The early hours of morning were marked by an unsettling stillness within Kaedus's castle. The usual cadence of the guards' boots and faint murmurs of activity had given way to a pervasive silence. Kade sat in his chamber, leaning over the polished surface of his desk, where the latest reports lay sprawled before him. A half-filled cup of tea had gone cold at his side.
"Why do I always get the reports with the ominous undertones?"
Kade muttered, thumbing through yet another document. The inked words blurred as he tried to piece together what felt like an incomplete puzzle. Every bit of intelligence suggested Verath's forces were regrouping, but the timing didn't align with the necromancer's usual tactics.
The faint creak of the door snapped him out of his thoughts. Vask entered with measured steps, his crimson eyes gleaming under the dim torchlight.
'My lord, we've received word from the scouts deployed along the northern ridge,'
