The air in the command tent tasted of iron and old blood, a familiar perfume to General Kaela. Yet now, it felt suffocating. Outside, the din of her victorious army—*her* army—celebrating the day’s slaughter was a rising tide of laughter and clashing steel. They toasted her name, the "Iron Maiden of the North," their devotion forged in a hundred battles. Her hand, usually so steady, trembled as she traced the edge of the war map. The victory was flawless, the enemy fortress now a smoldering tomb. But the cost… the cost was etched in the fading warmth beneath her skin, a secret hunger that the chaos of battle had temporarily sated. They thought her tactics were genius, her endurance superhuman. They did not know the truth: that her strength was borrowed, paid for in stolen life force, a cursed inheritance from the very necromancer king she had sworn to destroy. A fragment of obsidian, cold and heavy, sewn into her gambler, pulsed with a dull, guilty throb. It was the anchor of her curse, and the key to her power. A sudden, too-familiar chill crept up her spine—not from the night air, but from a profound, unnatural stillness that fell over the camp. The celebrations died mid-roar. Then, a new sound: the methodical, grim tread of armored boots approaching her tent, not in haste, but with grim purpose. The scent of fear, sharp and human, cut through the iron smell. Her personal guards would never march in such a formation. They knew. The realization was a cold knife in her gut. Her second-in-command, Vorik, a pious man with eyes like flint, must have found the evidence—the desiccated corpse of the enemy scout she’d used to fuel the final assault, hidden too hastily in the ravine. There was no time for armor, for banners, for explanations. The legend of General Kaela had to die tonight if the woman was to live. Her gaze swept the tent—the proud standard, the ceremonial dagger, the detailed plans of the northern holds. All were relics of a life she could no longer claim. She moved with the silent, lethal grace that had won her empire. In one fluid motion, she snatched the dagger and a thick wool cloak from a chest, dousing the central brazier with a skin of sour wine. Darkness swallowed the tent. As the first hand pulled the flap aside, she was already at the rear, slicing a silent escape into the canvas wall. The cold night air hit her face as she melted into the shadows between supply wagons. Behind her, she heard Vorik’s voice, hard with betrayed fury, echo from her tent. "Find her! The creature is not our General!" She was no longer a warlord. She was prey in her own camp, a ghost fleeing the very legacy she had built. Pulling the cloak tight, Kaela vanished into the chaotic darkness, her deadly secret a weight she must now carry alone, her path forward written not in strategy on a map, but in the desperate, fleeting prints she left in the mud. The hunt had begun.