The sun dipped low behind the black ridge as the remnants of the Ash Company returned to base—dirt-caked, blood-marked, and wordless. The wind carried the sharp scent of ozone and dried bark, stirred with the faint tang of burning oil from spent golem cores. Ash still drifted through the air like memory.
They came with both gain and loss.
Five new combatants—captive scavengers now stripped of their gear but wearing fresh linens and collared control rings—walked in a tight, silent formation. Their steps were slow, purposeful, marked by exhaustion. Their eyes flicked from guard to wall, to the golems that loomed silently behind them. Three handlers, marked by old scars and cautious obedience, followed. Two auxiliaries walked with their heads low, already assigned to latrine rotation and supply retrieval duty.
Behind them were the dead.
Three combatants of the Ash Company had fallen—skilled, loyal, and now forever absent from the line. One logistics unit, pulled from the wreckage of the supply wagon crushed during the tower collapse, had been identified by the tattoo on his ankle. One auxiliary had burned to death in the field, caught under loose artillery when Craterhoof misfired during repositioning.
Their bodies returned wrapped in thick linen, tied with rope, and placed across sled carts. No fanfare. No hymns. Only silence.
Two new golems walked at the rear of the procession—behemoth figures carved from salvaged plating, welded joints, and massive maces clutched in their hands. Each stood twenty feet tall, their armor layered like cathedral walls. The right arm of one still bore the tribal insignia of its previous owner—scratched out but not erased. They had no names yet. Only designations: Aegis-1 and Aegis-2.
At the gates of the outpost, the party was checked, recorded, and waved through by scouts with hand signals. No one asked questions. Everyone already knew.
Once inside, people dispersed like particles blown by wind.
Roa broke from the group without a word. Her movements were stiff, shoulder sore from the fight, but she pushed through the ache. She passed between storage tents and training circles, past the forge and the silent relay towers. There, in the back quarter of the compound, she reached the small barracks where her twin sons lived under the supervision of a rotating caretaker.
They were already waiting for her—two identical boys of eleven winters, dressed in roughspun but cleaned, sitting cross-legged on the ground, sketching crude golem designs on parchment.
When Roa stepped through the curtain, they looked up in unison.
"Did Thornjaw win again?" one asked.
"Was it scary?" said the other.
Roa didn't speak. She just knelt and wrapped them in her arms, pressing her forehead to theirs. The war lived in her bones, but this—this was why she endured it.
Elsewhere, Mark, the handler of Thornjaw, trudged toward the shade of the iron-boned barracks. He unfastened the control ring from his wrist and winced as the residual mana discharge prickled his nerves. His hand had gone numb again. He would deal with that later.
Park, Craterhoof's handler, walked beside him in silence. They didn't speak often—war had narrowed their friendship to glances and shared exhaustion. They exchanged nods at the doorway before peeling off to their separate quarters. The rest would be brief, but it would be honest.
As dusk fell, the funeral pyre was built.
The dead were laid atop blackwood logs soaked in blessed oil, flanked by rows of standing company members. There were no priests. No relic-bearers. Only the quartermaster, who read a short list of the fallen—names and designations—then stepped aside.
Fornos stood apart from the rest. He did not join the circle. He did not kneel. But he watched, arms behind his back, his mask removed for once. The firelight touched the sharp lines of his face as the pyre was lit.
Flames climbed, and ash returned to the air. Again. Always again.
Some wept. Some saluted. Most simply watched. It was not grief they shared—it was transformation. In the Ash Company, every death was a weight—but also an opportunity. New blood, new positions, new tests of the chain.
Fornos did not mourn.
He calculated.
As the fire crackled behind him, he returned to the war tent—his private quarter, lined with strategic maps, supply inventories, and three rotating flag manuals. The codex of the new golems had already been delivered—thick scrolls of etched instruction, half encrypted, partially damaged. He'd have them rewritten by the next moonrise.
The new combatants would be tested—subtly, then brutally. Not to see if they were loyal. Loyalty could be shaped. He wanted to see who could be shaped.
Aegis-1 and Aegis-2 would need modified protocols. Heavy golems were not frontline brawlers—not in this terrain. But they could anchor corridors, guard artillery nests, or break siege lines. If he could stabilize their mana expenditure, they might become assets.
His fingers danced across the waxed surface of a territory chart—local hunting trails, scavenger hideouts, collapsed aqueducts. The next operation would not be another clean strike.
It would be pressure.
Starve out the midlands. Cut off smaller bands before they regather. Send Thornjaw to roam beyond signal range. Send Craterhoof to draw fire.
He circled three outposts near the southern hill pass. Scavenger strongholds. Light defenses. Rich in terrain advantages.
Test endurance, yes—but now, test ambition.
He reached for a piece of red chalk and scrawled a single word beneath one of the marked locations:
"Ashroot."
That would be the next foundation.
He leaned back, eyes narrow, the crackle of the pyre still faintly audible beyond the tent wall.
This wasn't just a campaign. It was a transformation.
Ash was not the end.
It was always the beginning.