They left me for dead because I wasn't worth killing. I lay there in the mud, my face pressed against the cold earth, listening to my brothers scream. The Crimson Valley Massacre, they'd call it later. Three hundred soldiers cut down in the night. But right now, it was just chaos and blood and the sound of steel cutting through flesh. I didn't move. Couldn't move. Not because of my wounds—I barely had any. I'd been knocked down in the first charge, trampled by our own men fleeing the ambush. By the time the enemy swept through, I was already buried under two corpses. So I lay there. The weakest soldier in the Fifth Legion. The one they all laughed at. And I survived. The screaming stopped around midnight. The silence that followed was worse. I could hear boots squelching through mud, checking bodies. A voice barked orders. "Make sure they're all dead. The king wants no witnesses." The king. My blood went cold. This wasn't a border skirmish. This wasn't raiders or rebels. This was an execution. I held my breath as boots stopped inches from my face. A sword tip prodded the corpse above me. The soldier grunted and moved on. I waited three more hours before I dared to move. When I finally crawled out from under the bodies, the moon had set. The valley was a graveyard. I recognized faces in the darkness—Marcus, who'd shared his rations with me. Theo, who'd taught me how to hold a sword properly. Captain Venn, who'd called me "dead weight" just yesterday morning. All dead now. I stumbled through the carnage, my legs shaking. I'd never been strong. Never been fast. I'd only joined the legion because my village couldn't feed another mouth. They'd assigned me to supply duty because I couldn't keep up with the real soldiers. But I was alive. And they were all dead. I found Captain Venn's body near the command tent. His eyes were still open, staring at nothing. I knelt beside him, my hands trembling. "I'm sorry," I whispered. That's when I saw it. A piece of parchment, clutched in his dead hand. I had to pry his fingers open to get it. The paper was stained with blood, but I could still read the words in the moonlight. *Fifth Legion to be eliminated. No survivors. Burn all evidence. —Lord Commander Kael* Lord Commander Kael. The king's right hand. The hero of the Northern Wars. The man who'd personally decorated our legion just two weeks ago for our service. He'd ordered our deaths. I stuffed the parchment inside my shirt and ran. I didn't stop running until dawn broke over the eastern hills. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. But I kept moving. Because now I understood. We hadn't been sent to Crimson Valley to reinforce the border. We'd been sent there to die. All of us. Three hundred men who'd seen something or knew something or were simply inconvenient. And I was the only one left. I collapsed behind a fallen tree as the sun rose. I needed to think. Needed to plan. But my mind was spinning. What had we seen? What did we know that was worth killing three hundred men? I thought back over the past month. We'd been stationed at the northern fortress. Routine patrol duty. Nothing unusual. Nothing that would— Wait. The supply caravan. Three weeks ago, we'd escorted a supply caravan from the capital. But it hadn't gone to the fortress. Lord Commander Kael had redirected it to a private estate in the mountains. Captain Venn had questioned it, but Kael had shut him down. We'd all seen the crates being unloaded. Heavy crates marked with the royal seal. At the time, I'd thought nothing of it. I was just the supply clerk. I counted boxes and checked manifests. That was my job. But I'd seen the manifest. Weapons. Armor. Enough to equip a small army. And they'd gone to a private estate, not a military installation. My stomach dropped. Someone was building a secret army. And we'd been the witnesses. I heard horses in the distance. My head snapped up. Through the trees, I could see riders on the road below. Six of them, wearing the black cloaks of the King's Shadows—the elite soldiers who served Lord Commander Kael directly. They were searching the area. One of them dismounted and examined the ground. He was tracking something. Tracking me. I pressed myself flat against the earth, barely breathing. The rider moved closer, his eyes scanning the hillside. "Anything?" another rider called out. The tracker shook his head, but he didn't look convinced. His hand rested on his sword hilt as he took another step toward my hiding spot. "Lord Commander wants confirmation that all witnesses are eliminated," the second rider said. "If even one soldier survived and talks—" "I know," the tracker interrupted. "The whole plan falls apart." He took another step. I could see his face now. Young. Maybe twenty. Cold eyes that had seen too much death. He was looking right at the fallen tree. Right at me. His eyes narrowed. And then he smiled. ---