Captain Varn sat with his back against a tree, hands bound behind him, watching twenty exhausted fighters stare at him with expressions ranging from curiosity to barely restrained murder. Five kilometers north, the main refugee column rested, unaware that their protectors had just won an impossible victory.
Misaki crouched in front of the captain, his scout's blade still stained with blood from the ambush. "Talk. Why is King Ashtherion'vaur doing this? Why genocide? Why now?"
Varn spat blood to the side. "You think I know the royal mind? I'm a captain. I follow orders."
"Then follow this order: speak, or I let Riyeak ask questions his way." Misaki gestured to where the massive shield-bearer stood, his knuckles still raw from beating soldiers to death with his bare fists.
The captain's resolve cracked slightly. "The king... he believes mana users are corruption. Hell-born. That they weaken the kingdom by existing. He's been planning this purge for years—since before I joined the military. It's ideological. Religious, almost."
"Bullshit," Deylos interjected from his position. "Genocide isn't ideology. It's policy. What does he gain?"
Varn hesitated, then: "Unity. The nobility were fractured before—competing houses, regional tensions, succession disputes. The purge gave them a common enemy. Common purpose. The king consolidated power by making chakra users feel superior. By making them complicit." He met Misaki's eyes. "You want the truth? The purge isn't about mana users at all. It's about control. About creating an enemy that justifies unlimited state authority."
Misaki felt sick. He'd seen this pattern on Earth. Create an outgroup. Dehumanize them. Use their persecution to justify authoritarian expansion. The methodology was universal across worlds.
"How many?" Shy'yao asked quietly. "How many has he killed?"
"I don't know exact numbers. East City was one twenty-seven thousand. But there have been... dozens of operations. Maybe hundreds. Gods." Varn's voice dropped. "Maybe half a million. Maybe more."
The forest went silent except for wind through leaves and the distant river.
Half a million souls. Erased. For politics disguised as principle.
Misaki stood, suddenly needing distance from the captain before he did something he'd regret. "Tie him properly. We're bringing him to Seleun'mhir. Let the mountain nation decide his fate."
Three hundred kilometers southwest, on Ul'varh'mir's northwestern coast, Fort Nal'therin burned.
Commander Resh'kala had launched his preemptive strike as ordered—twenty-three warships charging the elvish fleet with desperate courage and zero tactical wisdom. The engagement lasted eleven minutes.
Elvish warships didn't use conventional weapons. Their hulls were grown rather than built, their masts channeled ambient mana, and their crews could reshape reality with focused thought.
The first Ul'varh'mir ship that came within range simply stopped existing. Not sunk. Not destroyed. One moment it was there—wood and sail and one hundred twenty men. The next moment, empty water. As if the ship had been edited out of reality by some cosmic hand.
The second ship caught fire from the inside out. Every wooden plank igniting simultaneously. Sailors jumped into the ocean screaming, their flesh still burning underwater—magical fire that needed no oxygen.
The third ship's hull transmuted to sand mid-voyage. Collapsed in on itself. Drowned everyone aboard before they could process what had happened.
By the time Resh'kala ordered retreat, he'd lost sixteen ships and two thousand men. The remaining seven vessels limped back toward shore, pursued by elvish magic that turned water to ice, air to acid, hope to despair.
On the lead elvish warship, Admiral Kel'tharon watched the human fleet flee with no satisfaction. "Such waste. Such pointless death."
"They attacked us, Admiral."
"Because their king is an idiot who mistakes cruelty for strength." Kel'tharon raised his hand, and across sixty-five ships, every captain received his silent command simultaneously—mana-based telepathy that made verbal orders obsolete.
A horn sounded. Deep. Resonant. A sound that carried across water and land for hundreds of kilometers, echoing through valleys and over mountains.
The signal had been given.
On Ul'varh'mir's northern plains, two hundred kilometers from the coast, the ground trembled.
Farmers working fields looked up in confusion. Merchants traveling roads stopped their wagons. Children playing in villages paused mid-game.
Then the horizon changed.
An army appeared. Not marching from distant territory. Not approaching gradually. Simply... appearing. As if they'd been invisible until this moment—which, in fact, they had been.
The elvish ground forces numbered thirty thousand. Infantry, cavalry, mages, siege units. All arranged in perfect formations that looked more like geometric art than military deployment. Their armor gleamed silver-white, grown from the same living material as their ships. Their weapons hummed with stored mana.
And they moved.
Not with the slow methodical pace of human armies. Elvish infantry could sustain speeds that would exhaust human soldiers in minutes—for hours. For days. Their physiology simply operated on different principles.
By sunset, they'd advanced eighty kilometers inland. Captured seven towns. Occupied four military forts. Secured critical road junctions and supply depots.
The kingdom's northern forces tried to respond. Tried to organize defensive lines. Tried to slow the advance.
They died. Quickly. Efficiently. Absolutely.
An elvish mage could level a fortified position with a thought. An elvish warrior could cut through five human soldiers before they finished drawing weapons. And elvish commanders fought alongside their troops—unlike human officers who directed from safety, High Elven leadership believed in leading from the front.
By nightfall, when both Ulth'rk set and darkness claimed Vulcan, the elvish forces had claimed twenty-two percent of Ul'varh'mir's northern territory.
Twenty-two percent. In twelve hours.
And they showed no signs of slowing.
In Velkyn's royal palace, King Ashtherion'vaur sat on the edge of his bed, staring at nothing. His crown sat on the nightstand. His royal robes had been discarded for simple sleeping clothes.
"Twenty-two percent," he whispered. "In one day. How is that possible?"
Queen Myra'vaur stood at the window, watching the city below. Her back was to her husband. Her posture was perfectly straight.
"Husband," she said softly, "may I ask you something?"
"What?"
"Who do you think informed Xyi'vana'mir about the purge? About East City? About the specific casualty numbers?"
The king's head snapped up. "We've been investigating. Some traitor in the military command, obviously. When I find them—"
"You're looking in the wrong place." Myra'vaur turned, and something in her expression made the king go very still. "The informant wasn't in your command structure. Wasn't in your advisory council. Wasn't even in your kingdom's intelligence apparatus."
"Then who—"
"Me."
The word hung in the air like a blade.
The king stood slowly. "What did you just say?"
"I told them everything. Every death count. Every village cleansed. Every child murdered. I sent detailed reports directly to High Queen Lyse'andra Vel'synthara through channels you don't even know exist." Myra'vaur's voice was perfectly calm. "Did you never wonder about my family, Ashtherion? About where I came from before you forced me into this marriage?"
"Your family is nobility from the eastern provinces—"
"My family is the forgotten eleventh bloodline of Ul'varh'mir." She pulled back her hair, revealing ears that had been carefully covered for decades. Pointed ears. Elvish ears. "My great-grandmother was High Elf. Married into human nobility five generations ago. The bloodline diluted but never disappeared. I am half-elven, husband. Have been the entire time you've known me."
The king's face went from confusion to horror to rage in three heartbeats. "You... you're one of them..."
"I am what you've been trying to exterminate." Myra'vaur's hand moved to her sleeve. "And I will not let you kill any more of my people."
She drew the hidden knife in one fluid motion—a thin blade of elvish silver, kept concealed in a sleeve sheath for twenty years of marriage, waiting for this exact moment.
The king opened his mouth to scream. Myra'vaur's other hand stuffed cloth into his mouth with practiced efficiency, gagging him before sound could emerge.
Then she cut his throat.
One clean motion. Ear to ear. Severing both carotid arteries and the windpipe. Blood sprayed across white silk sheets, across the mythril crown, across everything the king had built through cruelty and cunning.
Ashtherion'vaur clutched at his throat, eyes wide with shock and rage and terminal understanding. He tried to speak. Tried to call guards. Tried to use chakra for healing.
But Myra'vaur's blade was coated with elvish poison—a substance that disrupted chakra flow and prevented coagulation. The king would bleed out in ninety seconds. No healing possible. No salvation available.
"This is for East City," Myra'vaur whispered as her husband collapsed. "For every child. For every innocent. For every person you murdered because they were born different."
She watched him die. Watched the light fade from those pale grey eyes. Watched the tyrant become a corpse.
Then she moved.
The hidden tunnels beneath the palace had existed for centuries—escape routes for royalty during sieges or coups. Myra'vaur had mapped them years ago, waiting for an opportunity that had finally arrived.
She disappeared into darkness, leaving behind a dead king, a blood-soaked bedroom, and a kingdom about to discover that its head had been removed.
Morning came to the northern forest where refugees huddled and fighters rested.
Misaki woke to birdsong and the smell of cooking fires. The refugee column prepared to move again—packing supplies, organizing children, preparing for another day's march toward Seleun'mhir's border.
"How far to the border?" Sera asked, holding Kyn against her chest. The little girl looked stronger today. Less fragile. Hope was powerful medicine.
"Three more days," Lyria answered, helping distribute morning rations. "Maybe four if we're cautious."
"The other pursuit columns haven't caught up," Vellin reported to Misaki. "If they could reach us, they would have by now. I think we've outrun them."
Misaki nodded, allowing himself cautious optimism. They'd survived. Against impossible odds, through tactical brilliance and desperate courage, eight hundred refugees had survived.
They had no idea that three hundred kilometers south, war had reshaped the continent. That their small rebellion had sparked a conflagration that was burning through the kingdom like wildfire through dry grass.
They didn't know about the elvish invasion. About the coastal battles. About twenty-two percent of Ul'varh'mir falling in a single day.
They didn't know that Queen Myra'vaur walked free through northern forests, heading toward elvish lines, carrying intelligence that would reshape the entire campaign.
They only knew they were alive. And moving north. And maybe—just maybe—about to reach safety.
"Let's move out," Shy'yao called. "Stay together. Watch for traps. And remember—we're not safe until we cross that border."
Eight hundred people began walking. North. Always north. Toward mountains and sanctuary and a future they could barely imagine.
Behind them, unseen and unknown, a kingdom burned.