Harold was woken by a hand on his shoulder.

  “My lord.”

  He opened his eyes to the dim outline of one of his guards in the doorway. The sky beyond the narrow window was still black.

  “What is it?”

  “Margaret requests you in your office, my Lord. It’s urgent.”

  He swung his legs over the bed and pulled on his boots without speaking again. The stone keep was cold as he moved through the corridor, and it was quieter than it ever felt during the day.

  Margaret was already in his office when he entered. She hadn’t changed from whatever she had been sleeping in. Hair pulled back quickly while she was reading something on the forum with unfocused eyes.

  Harold closed the door behind him. “What happened?”

  “There’s a raid underway at the northwest-most village in the basin,” she said. “Lizardmen again.”

  He felt the word more than reacted to it.

  “With Lord Gerold, how bad is it?” He asked.

  “Worse than a probing attack. Multiple witnesses and posts. The lord posted twice within the hour. He’s asking anyone who can reach him for aid.”

  She paused. “He named you, directly asking for help.”

  Harold stepped closer to the desk, where a rough map of the basin was spread out.

  “That’s almost two weeks of marching from here, even with a forced march.”

  He did the math anyway. “The knights?”

  “They couldn’t make it in time,” Margaret said. “And they’re exhausted, they just got back.”

  A cold, tense silence stretched between them.

  “Have any of the closer lords responded?” he asked.

  “Only one is actually close,” Margaret replied dryly. “But no one has said anything about sending support.”

  Harold stared at the copied forum post.

  We are under attack from Lizardmen. If anyone can reach us, we need help. Lord Harold, you have strength. Please.

  He exhaled slowly. “We don’t, though,” he said.

  “We don’t have the resources,” he continued. “Not without stripping Haven or the farming village.”

  “Is he holding?” Harold asked.

  “The last update was forty minutes ago,” Margaret said. “They’re barricaded in the Lord’s hall.”

  Harold looked toward the dark window. He had spent weeks planning.

  And now, someone out there was burning for his decisions.

  “We can’t reach them,” he said again, this time softer.

  Margaret met his eyes.

  "No, we can't," she murmured.

  Harold didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he crossed the room and moved slowly toward the brazier by the wall.

  The brazier by the wall was cold. Harold knelt, picked up a twist of kindling, and placed it inside. He struck flint until a small flame caught, then set a kettle above the flickering light.

  Margaret didn’t interrupt him.

  “We can’t reach them,” he said, raw anguish breaking through, almost to himself.

  The water began to heat. He measured grounds into a small tin, hands steady out of habit, more than calm.

  “Two weeks,” he murmured. “Even if we march as hard as we can, it’s still almost two weeks.”

  Margaret watched him.

  “I remember this basin,” he went on, voice low. “I know it well, it’s a large part of why I started here. No villages were wiped out like this.”

  The kettle began to hiss faintly, and he stared at it without seeing it. “Something changed.”

  Margaret’s eyes sharpened. “What are you thinking?”

  Harold closed them briefly. “I did.”

  The words seemed to fill the room, heavy and suffocating.

  “I woke the Thresher King,” he said. “Almost a year earlier than last time. I disrupted one cult already, but I thought that was a lone cult. He exhaled through his nose. “I should have known better; the ingredients that potion would have needed would have been a widespread effort.”

  Margaret absorbed that in silence.

  The kettle began to tremble. Harold poured the water slowly, steam rising between them.

  “The water is the key,” he said softly. “Hidden places connected to water. Caverns and submerged tunnels. Lizardmen are a bane upon this world…kidnapping and sacrificing people in their vile rituals.”

  He opened his eyes.

  “We need to warn every village immediately. They need to scout along waterways. Especially places that don’t look obvious or may lead towards the water. They prefer to be underground.”

  Margaret nodded. “I’ll draft the message.”

  “No,” Harold said. “I will.”

  He handed her a cup, making sure she had a firm grip, before taking one for himself.

  “Now more than ever, we need Garrick’s scouts producing results. I’ve made efforts to eradicate every den we have come across because I don’t want them to become nests. It becomes much more difficult to kill them when that happens.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  He took a sip, and it steadied him.

  “I’m going to draft a list of monsters with potential scouting-related perks. Anything that enhances detection, scent, vibration awareness, and thermal sight. If we can’t move fast enough, we need to see farther. Then I will begin making quests to hunt those monsters.”

  Margaret’s gaze didn’t leave him. “And the lizardmen?” she asked.

  Harold closed his eyes again.

  For a moment, he let the full weight crush him. The guilt, the fear that his actions had shifted timelines. That another’s home and lives were burned because he had changed the future.

  “Let’s have Captain Hale prepare for a campaign. If we can’t save them, we dammned sure can get revenge.”

  The next morning, the training yard felt smaller. The recruits were still waking up when he arrived. Harold stepped into it before the sun had fully cleared the horizon. The air still held the night’s chill, but it was warming quickly, and he welcomed it.

  He didn’t pace himself.

  His guard fell into pairs without comment. They had done this enough times that instructions were unnecessary. Centurion Carter moved between pairs until finally settling into his own.

  “Let’s go,” Harold said.

  Wood met wood in controlled rhythm at first. They worked on footwork and breathing. Harold’s body protested from the previous day’s exertion, but he ignored it. Instead, he leaned into the ache.

  “Faster,” he said.

  His will tightened, and mana bled into his limbs. The weight of the heavy training blade lightened. He felt the surge of strength through his arms and legs, the familiar pull of enhancement settling into muscle and bone.

  His guard responded in kind, and they circled. Combat with mana was different; mistakes were punished before the other could respond.

  They clashed, then reset.

  “Again,” Harold demanded.

  Harold drove forward instead of waiting. He pressed, forced his guard back a step, then another. The scrape of boots on packed dirt. The hiss of breath through teeth.

  He pushed more mana through himself, enhancing himself further, and the strike landed clean.

  The flare of power behind it burst outward instead of staying contained. His blade connected with the man’s guard and drove through it, the force of it lifting him off his feet and throwing him violently backward.

  The yard went quiet. The guard hit the ground hard, rolled once, and lay still for a heartbeat before groaning.

  He stood frozen, fire in his limbs extinguished. His will collapsed inward, leaving him drenched in exhaustion and hollow remorse.

  He dropped his blade and crossed the yard at a run.

  “Dammit,” he muttered, kneeling beside him. “I’m sorry. I pushed too far.”

  The guard was already trying to sit up, breath coming short but steady.

  “I noticed,” he coughed.

  Harold slid an arm under his guard’s shoulder, supporting him carefully as he helped haul him to his feet. The man winced once, then steadied.

  “Nothing broken,” the guard said, rolling his shoulder carefully. “Just my pride.”

  Harold kept a hand on him longer than necessary. “I shouldn’t let my emotions get the better of me; I know better than that.”

  “And here I thought I’d die in a real fight,” the guard muttered. “Would’ve been embarrassing to go out in practice.”

  Harold stepped back, allowing the guard a moment to regain his balance.

  “Take a lap,” he said. “Walk it off.”

  The guard nodded once and did as he was told, boots crunching against the packed dirt as he circled the yard.

  The other soldiers resumed their drills, but the energy had shifted. They had seen and felt that flare.

  “Lord.”

  Carter’s voice cut through the yard, low but firm. Harold turned.

  Carter jerked his head toward the far edge of the training ground. “Walk.”

  Harold followed without argument, knowing what was coming.

  They stopped near the palisade wall marking the yard’s boundary. From there, the keep loomed behind them, solid and immovable.

  Carter folded his arms.

  “You trying to burn it out of yourself?” he asked.

  Harold kept his eyes on the drills. “No.”

  “Looked like you were,” Carter said evenly. “That wasn’t training.”

  Harold’s jaw tightened. “We can’t reach them,” he said.

  Carter knew what he meant and didnt pretend he didnt.

  “I know.”

  Silence settled between them for a moment, filled only by the clash of wood and steel behind them.

  “You changed something, and something new is happening,” Carter said finally. “Let’s work the problem, not dwell on it. ”

  Harold exhaled slowly. “I know I lost control and worse, I lost control with the people who should trust me the most.”

  “Yeah,” Carter replied. “You did.”

  Harold glanced back at the yard.

  “That guards trust you, you have done a lot of good,” Carter added. “Don’t make them question that. One village here may have died, but the various forum posts you made have saved far more than that.”

  The words hit harder than any strike. Shame mingled with reluctant comfort.

  Harold nodded once.

  Carter held his gaze another second, then clapped him once on the shoulder. “Now you and I spar.

  Harold didn’t return to the keep.

  He drifted downhill instead, boots finding the worn path without thought. People stepped aside when they noticed him, some offering nods, some not interrupting what they were doing. The Landing moved around him—carts creaking, tatanka snorting in their harness, children darting between stacked lumber while someone shouted at them to slow down.

  He paused once at the edge of the central square, watching a crew wrestle a beam into place on a half-built hall. The wood groaned as it settled, and someone whooped when it fit clean.

  He should have said something, checked on the progress, or asked about the supply. Instead, he kept walking.

  The blacksmiths’ workshop announced itself before he saw it.

  The air grew hotter, and the metallic tang of iron thickened on his tongue. The rhythmic clang of hammer on metal rolled out in waves, layered and uneven, like a storm made of steel.

  He stepped through the wide doors, and he felt the heat wrap around him immediately.

  Nearly twenty people worked inside—sleeves rolled, aprons dark with soot. A pair of apprentices fed ore into a furnace while two others worked the bellows in steady pulls, the fire roaring brighter with each breath. Another group hovered over a shallow trough, skimming impurities from molten iron with long-handled tools.

  At the far table, three smiths poured glowing metal into molds, forming rough ingots that hissed when they hit the molds.

  The workshop wasn’t chaotic, but it was busy and intense.

  Harold moved along the wall, staying out of the way.

  Then he saw him.

  A large man with an even more impressive beard stood near the center anvil, shoulders thick, back corded under sweat-darkened linen. His clothes had strange slashes through them while his hammer rose and fell in a measured cadence—no wasted motion, no flourish.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  The ingot beneath his hammer shifted shape faster than Harold expected. Each strike wasn’t just flattening—it was guiding. Edges pulled outward, lengthened, curved, and it was happening too quickly.

  A senior blacksmith stood just off his left shoulder, voice sharp over the ringing steel.

  “Turn it—no, not like that—there. Keep the spine thick. Don’t thin it too fast! You’ll need it for the hollow spaces!”

  The big man adjusted without hesitation.

  Clang.

  Clang.

  The metal obeyed.

  Harold stepped closer, drawn despite himself.

  The shape emerging wasn’t a simple bar or farming tool. It had a slight curve. A large spine formed along the center while it narrowed toward the tip.

  It looked like the head of some kind of spear, but not one he recognized.

  The senior smith glanced up, finally noticing him.

  “My lord,” he said, not pausing his instruction. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

  “That’s fine,” Harold replied quietly.

  His eyes never left the forming piece.

  “What is he making?”

  The senior smith grinned, teeth bright against soot.

  “Something new.”