Elmira

That voice. El recognized it anywhere. A surge of heat flooded her chest. Colonel Boll. The very man who had hired that incompetent boy to give her the commission. She leaned in further, her breath bouncing back on the wood of the door. Her pulse pounded in her throat as the General’s voice filled the room with a chilling authority.

“I dislike laziness, Colonel.” Alexandre Kollisi was adept at making even the slightest whisper sound like a roar. “You have been given more chances than you deserve.”

Slow footsteps followed, a methodical rhythm filled with purpose. There was a sound, almost imperceptible through the door, but it scared the Colonel enough for a whimper to escape.

“Please, I'll do anything. Anything!” Boll’s voice broke, full of panic.

“Anything is so boring, Boll,” Kollisi crooned, and there was another yelp. “I gave you a very simple task. And yet you failed.”

Even without a visual, she could sense his rage. There was a loud cry from Boll that shattered the silence, followed by the thud of him crumpling to the floor again.

“No! No!” he gasped. “Not me! The girl! I told you she’s bad news! She’s trying to betray you. Drumming up a resistance right under your nose!” Boll’s words came in frantic bursts, stumbling over themselves in his rush to absolve himself. “I told you she can’t be trusted, and this is my proof. I sent her that message two full days ago, and I heard from the messenger that she took that commission and went straight to that druid Hana. She’s working against you, General! You have to listen to me! She’s lying to you!”

“Boll!” El’s voice cut through the room like a whip, sharp and furious. Without thinking, she threw the door open with such force that it slammed against its hinges and swung back with the sound of splintering wood.

Her cheeks were hot, but not as hot as the rage inside her, which made every cell in her body tremble. Boll’s words, wild with fear, snapped the last thread of self-control she had. To hell with caution. To hell with laying low. Her gaze locked on Boll’s pitiful figure, her breath coming in ragged gasps, barely controlled. Yes. Yes, she was a spy. Yes, she played a very dangerous game. But this — this was not how it was going to unfold. Ignis, it was too crude, too unrefined. The audacity of that man to even suggest it! It was enough to make her vision blur with the sheer force of her anger.

“You egotistical, coat-turning, lying piece of shit!”

The Colonel at least had the sense to flinch. The air reeked with the stench of booze and something distinctly sharp and metallic. Maroon tapestries stained with gold clung to the walls like an oppressive promise of doom. The room felt small, like a trap closing in around you, with tables and chairs arranged with unnerving precision along the edges. Parchments, cluttered with maps and indecipherable notes, adorned the walls.

General Alexandre Kollisi stood over the kneeling man, a bloated figure drenched in sweat, dirt, and blood. The gash on his forearm bled through his fingers, his hand clutching the wound to his chest in a desperate attempt to shield himself from the inevitable.

Kollisi looked at her, unfazed. Looking like someone who had merely taken a brisk stroll through the park. His sleeves rolled up casually, revealing an old burn scar on his left forearm where his tattoo of the mark also shone.

El slammed the transistor down onto the table, the sharp clank echoing through the now far too silent room. It joined a small box of other pieces of disjointed machinery, many of which she recognized from previous fetch missions.

“Ah, El, what a lovely pleasure to see you,” Kollisi said, his voice a smooth mockery of warmth, eyes flicking over her with a casual interest just as the bell rang out the eighth hour. She was on time. “We were just talking about you.”

“Yes, this one was rather vocal about it,” she snapped back, biting back words that would have cost her dearly.

Kollisi’s lips thinned, the faintest glimmer of irritation cutting through his mask. “That he was. You must understand my predicament, my dear. When I ask for something as simple as this, I expect it to be carried out with haste. I so detest waiting.”

Why had she burned the note? Stupid! “Choose your messengers yourself then,” she said with a slight sangoran drawl, her voice clipped with suppressed venom. “Despite his rather convincing argument to the contrary, he did not find a courier until yesterday, and that scrawny rat didn’t deliver the note to me until three hours past. I believe I am right on time. 8^th bell was it, Boll?”

The Colonel stared at her, eyes wide and dark with fear.

“Is that so?” Kollisi’s voice remained unruffled, but his gaze narrowed ever so slightly.

“It is.”

A long, silent moment passed as they stared at each other. Looks that took in everything and revealed nothing. She would not blink first. Her gaze held steady, unwavering, even as his bore into her with the icy indifference of someone who held all the power in the world. Fickle without a flicker. Unpredictable. With a soft chuckle, the General turned his attention away from her and shooed at the trembling, cowering Colonel.

“Get out,” he ordered.

Boll scrambled to obey, his movements jerky and stiff with pain. He fled to the door as if the hounds of hell were on his ass. Kollisi’s eyes slid back to El, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he moved just enough to glance over his shoulder.

“Colonel.”

Boll froze dead in his tracks, halfway through the door, every inch of him trembling. “Yes, sir”?

“Time to earn your stripes. Project Storm. See to it.”

Boll gave a curt nod and fled, the door slamming shut behind him with a finality that hung heavy, leaving El and Kollisi alone.

Time seemed to move excruciatingly slow as El took in the implications of that order. Questions roared through her mind, each more terrifying than the last. What did he mean? What was Storm? No matter the answer, she knew exactly what it implied. Nothing good. Of that, one could at least be certain. She schooled her expression, letting none of her fears slip onto her skin.

With the ease of a man untroubled by the recent events, the General sauntered over to a cupboard where a pair of glasses awaited. Pouring Varuvian moonshine into both, the sharp scent of the clear liquid working its way across the room to her in thick tendrils.

“Have you tried this?” he said, his tone seductive. “It is to die for.”

Moving away, he indicated the filled glass resting on the table beside him. El hesitated for a moment, her eyes flicking between him and the drink. It felt like crossing a line. Still, a refusal would be absurd, if not lethal. She forced herself to move, took the glass, and drank deep.

It was vile, the taste burning her throat like acid. “I think some have,” she choked.

She coughed, struggling to swallow, then took another sip, her mind racing with a thousand thoughts. The drink did not improve, but it killed the tastebuds and numbed her nerves.

Kollisi’s laughter filled the space between them, unsettling in its ease. He had a nice laugh, she realized, when it was not filled with darkness. He raised his glass and downed the liquid without hesitation or a flinch.

“You have a sharp tongue,” he remarked.

She shrugged, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Gotta make a living somehow.”

“In this shithole?” He poured himself another generous serving of the toxic drink, his eyes gleaming with something like amusement. Ignis, he was hard to get a read on, and she could already feel the moonshine working its way into her brain. “Someone like you would be better off, well, anywhere else.”

“Anywhere else is not here,” she shot back, voice still strained. “It may be hell, it might be barely fit for living, but it is something. And something beats nothing.”

A slight crease appeared between his brows. “And why is that?”

Vile as it was, the liquid burned its way down her throat again with a strange, pleasant form of intensity, spreading warmth through her chest and setting her ears buzzing. For a second, her vision blurred, the edges of the room swaying, but it cleared just as quickly, leaving her with a clarity that surprised her. A small voice in the back of her mind tried to tell her something, but it was fuzzy. Unimportant.

Suddenly, a darkness settled like lead in the pit of her stomach. The taste had not changed, not in the slightest. But she could feel it now, the subtle sting of poison. He’d known. He knew she was immune to it. Knew she was not just a random girl with an eye for patterns but someone gifted with a body that could withstand the stuff that killed others in minutes.

Her heart pounded in her chest. Now she knew why her thoughts scattered like birds taking flight. For a brief moment, she considered the idea of playing along. Lying, pretending she had not noticed. He’d grabbed the wrong bottle. Make him wonder. But the weight of his gaze was a silent pressure that demanded something more. Something real.

“Where else would I go? This base is mine just as much as it is yours,” she said, battling through the pain as the poison swam in her blood without effect and caught the disrespect a little late. “Sir. I know a damn sight more than any of you lot have the gall to believe.”

Kollisi’s lips curved into a smile that would have put a child at ease but sent shivers crawling up her spine. “Finally,” he murmured.

“General?”

The realization hit her like a slap. This was it. She either played her part perfectly now, or she was nothing more than a body to be discarded before the dawn. The smile played across his face as he studied her. There was something about the way his eyes lingered that sent a pulse of cold fear through her. He was toying with her.

“Come now, surprise does not become you, girl,” he said, his voice smooth. “We have been through far too much to keep lying now, don’t you think?”

“Old habits die hard,” she admitted, forcing the words from her very dry throat. “Especially if one appears to have been poisoned.”

He barked a laugh at that. “Indeed,” he agreed. “Indulge me, dearie. Tell me what it is you think you know.”

The gaze was sharp, captivating. A challenge. The devil asking what you desire. His eyes, black as night, bore into her, as though he could see right through her. She was missing something. Something right on the edge of her mind, but the moonshine spilling through the windows, and her mind, both seemed to wash it away each time she tried to grasp at it.

Kollisi didn’t move. His stillness was unnerving, like the calm before a storm. The only sound came from the subtle tap of his finger against the glass. A slow, deliberate rhythm.

She clenched her jaw as her mind raced through the years of chaos, of battles, of whispers that lingered in corners of rooms, the half-hidden secrets she’d collected over time. Eighty years of strategy, of bloodshed, of survival. Every move, every whispered word, every clandestine action, locked away in her memory. The state of morale, the constant shelling, the relentless skirmishes, and the victories — each detail fell into place one by one like a massive, intricate puzzle. A tapestry of suffering and triumph.

Realization dawned like a lightning bolt. She had not missed it. She had just been too blind. Too focused on the wrong things to see him as the predator he was. The predator that now watched his prey struggle in the web it had spun.

The words escaped her before she could stop them. “You’re the shelling ghost.” It was not a question.

Kollisi sighed, a breath of contentment and satisfaction. “Only James figured it out before you. Bravo.” He took a slow, deliberate sip from his glass. Was there poison in it, too? “Now tell me why.”

Why? Why was so absurd, so obvious that she was surprised that she had not seen it sooner.

“You make yourself what they fear, and then you make yourself what they need,” she replied. “A self-fulfilling prophecy. Every move, every attack, every brief respite. Each time, one step ahead, each time you find a crack in the case, but never enough. You built a new quarter from the rubble of a shelling, becoming the hero rising from the ashes. Another opened the Southern Well. Then General Tiloron…” She swallowed hard, the rest of the sentence faltering on her lips. “You killed him.”

His grin twisted with madness, sharp and wide, as though the truth thrilled him. “Poor, poor General Tiloron,” he mused with a sadistic glimmer in his eyes. “Such a tragedy to befall our eminent leader. A matter of simply being in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Well, third time’s the charm, isn’t that what they say?”

Her stomach churned at the casual cruelty in his words. Three attacks. Three attempts on Tiloron’s life, and no regard for the lives lost in the process. It was all a game to him. The same game that had been played against him and his kin since the dawn of Shadow Wars.

He was too close now, even though he had not moved. Even his presence pressed against her skin, like a shadow that refused to leave. His words, while cruel, did not terrify her. No, it was the look in his eyes. The look that said he knew everything, that he had won before the game had even begun. Despite her years of calculating, of maneuvering, she had underestimated him. Her stomach twisted with a cold, creeping fear.

“Why today?” She hated how weak her voice sounded. “Why shell them today?”

Kollisi’s shoulders gave a slight, dismissive shrug. “I need them awake,” he said as if it was barely worth explaining. “And I was bored. Why else?”

“Why indeed?” she murmured, more to herself than to him, taking a long drink to hide the tremor in her hand. The poison barked like a dog that could not bite. She did not trust herself to speak again without betraying just how unsettled she was.

“Think about it, girl,” he said. “I am there, always one step behind, barely scraping by.. Every time, they think they’ve got me. Every time I make them believe they are stronger. But with each of my little gambits, they come together. I forge them in fire and blood. I give them hope. I give them something to fight for.” He leaned forward, his features wracked with the calmness of a man who saw nothing wrong with his actions. “I am their saving grace.”

“You’re their enemy,” she added, her voice low, tinged with reluctant awe. “Effective.”

He laughed, a low, rumbling sound that vibrated in her bones. “We all have our parts to play. You play yours and I play mine. If I need to become the villain to save them, then so be it.”

His eyes narrowed, and the amusement vanished as if something had flipped a switch. “But now. You. What about you?