Chapter 20 · The Board Wakes

"You want them to march together?" Aldric's voice cut through the command tent before I even got the flap open. "Half these clans tried to kill each other last winter."

I stepped inside. Snow fell off my shoulders. The war table between us was covered in carved markers—wood chips painted with clan sigils, scattered like dice.

"Then they die together," I said. "The horde's three hours out. You want to argue bloodlines or you want to live?"

He didn't move. Just stood there across the table, backlit by the oil lamp, jaw tight. The kind of stillness that meant he was deciding whether to throw me out or listen.

Virrak was behind me, close enough I could hear his breath. Still limping from the collapse two days ago. I'd cut him free with a shard of ruin-glass and we'd crawled out through a tunnel that shouldn't exist. The core had lit up the frozen map, every clan position glowing like embers under ice. Now every warlord in the pass knew I had something they didn't.

And they hated me for it.

"The clans won't follow you," Aldric said. "You're exiled. You're a name they spat on."

"They'll follow the beacon."