Two days in chains had done what the battlefield could not.They had taken Viktor Kael’s silence and turned it into decay.Back in the Tribunal headquarters, Ethan walked through the underground detention corridor with four Tribunal guards behind him. The place was built from cold concrete and iron, with narrow strip lights fixed high on the walls and a damp smell that settled in the lungs. Every footstep echoed. Every locked door they passed seemed to carry the weight of someone else’s ending. The guards said nothing. They did not need to. They all knew who sat in the last cell and why Ethan had come in person.One of the guards glanced at Ethan as they approached the final door. “He hasn’t spoken much, sir.”Ethan kept walking. “Don't worry, he will.”The guard nodded once and stepped aside when they reached the reinforced cell. Heavy bolts were drawn back one by one. Metal scraped against metal. The sound dragged through the corridor like a warning. Then the door opened inward.

The courtroom went silent before the sentence was spoken.Viktor Kael stood in chains at the center of the Havenport war tribunal hall, flanked by armed guards and facing a raised bench of judges who looked more tired than ceremonial. The chamber was packed. Soldiers lined the walls. Citizens filled every bench and standing space at the back. Some had come for justice. Others had come because they needed to see with their own eyes that the man who had turned their city into a theater of fear could still be brought low.Kael stood as straight as his battered body allowed.Bruises still marked his face. One eye was slightly swollen. His wrists were bound in front of him with transport irons that glinted coldly under the lights. Even now, even dragged through defeat, he was trying to wear defiance like rank.The chief judge looked down at the papers before him, then up at the prisoner.“Viktor Kael,” he said, his voice carrying through the hall, “this court finds you guilty.”The air c

“Give him to us!”"Give him to us!""Give him to us!"“No rope!”“He gave no mercy!”Ethan let the noise rise until it became almost unbearable. Then he lifted one hand.It took time, but the square slowly lowered into an unstable silence.It was no longer just a crowd reacting. It had become a single force, drawn together by shared loss. Every face in that moment carried a story, and every story pointed back to the man standing in chains.Kael was shaking now. Not violently, not enough to look weak from a distance, but enough for Ethan to see it. His lips were swollen. One eye was half-closed. Blood had dried at the edge of his collar. Yet nothing about the damage done to him so far had frightened him as much as what was now waiting below the platform.Ethan stepped close enough for his voice to carry through the square without effort.“You burned this city,” he said.Kael swallowed.“You ordered public executions,” Ethan continued. “You allowed unarmed men and women to be dragged i

That sentence moved faster than any formal report could have.By the time Ethan reached his office, the news had already begun traveling beyond the square. It passed from soldier to soldier, from messenger to operator, from Havenport’s streets to the lines of the Tribunal army spread across the war-torn counties. Viktor Kael, the Herold army’s sharpest strategist, the man who had broken battalions and struck hospitals, was dead at the hands of the same city he had tried to break.The effect was immediate.It did not need confirmation from high command. The tone of the voices carrying the message was enough. Something decisive had happened, something that changed how the war would be spoken about from that moment forward.At a field outpost near the southern line, a radio operator nearly stood up from his chair. “Repeat that.”The voice over the line answered, “Confirmed. Viktor Kael is dead. Havenport saw it.”A wounded Tribunal sergeant, his arm bound in blood-stiff cloth, stared ac

Tetris Bridge had become more than a bridge.It was one of the few routes the Tribunal army still trusted as a passageway for their food, which made it more valuable than most strongholds. The long steel-and-concrete span cut over deep water and fractured ravine channels, linking supply zones that had already lost too many roads to shelling, sabotage, and sudden Herold pressure. If Tetris Bridge stayed open, men at the front kept eating. If it fell, hunger would begin moving faster than gunfire.The tribunal command had already issued warnings about ration tightening if even one major route failed. Men at the front had begun stretching meals without being told. Hunger had not arrived yet, but it was close enough to be feared.Seven Tribunal trucks rolled onto it in a tight convoy.The spacing between the trucks was deliberate, tight enough for protection, loose enough to react if something went wrong. Every driver knew that on a bridge like this, there was no real room for mistakes.