CHAPTER 12: The Quiet Blade
Duskwatch – Winter Deepens
He arrived with the second wave of displaced villagers. No banners. No surname. Just a limp, a stitched lie about a burned farm, and eyes that noticed too much.
They called him Nalen.
But his true name didn't matter.
The court had given him a code-sigil, burned into a piece of bone: Crow-Talon 37. His purpose was simple.
Observe the Sovereign. Learn the structure. Identify cracks. And when ordered—shatter them.
Entry
Duskwatch had grown—chaotic, swelling with exiles, tradesmen, and firebrand zealots. Nalen slipped into the fortress like a drop of oil in soup: indistinct, invisible, inevitable.
He served under a quartermaster, cleaning crates, checking ledgers. Each night, he sketched diagrams from memory. Gate rotations. Watch shifts. The location of Seyda's fire-hall.
He never spoke unless spoken to.
And yet—he watched everything.
Target: Kael Sovereign
Nalen saw Kael first during an address in the training yard.
No crown. No polished armor. Just a black cloak dusted with ash, and a sword at his back.
Kael spoke not like a king, but like a soldier who'd survived too many kings.
"We build not to conquer. We build because no one else did. If that threatens them—let it."
The crowd roared. But Nalen heard fear underneath the devotion.
He noted the patterns:
Myrren handled discipline.
Dren commanded scouts.
Seyda moved through the people like a shadowed flame, whispered about more than obeyed.
And Kael? Kael listened. More than he spoke. And that was more dangerous than any sword.
Complication: The Girl with One Glove
Nalen's cover nearly slipped when a kitchen girl, Tarna, asked too many questions.
"You don't move like a farmer," she said, cleaning knives beside him.
"I limped three days on a frozen road," he replied flatly.
"Still stand straighter than Dren."
He offered a shrug and a muttered thanks.
But he began watching her, too.
Tarna wasn't just a cook. She passed food to Veil Acolytes. Sat in prayer circles. She was a flame-touched loyalist. Not a spy.
But maybe bait.
A Glimpse of Suspicion
Two nights later, Seyda passed within feet of him in the hall.
She stopped.
Turned.
Her gaze rested on him like heat from a dying fire.
"You've seen war," she said, not asking.
"Briefly."
She smiled faintly.
"So have ghosts. But they make less noise when they dream."
She left him there, unsure if he'd been marked.
He burned his sketches that night.
Final Scene – A Letter Never Sent
In a hidden alcove of the old Duskwatch chapel, Nalen knelt and carved a message into a stone scroll casing:
"Sovereign is not a man—they're building him into a myth. He listens. He bleeds. But he leads. Kill him now, or not at all."
He sealed the scroll and set it inside the hidden passage hollow.
He had done his duty.
But as he looked out across Duskwatch—from torchlit towers to singing children in the snow—he realized something colder than treason:
He was starting to believe in the man.