Dawn found the army uneasy.
Not because of alarms or attacks—there were none—but because something essential had gone missing.
Orders were still given. Units still rotated. Steel still gleamed as the sun climbed. Yet a subtle dissonance threaded through the camp, like a rhythm played half a beat off. Veterans felt it first. The kind who knew when a line held not because it was ordered to—but because it believed.
They kept glancing toward the valley.
When the Rotten-Heart emerged from the morning haze, there was no horn.
No challenge call.
Just a ripple of attention moving outward from the sentries who saw them first.
An orc, tall and scarred, armor absent, weapons left behind. The sigils that once marked command still faintly etched into their flesh—but dim, no longer asserting themselves.
"Hold," someone whispered.
No one knew who had said it.
The Rotten-Heart stopped just beyond bow range and raised empty hands—not in surrender, but in proof.
