St. Roan
February 15th, 1948
Silence dominated the chamber as Dwayne entered.
The Confederate leaders were already present, seated around the long table, coats still dusted with road grime and victory. No one spoke, not out of fear, but expectation. The first two weeks of the Civil War had brought them great success with their defeat of General Brooker's Battalion and Commander Lawrence's regiment at Brooksville and Orleans' Pass. They had been summoned by the person behind this war.
"I'll be brief," Dwayne said, his voice thin in the stillness. "You're not here for me."
The magic lamps dimmed, the warm atmosphere of the grand chamber dying as each lamp dimmed, one by one, until it fell into uneven pools of light and shadow. The air grew colder, heavier, pressing down on the lungs like a held breath.
The doors opened, and a figure entered without sound.
Cloaked in black, their presence seemed to drink the light. A smooth mask concealed their face, featureless and unreadable, stripped of humanity. They did not look at anyone in particular, yet everyone felt seen.
Several men stood instinctively. One smiled, until his expression faltered, unsure why he had done so. It was as if they were still in the National Convention hall when President Winchester reaffirmed the Republic's stand for equality and freedom.
Or similar to when Cody united the different Chapters from a ragtag group of men and women who believed in a cause to a unified revolution to oust the British from their country.
Dwayne stepped aside, reverent now, as the figure stopped at the head of the table but did not sit.
"You are ahead of schedule," the figure said, tilting their head, an enchanted map showing the points.
The voice was calm, flat, not cruel but utterly without warmth.
President Brawns frowned. "We're winning," he said carefully. "Brooksville Heights. Orleans Pass. Brooker was forced into retreat. Commander Lawrence routed."
"Yes," the figure replied. "Exactly as projected." The lamps flickered once more, making them more unsettling. The ink bled across the maps, not with corrections but confirmations. Victories already won glowed faintly, lines tightening around Republic positions that would soon fail.
New routes appeared, movements none of them had ordered aloud, converging with unnerving precision. General Stephens rose slowly. "These are our operations."
The figure tilted their head once more.
"They are the operations that survived," they said. The room chilled as everyone stared at the maps.
Admiral Connors swallowed. "You're saying there were other ways this could have gone."
"Yes." A pause that lasted for just a moment, only enough for all of them to feel the tension in the room.
"Most ended with your defeat."
The confidence in the room cracked, not shattered, but hairlined.
Brawns bristled. "Then why show us this now?"
"Because you're beginning to believe the victories are yours," the figure replied. "That is when errors occur."
The mask turned slightly, light sliding uselessly across it.
"You call yourselves Confederates. Men who believe the Republic betrayed its promise." A pause that lasted for a moment.
"You are correct."
Several men exchanged glances. That wasn't what they expected.
"But belief does not win wars," the figure continued. "Momentum does. Pressure… Timing."
One councilman crossed his arms. "And you're responsible for that?"
The figure placed a gloved hand on the table.
"I remove the futures where you hesitate," they said. "Where rival commanders argue instead of advancing. Where confidence turns into pride."
Dwayne watched as satisfaction drained from the room, replaced by something colder.
"President Winchester inspires hope," the figure went on. "Secretary Rivera inspires loyalty..."
The mask tilted, "Why do you think they won the hearts of the people?" The right eye of the mask was glowing a slight red as silence followed.
"I show them what happens if they adapt too slowly."
A general's voice trembled despite himself. "So the Republic's failures-"
"-are not failures," the figure corrected. "There are delays, and delays can be fatal."
A younger delegate leaned forward. "If you can see outcomes… why not end this quickly?"
The figure's voice lowered, not in volume, but in weight.
"Because absolute certainty breeds panic," they said. "And panic fractures coalitions."
"Someone must shape the war without revealing its edges."
When the figure turned to leave, no one tried to stop them.
Just before the doors closed, a voice called out, not trembling, but wary.
"What do we call you?"
The figure stopped, for a moment, and just a moment, their posture betrayed something beneath the mask. Multiple emotions that Dwayne could read: Guilt, regret, but something replaced them all, hate and burden.
"You already do," they said, looking back at the group, their mask staring deeply into their souls.
"Shroud."
The doors slam shut, the lamps brighten. Only then did the men notice the symbol burned faintly into the table, a torch crossed with a blade, scorched so lightly it could be mistaken for a trick of the light.
No one mistook it for that, but the room remained silent.
Finally, Admiral Connors exhaled. "So our victories…"
"...continue," Dwayne said, smiling as he leaned against the wall. "As long as you don't stray."
Stephens turned to him sharply. "And if we do?" Dwayne's eyes flicked to the maps.
"Then you'll discover how many victories never reached this table."
No one spoke after that.
Outside, beyond the stone walls of St. Roan, the night carried on as if nothing had changed. But inside the chamber, every man understood the truth: They were winning. And that terrified them far more than losing ever had.
___________
Meika held onto Mey's hand beneath the lunch table, her fingers curled tight, not in desperation, but in insistence. As if contact itself was proof that some things still existed.
The dining hall moved around them. Voices rose and fell. Trays clattered. Someone laughed too loudly. It all continued, stubborn and indifferent, while the war pressed in from every direction.
The news from the battlefield made no sense. Men whose names had once belonged to textbooks and speeches, heroes of the Revolutionary War, had been driven back from Brooksville and Orleans Pass. Not routed, not annihilated, but beaten. And still, there was no word from her uncle.
She had learned that silence could mean many things. None of them were kind; it was the reality of her life that she could not deny. Even if she has Mey and a couple of friends, silence still scares her.
Like the silence she felt after that brief spark during the parade. She tried to feel it, to feel its warm embrace on her soul.
She remembered the way the air had tightened, how the future had not unfolded but collapsed into her all at once. Smoke, soldiers shouting, the dull, concussive thud of artillery. She could hear her uncle's soft voice, stern and determined, but something stood out to her.
It was death, but not where it should have been.
When she blinked, the vision was gone. The soldiers were still marching. The banners were still straight. The world had insisted on looking normal.
Since then, there has been nothing.
No warmth beneath her skin. No flicker at the edge of her thoughts. Just absence, clean, deliberate, and frightening in its finality.
The Rivera household felt the same. Not empty, but hollowed. Her aunt moved through it like a ghost with a schedule, conversations reduced to logistics and careful pauses. And Ken Drick, an uncle who had never truly been present, had become a voice in the papers, a name attached to diplomatic maneuvering, trying to keep the war contained as if it were something that could still be reasoned with.
Mey squeezed her hand once, gently, not to interrupt the drift of her thoughts but to steady her within them.
"You're drifting," he said, softly looking at her eyes with concern.
She looked up at him, her expression touched with embarrassment. "Was it obvious?"
"Only to me."
She considered that while the noise of the cafeteria rolled on around them, voices and laughter blurring into something distant, then she gave a small nod.
"Sorry." she mumbled while Mey tried to look at her soft brown eyes again.
"Don't apologize." His thumb moved absentmindedly over her knuckle. "You're allowed to be elsewhere sometimes."
She let out a quiet breath. "I keep waiting for it to come back."
"The magic?" He asked, softly holding onto her hand while she stared blankly at them. She remembered the feeling, the soft tingle of magic as images of the future flashed through her mind. She immediately pushed herself away from that thought and nodded.
Mey was silent for a moment, as he often was when something mattered. He looked at her in the eyes with gentle care.
"I think," he said at last, choosing his words carefully, "when something shows you too much, it sometimes pulls away. As if it means for you to walk some part of the road without it."
She hesitated, then asked quietly, "Do you think it ever comes back?"
"Maybe."
She frowned faintly. "That's not comforting."
"No," he said, a trace of warmth in his voice. "But it's honest."
That almost made her smile. It was the kind of honesty she had been raised to respect, even when it hurt.
A stillness settled between them, not awkward but attentive, the kind that could hold difficult things without breaking under them.
Around them, the cafeteria was louder than usual, filled with overlapping conversations, chairs scraping against the floor, and bursts of laughter from tables nearby.
Meika barely noticed any of it.
Mey sat across from her, absentmindedly turning the paper cup between his hands while his lunch remained untouched. Every so often, he looked toward the windows overlooking the courtyard, though she doubted he was actually looking at anything outside.
"You're doing that again," she said.
His eyes flicked back to her. "Doing what?"
"Leaving without moving."
A small breath escaped him, almost a laugh, but it faded quickly.
"Sorry."
She studied him more carefully after that. His shoulders were tense, his thoughts visibly somewhere far beyond the cafeteria walls. Normally, he would have teased her by now, or made some dry comment about the noise, but today he seemed to shrink further inward each time silence settled between them.
Around them, the cafeteria carried on normally, students arguing over assignments, someone calling across the room for extra fries, music faintly leaking from a phone speaker.
But at their table, the air felt strangely still.
"Mey," she said after a while.
He held her gaze. "Yeah."
"I don't want to hear this if it isn't real."
"It's real," he said. "That's why I haven't said it."
Her chest tightened before he even spoke again.
"I might enlist," he said softly, looking away with silent discomfort. "When the term ends."
It felt as though the world did not collapse so much as draw inward, every other sound receding until only his voice remained.
"You said you wouldn't." She didn't sound accusing, only stunned, as though repeating something she had trusted.
"I said I didn't plan to."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," he said. "It isn't."
She searched his face for certainty and found only conflict.
"You don't owe this war anything," she said, her voice low, steady in a way that almost made it sharper.
"I know."
"Then why?"
He looked down for a moment before meeting her eyes again.
"Because staying still feels like lying," he said. "And I'm tired of pretending none of this asks anything of me."
She swallowed. "Asks what?"
"That I choose." He looked at her with sad eyes.
"Pretending this isn't already asking something of me…"
She shook her head, getting closer to him as she placed her hand on his face. "I don't need you to be brave." Her soft tone, desperately wanting him not to go.
"I'm not," he said, looking at her soft eyes. "I'm just trying to be useful."
"That's worse."
He gave a small, resigned laugh. "Yeah. I thought you'd say that."
Then, after a pause, he added, almost reluctantly, "My mother said the same thing."
Meika stilled. "When?"
"When my father left," he looked down, remembering the night his father left. "She used to say war takes someone twice. Once... when they go. Once when they come back."
Meika searched his face, her eyes bearing into his, and somehow it made him uncomfortable, like she was digging deep into his soul.
"Did it?"
"Yes."
He said it simply, and somehow that made it heavier. She broke eye contact and hid her eyes behind her hair.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Then Meika said, "I can't see anything anymore, not ahead, not to either side. Nothing…"
Mey tightened his grip, just slightly. "Then maybe that means it's yours."
She frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"It does," he said softly. "You can't be trapped by a fate no one can see."
Her breath caught despite herself. She knows that deep within her, the magic that lingers and holds her entire being is screaming within her that she knows fate has a funny way of playing with her.
After a long silence, she whispered, "I don't want to lose you."
His eyes softened. "I know."
"I don't want to wait for a letter,"
"I know."
"Or a knock. Or silence."
This time, his answer was barely more than a murmur, reaching out for her hands to comfort her.
"I know."
She leaned forward until her forehead rested against his, the cold edge of the table forgotten, his nearness warmer than the room around them.
"Promise me something," she murmured.
He didn't hesitate, his gaze fully on her. "Anything."
"If you go…" Her voice wavered. "Don't disappear."
He said nothing, waiting. Her eyes were full of fear, remembering the stories her aunt told her during those months her uncle went missing.
"Even if you leave, don't become someone I don't recognize."
He closed his eyes. "I'll fight that harder than anything else."
It wasn't certainty, it was intention.
She held onto that instead.
Because she was beginning to understand that love was not prophecy, nor the promise that nothing would be lost. It was choosing, even in uncertainty, to remain with someone in the present moment while the future kept its silence.
St. James
February 20th, 1948
Cody felt it before anyone spoke. He looked between the different members of his staff, all of them new faces, not a veteran among them.
The tension in the air, sharp and humming, like the moment before a storm breaks. It wasn't magic, at least not the kind that glowed or burned, but something older. Extremely familiar, the same sensation he'd felt years ago in dim safehouses and lantern-lit rooms, when choices hadn't yet hardened into fate.
A callback to the past.
Colonel Soll stood across from him, maps spread over the table, his jaw tight.
"General," Soll said, tapping the edge of the map, "enemy forces are moving toward Herodia and St. Ezekiel."
The officers around the table murmured in agreement. The routes were obvious. Clean and predictable, but all he could do was stare at the markings.
The movements were too predictable, too clean for this nation and him to see through the shroud of cleanliness.
Herodia was fortified with thirty men, handling the defense. St. Ezekiel was symbolic of the first true victories against the British Armies during the Revolutionary War. Any commander seeking momentum would strike there first. It was the kind of move that made sense, and that was exactly what unsettled him.
"When?" Cody asked.
"Within forty-eight hours," Soll replied. "If they take Herodia, they split the southern corridor. If they take St. Ezekiel..."
"They don't need both," Cody interrupted quietly. Everyone turned to look at him. Many of them are fresh faces with inexperienced eyes, and that is what the Confederates are trying to bank on.
Soll frowned. "Sir?"
Cody leaned forward, palms braced against the table. "They want us to think they do."
He reached for a charcoal stick and drew a new line, one that curved away from the expected routes, slipping through marshland most planners avoided.
"This," he said, tapping the mark, "is where they'll break."
A ripple of unease spread through the room.
Commander Cutter spoke first, carefully. "That region is impassable terrain, sir. Marshland, unstable roads, no reliable supply routes. Standard doctrine avoids it entirely."
Major Halvorsen folded his arms. "With respect, General, if the Confederates attempted that route, they'd starve before reaching our lines."
"Which is why they won't attempt it fully," Cody replied. "Only enough to force us to react late."
Soll studied the line. "That maneuver exposes their flank."
"Only if they're afraid of losing ground," Cody said. "They're not. They're afraid of time."
Captain Reyes shook his head. "Sir, this goes against every established engagement principle we have. We'd be dispersing artillery and committing a veteran battalion to a position with no fallback."
Another officer added, "If this fails, we lose Herodia outright."
The words hung heavy.
Cody straightened slowly, eyes distant, no longer seeing the map, but something else. A memory. A voice that used to comfort him and Ken Drick during those moments of uncertainty, low and certain.
Because people panic when they see the future.
He shook the thought away.
"I'm aware of the risk," he said evenly. "But if we defend only what they expect us to defend, we'll always arrive one step behind."
Soll hesitated. "Sir, intelligence hasn't indicated movement in that sector."
Cody met his gaze. "Then intelligence is being shown what it expects to see."
The room went still. Veterans of the Revolutionary War knew of Cody's unorthodoxy when approaching strategy, one of the many reasons why he was chosen as Secretary of State, but many of the fresh faces look at him as if he were insane, and while it was an honor to serve beside a hero, they have yet to be shown if Rivera is worthy of the title.
"You're asking us to bet the southern front on instinct," Halvorsen said.
"No," Cody replied. "I'm asking you to bet it on a pattern."
Cutter frowned. "Pattern?"
"Every move they've made so far avoids chaos," Cody said. "They preempt our decisions. They arrive just early enough, just prepared enough. Someone is smoothing the path ahead of them."
A murmur followed that, uneasy and unspoken.
Cody continued, quieter now. "Which means the only way to beat them is to move somewhere the future doesn't bother preparing."
Silence, that familiar warmth he yearned for at the end of the workday, wasn't as welcoming as he wanted while everyone looked at him.
Finally, Soll exhaled. "If we redeploy the 212th, we'll need authorization to break standard formation protocols."
"You have it," Cody said without hesitation. "Quiet movement, no banners, and no announcements. Pull artillery from the east and reposition it here-" He marked the ridge just beyond the marsh. "If they commit to Herodia, we bleed them. If they don't... we catch them where they don't expect resistance."
The officers exchanged glances. Doubt, fear, and respect all flashed through their eyes as Cody stared at the map.
"This will put your command on the line, sir," Reyes said, staring at the map, the reinstated General of the Armies immediately placing himself at the forefront of controversy if this defense fails.
Cody nodded, his gaze moving from one face to the next around the table. The uncertainty was still there. He could see it in the set of their shoulders, in the glances exchanged across the room. None of them believed this would be easy.
"I know," he said quietly.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Soll drew himself upright and gave a single nod. "Understood."
The response broke the silence.
One by one, the others followed. Some answered immediately, others after a brief hesitation, but each accepted the order in the end. Doubt remained, lingering like smoke after a fire, yet beneath it was something stronger: trust. They did not know whether Cody's gamble would succeed, but they had chosen to place their faith in him regardless.
Gradually the tent emptied. Officers gathered their notes, aides rolled up maps, and the murmur of discussion faded into the camp beyond the flaps.
When the last of them had gone, Cody remained where he was.
The enchanted map still floated above the table, its pale light washing across the room. He studied the altered lines stretching across the islands, tracing routes and possibilities that had not existed only hours earlier. None of this had been part of the original plan. Yet the longer he looked, the more the new pattern felt inevitable, as though the pieces had always been waiting to fall into place.
He rested a hand against the edge of the table and exhaled slowly.
Far beyond St. James, unseen forces shifted.
Predictions that had once aligned with certainty began to unravel. Futures carefully charted through visions and probabilities fractured into a thousand uncertain paths. A road once dismissed as impossible now widened before history itself.
Cody knew none of this.
He saw only a difficult decision and the burdens that came with it.
Yet in choosing it, he had done something no strategy, no calculation, and no prophecy had anticipated.
He had stepped beyond the shadow of the woman who could see tomorrow and taken the one road she had already abandoned.
And for the first time in a very long while, the future no longer belonged to her.
___________
Ken Drick stood with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed on the enchanted map hovering above the table. Pale light rippled across its surface, rivers shimmering faintly, borders breathing in slow pulses as if the land itself were alive.
Beside him, Karlos adjusted the focusing ring, murmuring under his breath as sigils realigned.
"It's holding," Karlos said. "Barely."
Ken Drick didn't respond. Tiny markers slid across the map, blue for the Republic, red for the Confederates. The red had advanced far too quickly.
Brooksville Heights blinked once... then dimmed.
His jaw tightened as he looked at Karlos.
"Confirmed?" he asked quietly, watching the magic pull back from the point.
Karlos nodded. "General Brooker was forced to withdraw before dawn. Commander Lawrence held the pass for three hours longer than expected, but Orleans fell just after sunrise."
The red markers bled forward, spreading like ink in water.
Ken Drick exhaled through his nose. "They shouldn't have been able to coordinate that."
"No," Karlos agreed. "Their supply lines were fragmented and their military leadership was still in shambles… At least, they were from our spies at St. Roan."
Ken Drick leaned closer to the map. The enchantment reacted immediately, zooming inward, revealing fine threads of light, communication routes, and decision points, moments where orders were given and received.
His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"These movements are too clean," he said, looking at the map before looking at the reports that were handed to him. "Too... preemptive."
Karlos hesitated. "You think they're being advised."
"I think," Ken Drick replied slowly, "someone is removing their mistakes... Removing the probability of failure by annihilating the chance of it ever occuring."
As if in answer, the map shuddered.
A thin line, silver and almost invisible, appeared for the briefest moment, stretching ahead of the Confederate advance. Not a unit. Not a road.
A projection that gave everyone in the room a flicker of hope.
Karlos sucked in a breath. "Did you see that?"
"Yes," Ken Drick said. "And I don't know if it's good or not."
The silver line fractured suddenly, splintering into nothing. In its place, a blue marker shifted, subtle and deliberate.
The small town of St. James, particularly the marshlands that surround it.
Ken Drick straightened, the grim atmosphere falling apart as a smirk tugged on his lips. "That son of a gun..."
Karlos adjusted the focus again. Looking at his cousin's troop movement. "He's redeploying the 212th."
One telegraph operator started writing furiously as the machine started beeping a signal. He handed the letter to Ken Drick.
It contained the orders that Cody had given to the field, along with the formation order.
"No announcements… no signals. Just an immediate transfer." Ken Drick muttered while studying the new formation. It didn't follow the expected doctrine. It didn't chase the enemy's gains or rush to reclaim lost ground.
Instead, it waited. Waited for an enemy that relied too much on surprise.
"Interesting," Ken Drick murmured, placing down the letter next to the report while the map flickered again, this time more violently. Red markers hesitated, their advance slowing as if uncertain.
"Sir," Karlos said carefully, "that wasn't part of the projected outcomes."
Ken Drick allowed himself a thin smile. Recognition flooded his senses as memories flashed before his eyes.
"Cody never was," he said, "good at following scripts."
Another shimmer passed through the map, faint but unmistakable, like something recalculating.
Somewhere beyond the chamber walls, far from the glowing table and its shifting lights, a different mind was watching the same future, realizing, for the first time, that one of her certainties no longer existed.
Ken Drick folded his arms.
"Notify the Assembly," he said. "Tell them the war just changed shape."
Karlos swallowed. "And if they ask why?"
Ken Drick's gaze remained fixed on St. James.
"Tell them," he said quietly, "that hope just learned how to move sideways."
The map pulsed once more. And the land held its breath.
To be Continued