rare among "bandits."
Hmm, Reitz thought. Knight-level Field. Quite formidable for ruffians.
It also matched the damage.
Not just knives and torches.
Something had kept ten guards from holding a line.
"Very well," Reitz said. "What element can you cast?"
Caspian flinched, as if expecting the question to be a trap.
"Y-your L-lordship… I-I c-can cast Water Ball," he said, words rushing out now that he'd started. "B-but I am not v-very good at it."
Reitz nodded once.
A crude spell.
But a spell all the same.
And if the child had managed it without formal instruction, with no lord's tutor shaping his mind, then his potential was more than "promising."
It was useful.
And usefulness, in a broken village full of corpses, was a dangerous thing.
Reitz looked down at the boy for a long moment.
He could have left Caspian here.
He could have offered a few coins and told him to find distant kin.
He could have walked away and pretended the child's fate was not his responsibility.
That was the easier path.
The lawful path.
It would also be cowardice.
"Caspian," Reitz said, "how would you like to be one of my son's retainers?"
The boy's breath caught.
Reitz kept going, voice steady, almost conversational.
"I can train you in magic. You can become a knight someday. You will have food. Shelter. A place that is not… this."
He didn't gesture at the village. He didn't need to.
Silence stretched.
Caspian's shoulders shook.
Reitz waited.
The captain shifted his weight impatiently.
"Answer, boy!" the captain barked.
Caspian flinched so hard his knees slid in the dirt.
Reitz lifted a hand.
"It's okay," he said softly. "Captain Ashen, there is no need to pressure him."
He let his gaze return to the child.
"You have nothing to look forward to here," Reitz continued. "Back in my castle, I can give you a better life. Just pledge fealty."
Caspian's face twisted.
Grief.
Fear.
And something stubborn beneath it: the last rag of a child's pride.
Finally, he whispered, "W-well… I-I am at your command, Milord."
Reitz nodded once.
"Good."
He allowed himself a small smile—brief, controlled.
Then he turned to the captain.
"Captain," Reitz said, "give him a fresh change of clothes. Have one of the Blackfyre Guard escort him to Castle Blackfyre. Tell the escort to deliver the boy to Maester Grimfire on my orders. He will know what to do."
The captain's eyes flicked to the ruined village again, then back.
"As for the bandits' location," Reitz continued, voice flattening into something colder, "I will personally take charge and deal with them today."
The boy's head snapped up slightly at that—just a reflexive movement—then dropped again.
Reitz didn't look at him.
He didn't want Caspian to see the expression on his face.
He was past irritation now.
He was past offense.
This was his land.
His people.
His responsibility.
And someone had decided they could burn it.
"Ten men will stay here as scouts," Reitz said. "If the bandits return, I want immediate notice. Evacuate the villagers in the meantime. Prepare the expeditionary force immediately."
Captain Ashen thumped a fist to his chest. "As you command, my liege."
Reitz turned his gaze south, toward the jagged line of rock where the land began to harden into Badlands.
Caves.
Stone mouths in a barren throat.
If the bandits had retreated there, it was either because they thought themselves safe… or because someone wanted them there.
Either way, Reitz would meet them in their hole.
And he would teach them what it meant to raid a domain protected by the Rex Imperia.
He took one last breath of smoke.
Then he started walking.