Page 29 of Orc’s Harvest

At the bottom of the page, beneath a date I recognize immediately as the coming Harvest Moon, four words wait in ink darker than the rest.

TOTAL REQUIRED FOR ASCENSION.

For a long moment neither of us breaks the silence. Kalthor’s arm settles around my shoulders without either of us deciding it should, solid and steady, and I lean into his side and let it hold some of what this page just handed us both.

TWENTY-ONE

KALTHOR

The population ledger sits open on the war table for two full days before anyone works up the stomach to say the obvious thing out loud, and in the end it’s Varok who says it, tapping one blunt finger against the largest number on the page.

“Great Eastern Granary.” He doesn’t dress it up. “Different granary than the one it tried luring us to that first night — bigger, and it’s learned since. Biggest number in the book. Biggest target left standing, and it’s holding half the refugees we pulled out of the last six villages.”

I already knew. I’ve known since the second night I read that ledger by lantern light and couldn’t sleep after. Ashmoor’s entire winter sits inside those silos, along with more people than the Keep itself currently shelters, and something’s been counting every soul in this valley toward a total I still don’t understand.

We assemble the strongest force I can gather without stripping the Keep bare, and I give myself one hour before we ride to do the one thing I’ve been putting off since the ledger first told me where this ends up going.

Zalie’s in the armory when I find her, fastening protective wrapping around her forearms with the same efficient focus she brings to everything, bloodroot seed bombs already lined up in a row on the bench beside her like she’s setting a table instead of preparing for a slaughter.

I sit across from her and start on my own gear, and for a while the quiet stretches on, comfortable enough that nobody bothers interrupting it. She reaches over without looking up and adjusts a strap I’ve buckled wrong, fingers quick and certain against my forearm, and I let her fix it instead of arguing that I’ve been buckling my own armor for twenty years.

“The roof at Bouchier Farm needs replacing before winter.” I say it like it’s the most natural thing in the world to discuss while we arm ourselves for a slaughter. “I noticed the sag over the east corner the first night I slept there.”

“You noticed a roof sagging while running a war camp out of my yard?”

“I notice everything about that farm.” I don’t look up from the strap I’m fastening. “I intend to fix it myself, if you’ll let me.”

She goes quiet for a moment, hands stilling over the seed bombs, something softening in her face that has nothing to do with the seed bombs at all.

We finish arming in silence after that, but it’s a different silence than the one we started with — steadier, warmer, the kind that comes from two people who’ve decided, without saying so directly, that they intend to survive long enough to build the future they just described. She catches my hand once before we leave the armory, presses a kiss to my knuckles the way I did hers days ago, and doesn’t explain it. She doesn’t need to.

We reach the Great Eastern Granary an hour before dusk, and the outer fields are already burning in a perfect ring around it — deliberate, contained, herding every living thing inside toward the one entrance that hasn’t been set alight.

“They want us funneled,” I call, halting before we’re within bowshot of the flames. “Main doors only. That’s not an accident.”

“Then we go in expecting a trap and hunting for the way out before we look for anything else.” Zalie’s already dismounting, checking the wind direction against the smoke. “Grain dust in an enclosed space burns worse than the fields do. One spark in the wrong silo and half this valley’s food goes up with everyone standing inside it.”

Inside, the granary reveals exactly how bad tonight’s going to get. Towering silos rise three stories into shadow, catwalks strung between them creaking under loads they were never built to hold, and threading through it all, wearing the faces of warriors who died defending the Keep two nights ago, Hollow Men move with the exact discipline those men carried in life.

I divide the assault the only way that makes sense given the ground. “Fenn, grain dust — keep every flame source contained, nothing near the lower silos. Darrow, catwalks — anyone falls, you’re catching them, not fighting through them. Varok, silo entries — whatever’s coming down from above, it’s coming down onto your shields first.”

“And you?” Varok’s already moving to his position.

“Threshing floor. Center of it.” I check my axe one final time. “If there’s a heart to this ambush, that’s where it’s beating.”

Zalie peels off toward the seed vault on her own, Jazine and two warriors falling in behind her. I watch her go until the crowd swallows her, and I keep track of her anyway, a distant, thin awareness at the back of my skull, the same faint pull that’s been mine since the Circle of Seasons, whether either of us asked for it or not.

The threshing floor is a slaughterhouse waiting to happen, stone worn smooth by a century of grain and boots, mechanical lifts groaning overhead on chains nobody’s oiled in weeks. What’s waiting for me at its center isn’t like anything I’ve faced since this started — a Hollow Man built too large for one stolen life to explain, fighting styles shifting mid-swing like the thing can’t decide which memory to wear next. One breath it’s an orc captain’s spear form; the next, without warning, a hunter’s low ambush crouch — then a blacksmith’s brute overhead swing lands before I’ve finished adjusting for the one before it.

I take a cut across my forearm, learning that lesson, blood running warm and immediate down to my wrist. The thing doesn’t stop to admire the hit. It’s already shifting again, reaching for a fourth identity I haven’t cataloged yet.

Zalie’s voice reaches me thin and urgent from somewhere across the granary, distant enough that I have to strain for the words. Sever the central lift chain. Now.

I don’t ask why. I don’t have time to, and more than that, I don’t need to — these last days of watching her judgment prove itself have earned this exact kind of trust, the kind that doesn’t require an explanation before I act on it.

I drive my axe up through the chain instead of the composite thing’s throat, and the lift crashes down onto the threshing floor in a shower of splinters and old grain dust, burying the creature under enough splintered wood to stop it from shifting identities long enough for me to finish what the chain started.

I’m still catching my breath over the wreckage when the seed vault gallery goes up in a burst of gold light bright enough to throw shadows across the entire granary floor, followed half a second later by a groan of collapsing stone that has no business coming from a building meant to hold grain instead of war.