They planned.
Not like rebels.
Like survivors who had no other choice.
Day after day, late into the cold mountain nights, they circled back to that war table—etching strategies with worn hands and tired eyes. Maps cluttered the walls. Notes, rumors, diagrams—Velmira's patterns, her defenses, her behaviors—every piece of scattered knowledge they had managed to scavenge across years of death and silence.
They were careful.
They had to be.
Because this wasn't just a revolt anymore.
It was turning into a war.
A war that could wipe their names from Signo's memory,
—or finally carve out a sliver of freedom where people didn't have to flinch at a goddess' shadow.
That was the dream now.
Not to win.
To be free.
So they waited. They gave themselves a month.
Not to buy time—but to earn survival.
