Page 192 of The Reckoning of Starlight

He’d expected columns or formations, the disciplined geometry of elven command imposed over mortal numbers. What sprawled in every direction was closer to a city.

Cookfire smoke drifted into the dusk, supply wagons choking the lanes between tents. Packhorses stood picketed in muddy clearings where the forest had been hacked back to stumps.

Fifty thousand soldiers settled into the night, noise rising from the shore in one ceaseless murmur—laughter tangled with orders, a shouted wager, iron striking iron.

Lykor’s voice came rough and low at Jassyn’s side. “Wraith go first. They can cloak and slip in before the sentries know the perimeter’s been breached. They’ll warp to the command tents, cut down the elven officers. Torch the tents, the wagons, whatever catches. Let the panic do the rest.”

“But the wraith won’t reach every Essence-wielder,” Serenna pointed out.

“Or the shamans,” Jassyn added.

Lykor’s attention never left the lake. “We’ll deal with the shamans when they start channeling the earth.”

“And Centarya?” Fenn asked. “What if their forces are down there too?”

No one answered.

Jassyn searched the firelit ranks. At this distance, faces blurred and bodies collapsed into numbers. The humans below had been caught in Galaeryn’s designs long before Jassyn decided where the first blow would fall.

Wind rushed over the ridge, stirring up the shore’s stink of cookfires, churned mud, and horse sweat.

“The fires are a distraction,” Jassyn said, studying the broken tree line. The sky above the water had already arranged itself in his mind, distances measured, altitudes fixed, the Starshard circles hopefully suspended beyond the reach of any magic. “Kaedryn’s forces will follow the wraith. They’ll harry the outer perimeter with wings and fire, force the army to face outward while the city goes unwatched.”

“And when the king steps onto the platform,” Vesryn said, seeing where it led, “the Starshard wielders strike.”

Jassyn straightened the edge of his bracer, though the leather already sat flush against his wrist. “Hold the circles dark until we have a clear target.”

He left the rest unspoken. They had no second plan, no hidden reserve. Everything depended on Galaeryn appearing to open the portal. If he didn’t, three thousand lives would be spent on a strike that never came.

The previous day, Jassyn had watched their Starshard wielders test the circles over the Aetherveil, driving sunfire higher to learn how much their bodies could contain before the formation broke. He’d spent hours afterward mending skin split by heat and scales blistered loose.

They’d trained for a day.

The king had prepared for centuries.

Jassyn’s mind still snagged on a dozen pressure points—the timing of the fires, the heights the circles had to hold, the exposed seconds before sunfire burned. He could adjust the pieces again, but every correction only moved the danger somewhere else.

There was nothing left to refine.

Around him, the others had gone quiet. Lykor held still beside him. Vesryn’s fingers drummed against the ground until Serenna covered his hand. Fenn’s shadows remained steady over them all.

They were waiting for him.

He’d never wanted command. He’d spent most of his life bearing the consequences of other people’s choices. Now thousands would carry his.

Jassyn pushed off his elbows and rose, blood needling back into his arms. Fenn’s shadows dissipated as they withdrew together into the tree line, where moss and wet bark crowded close. Leaves and distance thinned the army’s murmur to water washing over stone.

Jassyn met Lykor’s eyes and nodded.

Lykor tore a rift open between two ancient trunks, and the Aetherveil’s wind spilled through, thin and sharp from the heights of the islands.

Kaedryn emerged first, wings tucked tight. Her gaze swept the ground, trees, and sky in one pass before she cleared the rift without breaking stride.

Warriors followed in disciplined silence, leather wraps bound over their scales to keep starlight from flashing off them.

Koln strode through with the wraith, striking his talons once against his vambrace as he passed Lykor. His eye found Fenn and flared bright. Whatever passed between them lasted less than a heartbeat.

Zaeryn stepped through next with Saundyl beside her. He’d already sided with them once with Galaeryn’s army waiting across the river. Tonight, that choice earned him a place in their line, riding double with Zaeryn among the channelers who’d carry Essence and earth into a sky they had no wings to reach.