Dawn painted the eastern sky pale pink when the messenger stumbled into Murong Xue's command pavilion, his armor scorched, his face ashen. He dropped to one knee, and his report landed like a stone in the silent hall.
The western granary hold was gone.
Burned. Sacked. Every crate, every sack, every barrel of grain and meat and preserved fruit—vanished. Five hundred garrison troops dead or scattered. The orc warden had fled at the first sign of trouble, taking every horse in the stables with him. The tunnel rats had done it. They had come up out of the dark, blown open the gates, and stripped the place bare before anyone could sound a proper alarm.
Murong Xue stood very still at the head of her council table, her white robes glowing faintly in the dawn light. For a long moment, no one spoke. No one dared.
The Radiant Covenant had not lost a battle in a year. They had not even been challenged. To be struck at their very heart, by a ragtag band of scavengers no one had even taken seriously? It was unthinkable. It was an insult.
"Cowards," one of her knight-captains snarled, slamming a fist on the table. "They strike from the dark and run. They dare not face us in open battle."
"They don't need to," Murong Xue said, her voice cold and sharp as a shard of ice. "They hit our stores. They starve us out. That is the point."
She turned to the map spread across the table, her gaze sweeping the western plains. The tunnel network stretched for miles under their feet. They had known it was there. They had thought it was just a handful of scavengers hiding from the light. They had been wrong.
"From this moment forward," she said, her voice carrying through the pavilion, "the tunnel rats are our primary target. Every available sapper, every earth mage, every scout—you will find every entrance. You will flood them. You will smoke them out. You will collapse every passage you can reach. They want to hide in the dark? We will bury them in it."
The council roared their assent. Rage burned through the ranks of the Covenant. For months they had bickered among themselves, hoarded their crates, complained about jam and bread. Now they had an enemy. Now they had something to unite them.
No one noticed the wood elf contingent from Liora Voss's old command packing their supplies quietly at the back of the camp, slipping away into the forest before the marching orders were even drawn up.
Deep underground, the raiding party trickled back through the tunnels one by one, hauling carts stacked high with loot. The central vault hummed with quiet, giddy energy. Crates of fine white flour. Jars of golden honey. Sacks of dried fruit. Bundles of rare vegetable seeds none of them had ever seen before.
Korg slammed a clay tankard of sweet potato spirits down on a stone bench and laughed so hard his shoulders shook.
"Did you see their faces?" he boomed. "That fat orc lord trying to run for the gate? Worth every bruised knuckle."
Borgul grunted, rubbing a sore spot on his shoulder where he'd slammed into the keep wall. He still had not forgiven Korg for throwing him like a living cannonball. "Next time you want a door broken down, you walk up and break it yourself. I'm not a boulder."
"Worked, didn't it?" Korg said, grinning. "Ten out of ten. Perfect aim."
Lirael sat apart, sorting through a stack of seed packets by moss-light, her expression calm but satisfied. She had already divided the haul: one third to the stores, one third to the underground farms, one third to be traded with the Tide Pact's coastal scouts if the chance arose. Seeds were worth more than gold out here.
"They will come for us now," she said, not looking up. "Every sapper, every earth mage they have. They will dig. They will flood. They will try to collapse the tunnels."
Korg's grin faded. "Can they?"
"Not all of them," Lirael said. "The network is too big. Too deep. But they will seal the western passages. We will lose the easy access to the granary plains."
She looked up, her eyes glinting.
"That is fine. We do not stay in one place. We split into three bands. One harries their northern supply lines. One hits their southern outposts. One stays here and tends the farms. They want to dig us out? Let them dig. By the time they find one tunnel, we'll have dug three more somewhere else."
Borgul nodded, slow and grim. "Hit and run. Wear them down. Let them waste their strength chasing shadows."
"Exactly," Lirael said. "They have the numbers. They have the armor. They have the knights. But they have never been hungry. They have never had to fight in the dark. We have."
They raised their tankards. Sweet, rough liquor burned their throats. It was not much of a feast. But for people who had grown up on void beast meat and sour berries, it tasted like victory.
Up in the observation booths, the news had spread like wildfire.
Laia had just taken a bite of cream-filled pastry when the feed cut to the smoldering ruins of the granary hold. She choked.
Pastry crumbs went everywhere. She coughed, thumping her chest, and stared at the screen with wide, horrified eyes.
They did what.
They sacked an entire Covenant hold. Over bread. Over jam.
She sank back in her chair, covering her face with one hand.
Of all the things she had expected from this tournament—quiet scavenging, slow hoarding, maybe a few minor skirmishes—starting a full-scale war with the imperial princess had not been on the list.
Great. Just great. Now Murong Xue was probably going to dedicate every waking hour to digging her army out of the ground. And when this was all over, she'd probably track Laia down in real life too.
She moaned softly, then reached for another pastry.
Well, she thought, mouth full. At least they got the food. That was… something.
She peeked through her fingers at the feed showing Murong Xue's furious face, and winced.
Maybe she should start thinking about an apology letter. After the tournament. If she survived.
Down the row of booths, every other contestant was glued to their screens. The Tide Pact observers were laughing so hard they could barely breathe. The remaining Covenant lords were purple with rage. The last few independent contestants were already frantically digging their own little tunnels, apparently deciding that if you couldn't beat the tunnel rats, you joined them.
In the observation spire, Headmaster Corvin watched the smoldering granary hold and steepled his fingers.
Beside him, Kaelen Shaw let out a low whistle.
"Bold," he said. "Stupid bold. One little raid and they've woken the whole Covenant on top of them. They'll be crushed by the end of the month."
Corvin shook his head slowly.
"Will they?" he said. "Murong Xue has numbers. She has training. She has better equipment. But every hour her army spends digging holes in the ground is an hour they aren't training, aren't fortifying, aren't preparing for the final year. Every crate of food they lose is one less meal for their soldiers when the drops stop entirely."
He looked down at the faint, glowing network of tunnels winding under the earth, and smiled faintly.
"Lord Thorne will want to see this. This is exactly what he was talking about. An army that can feed itself, that can strike from nowhere, that doesn't need a god holding its hand every minute? That's the kind of army that survives the border. That's the kind of army that wins wars."
Kaelen blinked. He had never thought of it that way. He'd been watching for the drama, for the gossip. But the old man was right.
All the angel legions and radiant knights in the world didn't matter if you starved before the battle even started.
Out on the eastern coast, Soren Shaw stood on the deck of his flagship, listening to his scout's report with a slow, satisfied smile.
The Covenant was throwing everything they had at the tunnel rats. The western plains were going to turn into one giant digging site.
"Perfect," he said, leaning against the ship's rail. "Let them bleed each other dry. Let them waste months chasing ghosts in the dark."
His first mate nodded. "What do we do, sir?"
"Nothing," Soren said. "We fortify the coast. We fish. We stockpile. We wait. When they're both tired and hungry and sick of fighting? Then we sail in."
He looked west, toward the distant smoke rising from the granary hold, and chuckled.
"Cheers to the tunnel rats," he said, raising an imaginary glass. "Best thing that ever happened to this tournament."
Somewhere far below the earth, a single earth slime oozed slowly upward, patching a cracked tunnel wall.
No one saw it. No one noticed it.
But the war had only just begun.