Dark Parasyte

General Kaelen Dros had traveled under heavy escort for two days without pause, his command carriage flanked by mounted Veilguard outriders and banners of the Northern Front. The highland wind hissed against the reinforced steel of the carriage, whispering through arrow slits and armor seams alike. The roads had grown too quiet for his taste and quiet in the Iron March seldom meant peace. It meant aftermath. And Dros had learned, long ago, that aftermath carried no banners. Only smoke.

Inside the carriage, he reread the final field transcript, its ink smudged by cold and urgency. Halberreach, reduced to rubble. Thornvault, blackened stone and ash. Greybarrow and Saint Edrin’s Hold, abandoned, desecrated. Churches in Hightarn, Barrowreach, and Saint Lavellan left in silence, their clergy slaughtered.

The reports had been gathered by scouts, couriers who had passed too close to the locations o notice the strange eeriness and smoke. The enemy left nothing behind. Not even motive.

He hadn’t waited for permission to come to Blackspire Bastion. No formal request, nor a heralded entrance. His arrival was not announced by trumpets but by the rumble of wheels against stone and the creak of carriage joints stiff with frost. When the doors opened, Kaelen stepped out like a shadow stitched to iron. His cloak snapped in the wind and his boots clanged once, twice, against the flagstones.

Blackspire rose before him like a scar the earth had tried and failed to heal. Its runed arch was no gate of welcome. It was a warning. He passed beneath it with the weight of ruined bastions on his shoulders.

The Assembly Chamber had already convened.

A ring of commanders, fortress liaisons, and Veilguard operatives sat around a black iron table scored with decades of marks and burn scars. The High March Assembly. Less a council, more a war engine waiting to be aimed. At its head sat Grand Marshal Varkos Thorne, unmoving, banner draped behind him in place of a throne. Its threads soaked in victories and vows.

Veilguard dossiers lay in the center, sealed in bone thread wax. Just the kind of truth that could not be archived without fire. Black parchment for black deeds.

The Veilguard themselves did not speak. They watched. Their masks were blank, their presence heavier than armor. The agents had no names, no insignias, only clearance levels and the silence of death warrants. Most in the room had once feared becoming subjects of a Veilguard investigation. Today, they feared being excluded.

Kaelen placed his own report beside theirs. It was thinner. But the blood in its folds had not yet dried.

The Grand Marshal read first. Others waited. Rank in Iron March wasn’t measured by epaulettes or dress uniform. It was measured in what you could carry through hell and whether you came back walking or dragged.