The departure of his five new vassals did not solve the immediate problem. An army of over two hundred enraged, leaderless, and profoundly humiliated templars was still camped on the edge of his domain. Corian, a zealot deprived of his object of worship, was now in command. A man like that would not simply retreat. He would double down, seeking to cleanse his own shame and the perceived corruption of his superior through righteous, suicidal violence.
Elias had no interest in a prolonged battle. It would be a messy, resource-intensive affair. He did not need to defeat Corian's army. He needed to dissolve it.
His newly formed Order of the Ashen Canopy, led by Theron, was given their first mission. It was not one of espionage or combat, but of quiet, psychological erosion.
"Go to them," Elias commanded, as they stood ready to depart the Spire. "Not as yourselves. Go as ghosts. As whispers. Use their own beliefs against them."
Dressed in their humble pilgrim's cloaks, Theron and his men did not travel far. They circled around the main templar camp, observing it from the periphery. As predicted, Corian was in a frenzy of sanctimonious fury. He was conducting purification rituals, giving fire-and-brimstone sermons, and declaring Theron and the others to have been "taken by the Demon," their souls lost forever. He was preparing his men for a final, glorious charge into the forest to die for their god.
Theron watched, his heart aching with a strange mixture of pity and resolve. These men were his brothers, but they were trapped in a cage of their own making. He had to give them a key, even if they refused to use it.
His team began their work, operating as five independent cells of subtle chaos.
Valen, the young idealist, used his knowledge of scouting paths to create phantom trails that led patrols in circles. He would leave a single, white feather—a symbol of a solar angel's passage—on a path that led directly into an impassable bog, making the templars believe their divine guidance was faulty or, worse, being mocked.
The old quartermaster, using his understanding of logistics, contaminated a small, upstream source that fed the camp's water supply. He did not use poison. He used a mixture of crushed, non-toxic but foul-tasting herbs provided by Elias. The water was still safe to drink, but it now tasted bitter and unclean, like ashes. To the templars, drinking blessed water that tasted of sacrilege was a deeply unnerving omen.
The scarred warrior used his knowledge of combat formations to sow discord. He would sneak close to the camp at night and use a sling to hurl small, fist-sized rocks into the center of the sentry posts. The impact was enough to startle the guards and cause them to challenge the darkness, but they would find no enemy. Their vigilance turned to jumpy paranoia, and accusations began to fly between sentries about who was sleeping on watch.
But Theron's task was the most delicate and the most cruel. He targeted Corian directly.
Theron knew the man's private prayers, his deepest fears. Corian's greatest fear was not of demons, but of spiritual inadequacy. He feared that his faith was not pure enough, that the Sun did not find him worthy.
Using a whisper of the Soul Whisper technique Elias had taught him to use—a crude, mortal approximation, but effective at short range on a receptive mind—Theron began to haunt his former friend. He didn't send visions of monsters. He sent visions of Corian's own inadequacy. He would be in mid-sermon, and Theron would project the silent, telepathic feeling that his men were laughing at him, that they saw him as a pale imitation of Theron. He would be praying, and Theron would whisper a single, heretical thought into his mind: The Sun does not hear you.
Over several days, the mighty Templar army began to rot from within. They were well-fed and well-armed, but their morale was being systematically dismantled. Their patrols got lost, their water tasted of sin, their nights were filled with phantom alarms, and their leader was slowly being driven mad by his own insecurities.
The final act was a masterstroke of psychological theater orchestrated by Elias himself.
On the fifth night, as Corian knelt alone in his tent, trying to scourge the seeds of doubt from his mind with frantic prayer, Elias reached out across the miles. He did not manifest. He did not send a golem. He simply focused on a single object in the tent: Corian's personal, gilded holy symbol of the Sun that lay on the small altar before him.
Using his Geist-Binder ability, Elias focused a tremendous amount of pure, Votive Essence—the prayer-energy from Sunstone—into the holy symbol.
The symbol began to glow. Brighter and brighter it shone, with the pure, white-hot light of holy power. Corian looked up, his eyes widening in ecstatic disbelief. His prayer was being answered! The Sun was manifesting before him!
A voice then spoke from the glowing symbol, a voice of pure, celestial light, a voice that Elias synthesized from his memory of every zealous sermon he had ever overheard.
"CORIAN, MY UNWORTHY SERVANT."
The templar fell prostrate. "My Lord! My Sun! I am here! I serve you!" he sobbed.
"YOU HAVE FAILED," the voice of the false god boomed. "YOU HAVE LED MY CHILDREN INTO A LAND WHERE MY LIGHT HOLDS NO SWAY. YOU HAVE CONFUSED THE CANOPY FOR THE SHADOW. THIS BATTLE IS NOT YOURS TO FIGHT."
"But my Lord, the demon! The heresy!" Corian cried.
"THE BALANCE OF THIS PLACE IS ANCIENT AND IT IS NOT FOR MORTALS TO JUDGE," the holy symbol declared. "YOUR FAITH IS WEAK. YOUR CRUSADE IS A VAINGLORY. YOU HAVE ANGERED A POWER THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEFT TO ITS SLUMBER. NOW YOU WILL SHEPHERD MY CHILDREN HOME, AND NEVER RETURN. THIS FOREST IS... FORBIDDEN."
With a final, blinding flash of light that singed the tent canvas, the holy symbol returned to being an inert piece of metal.
Corian was left trembling on the floor, a broken man. He had not just been defeated; he had been excommunicated by his own god. His crusade was not just a failure; it was a sin.
The next morning, the templars awoke to a new leader. Corian, his face pale and his eyes hollowed out, gave a single, unbreakable command. They were to abandon the crusade. They were to return to the Theocracy and report that the Blackwood was a place of powers beyond their reckoning, a place their own god had forbidden them from entering.
Theron and his men watched from a high ridge as the demoralized, confused army of the Order of Sol turned its back on the Blackwood and began its long, shame-faced march home. They had not been defeated by a monster. They had been judged by their own faith and found wanting.
Elias had won again, without a single casualty on either side. He had turned an army of fanatics into his unwilling messengers. The Theocracy would not return. Not because they feared a demon, but because they now believed their own god had declared the Blackwood a forbidden, sacred, and terrifyingly neutral ground. The Ashen King had not just won the war; he had erased the chessboard.