The northern courtyard hadn't been used in years. Ivy crawled the archways. Moss ate the edges of once-proud statues—heroes now forgotten.
Zela stood by the rusted gate.
"You sure they'll come?"
Elara didn't answer.
She stood in ceremonial black. A half-cloak clasped at one shoulder with the sigil of the old moon—Lycaena's broken crescent.
Not royal.
Not noble.
Something older.
Stronger.
"When the path is overgrown, the wise do not clear it—they make a new one."
The gate creaked.
The first figure stepped through the mist.
General Kofi Naane. Once the Red Fang of the Eastern Border. Exiled after refusing to execute Lycaena's last loyalists.
Then came Adisa of the Flameguard, the only commander who'd held the Firewatch Tower for seven nights alone during the great siege.
And finally, Sango Iru, former strategist of the forbidden Lupine Guard. Tall. Lean. Eyes like thunder behind heavy lids.
They bowed—not low, not as to a queen.
But with respect.
The kind that can't be demanded.
Only earned.
"I did not call you to reopen old wounds," Elara began. "But to prepare for a new war. One they don't see coming. One I won't win with whispers and noble names."
General Naane studied her. "You carry Lycaena's symbol. Do you carry her cause?"
"No," Elara said. "I carry her mistake. She trusted the wrong king."
Silence.
Then Sango nodded. "And you won't?"
"I don't want the throne."
Adisa smirked. "Then what do you want?"
Elara looked toward the palace behind her. "To set the board on fire. And build something in the ashes that can't be unseated by marriage or bloodline."
"If the drum does not sound right, it is not the dancer who must change—but the drum maker."
They accepted.
Not with words.
But with weapons.
Each one knelt and offered a relic from the old war—symbols of the power they once had, now placed in Elara's hands.
Zela's eyes widened. "You just brought back a whole outlawed legion."
Elara smiled.
"No."
She closed her hand around General Naane's fang blade.
"I just gave it a new name."
That night, the first training began.
Beneath the old temple ruins. Torchlight. Stone dust. Footsteps in rhythm.
Elara watched as Adisa broke down the new recruits—ex-servants, city orphans, even temple defectors. She didn't yell. She taught with brutal efficiency.
"You are not wolves," she barked. "You are the wind before the wolf howls. You are the reason they lock their gates at night."
Meanwhile, Naane led drills in formationless combat—designed for uneven terrain and palace corridors.
And Sango?
He taught maps. Strategy. How to rewrite war using whispers and gates and rumors as battlegrounds.
"A child who holds the map learns faster than the one who follows the footsteps."
Back in the palace, Caelum sat with his generals. The rebellion in the southern provinces was rising faster than expected. Supplies were being stolen. Temple rites interrupted. And someone—untraceable—was arming villages.
A councilor murmured, "This looks like Lycaena's ghost."
Caelum said nothing.
He already knew.
This wasn't a ghost.
It was Elara.
And the worst part?
He didn't want to stop her.
He wanted to join her.
But the crown…
The crown was a leash too heavy to slip off.
By week's end, Elara had her first full company. Fifty warriors. Unnamed. Unpaid. Unbent.
She gave them no crest.
No chant.
Only a code.
"We serve no throne. Only the dawn after the fall."
Zela came to her at dusk, arms crossed.
"You're building an army inside a kingdom at peace."
Elara looked out at the flickering torches beyond the temple wall.
"This kingdom was never at peace. It was just quieter while we were asleep."
"The goat that sleeps beside the lion has already accepted its fate—or plans to bite first."