Chapter 1: The Door Opens

By midnight, the plan has already failed in the most useful possible direction.

a useless prince exiled with one broken regiment and an unread military journal

The evidence survives, but reaching it requires a choice that exposes the group to a new enemy.

Prince Lucan Grey keeps the larger goal in view: turn farmers, smugglers, and defeated soldiers into a defense no empire expects. The immediate problem is smaller, sharper, and impossible to postpone.

They disagree without leaving. For both of them, that becomes a more intimate choice than agreement.

Prince Lucan Grey accepts that the impossible event is real and cannot be ignored.

The recurring signs of battle maps, iron, ravens return with a different meaning, linking this choice to what came before.

Before the first night ends, the danger speaks Prince Lucan Grey's name.