The tension was a physical presence in Avalon, a wire pulled taut, waiting for a pluck. Rex's refusal to pay tithe to Marius's group had been the pluck. The response was not long in coming.
It began not with a frontal assault, but with a act of opportunistic predation. A small foraging party—two of the Newcomers, Pierre and Annette, who had been sent to check rabbit snares in the woods just beyond the stream—failed to return by nightfall.
A search party, led by Rex and Kaelen, found them at dawn. The scene was brutal, efficient. The snares were torn up, the rabbits gone. Pierre was dead, an arrow from a powerful hunting bow lodged in his back. He had been running. Annette was gone, along with her boots and the small skinning knife she carried.
There were no boasts, no signs. It was a message of pure, contemptuous practicality. A reminder that Avalon's walls ended at its gates.
They carried Pierre's body back in grim silence. The mood in the courtyard was a volatile mix of grief and terror. This was the first life lost. The abstract threat had become real, its cost measured in blood.
Rex stood before the assembled, pale-faced community, Pierre's body wrapped in a shroud at his feet.
"They did not attack our walls," Rex's voice cut through the cold morning air, hard as flint. "They attacked our people. They took one of ours and killed another to show us that our safety is an illusion. They believe we are prey."
He let the word hang there, letting the shame and anger of it sink in.
"They are wrong." He turned his gaze to Kaelen. "Are the new bolts ready?"
"A dozen," she said, her voice tight with fury. "Hardened and sharp."
"Good." His eyes then found Liana, who was standing with Elara, her face ashen. "Liana. The map of the lumber yard. The Brutes' camp. I need it."
She nodded, a flicker of understanding and fear in her eyes. She was not being asked to observe this time.
An hour later, the war council stood over her detailed sketches in the gatehouse. Rex pointed to a spot Liana had marked—a game trail used by the Brutes for their own hunting, a mile from their main camp.
"They hunt us? Then we become the hunters," Rex said, his finger stabbing the map. "We don't wait for a siege. We show them the cost of touching our people. We take one of theirs."
The plan was simple, brutal, and a profound departure from their defensive posture. Rex, Kaelen, and Jean would lie in ambush on the game trail. The objective was not to start a war, but to deliver a message. An eye for an eye.
They left at dusk, moving like ghosts through the twilight forest, their faces smeared with dirt. They took positions overlooking the trail, Kaelen with her crossbow, Rex with his longbow, Jean with a heavy, nail-studded cudgel. They waited in the chilling silence, the memory of Pierre's body driving away any doubt.
Just as the last light faded, they came. Two of the Brutes, laughing and coarse, dragging a freshly killed deer. They were confident, unafraid.
Rex let out a low, bird-like call. The signal.
Kaelen's crossbow thrummed. The bolt took the lead man high in the shoulder, spinning him around with a grunt of shock and pain. The second man froze for a fatal second, his head turning.
That was all Rex needed. His arrow took the man in the thigh, a clean, debilitating shot. The man screamed and collapsed.
In seconds, Jean was on them, disarming them with brutal efficiency. Rex stood over the two writhing men, his face a cold mask in the moonlight.
"Listen to me," Rex's voice was a low, deadly whisper. "You took one of ours. We take two of yours. You killed a unarmed forager. We let you live. Go back to your camp. Tell your leader this: the next time one of your people steps foot on our land, the next time you harm one of our people, we will not shoot to wound. We will burn your camp to the ground and sow the earth with salt. The castle is not a prize. It is a hive, and you have just been stung. Now, crawl back to your master and deliver my message."
They left the two men there, bleeding and terrified in the dark, their weapons and their deer taken as trophies.
The walk back to Avalon was silent, the adrenaline ebbing to be replaced by a grim solemnity. They had crossed a threshold. They had drawn first blood, not in defense of their walls, but in offense for their people.
The gate closed behind them. Rex looked at the faces of his council, of his people. They saw the blood on the arrow he had retrieved, the grim set of his jaw. They saw not just a protector, but an avenger.
Avalon was no longer just a sanctuary. It was a power. And the world had just been put on notice.