Orestis walked onto the stone bridge half an hour before the appointed time. He stopped roughly at the centre and let his gaze travel across the terrain.

  The bridge spanned a shallow river east of Orthessa, near an old quarry that had been abandoned long enough for the edges to soften but not long enough for the land to forget. The surroundings were open—low scrub, scattered trees along the riverbank, the quarry ridge rising to the north. Good sightlines in every direction. Nowhere to stage an ambush without being seen.

  That was the point. A masked stranger inviting a foreign envoy to a private meeting needed to offer something in return for the risk: visibility. The location said I am not hiding an army behind the hill. I am standing in the open because I have nothing to gain from treachery and everything to lose from being ignored.

  Whether Toren would read it that way remained to be seen.

  On the quarry ridge, a single figure stood with a bow in hand. No arrow nocked. Posture relaxed. Visible and deliberately so.

  A bow, not a crossbow. That told Orestis enough. Crossbows were easier to use, but a trained aura user could draw a longbow with reinforced strength and hold the shot at ranges a crossbow could not match. No one carried a longbow to a diplomatic meeting unless they could use it properly.

  An openly posted overwatch. Professional.

  Toren and company arrived shortly after—the sentry had signalled, no doubt. Four riders on horseback, approaching at an unhurried pace along the eastern road. They dismounted before stepping onto the bridge. One stayed with the horses. The other three proceeded on foot.

  Toren walked ahead, confident, unhurried. The two behind him were offset half a pace to his left and right—not flanking, but positioned to react. The one on the left carried no visible weapons but moved with the restrained economy of someone who didn’t need them.

  A mage. Dual-trained, most likely. Being from Logrion, it would be surprising if they didn’t use aura.

  When Toren reached a few paces from Orestis, he stopped. His gaze moved over the mask, the distorted outline, the deliberate anonymity. He took his time.

  “You come masked,” Toren said, “to accuse a nation of war.”

  “I come masked because the accusation is true,” Orestis replied. “And because the truth is more useful than my face.”

  Toren held his gaze—or where his gaze would have been—for a long moment. Then he reached into his coat and produced the letter. He did not unfold it.

  “An unsigned letter reaches my desk,” Toren said, “declaring my country the target of invasion. It asserts knowledge of Temple doctrine. It promises the means to win. And it asks me to meet a stranger on a bridge.” He tucked the letter away. “You will understand my reluctance.”

  “I would question your judgment if you weren’t reluctant,” Orestis said. “Which is why I brought evidence.”

  He reached into his coat and withdrew a stack of documents—not the full technical corpus, but a prepared summary. The first three pages outlined the Temple’s accelerated training methodology in precise, clinical terms: forced conditioning cycles, divine healing intervals, projected activation rates. The remaining pages contained the doctrine in full—the original one; not the one he’d fixed for Eirene’s use. He held them out.

  Toren took them without ceremony and read the summary. His expression did not change. The two behind him remained still, though the mage’s gaze flickered between Orestis and the documents.

  Toren turned to the second page. Then the third. Then he looked up.

  “This is Temple doctrine,” he said. Not a question.

  Good. He didn’t ask how I obtained it.

  “It is,” Orestis confirmed. “Their programme compresses four to eight years of natural aura development into six to twelve months. The mechanism is simple: train to failure, heal, repeat. They believe divine healing removes the cost of accelerated conditioning.”

  “And it doesn’t.”

  “Healing restores tissue. It does not increase tolerance. Each cycle leaves the soldier whole but no more adapted than before. The limit remains. Push past it often enough, and over-saturation becomes inevitable.”

  Toren considered this. “Our intelligence has already noted the increase in Kallistrate’s military throughput over the past year. Accelerated recruitment. Expanded training facilities. Supply chain adjustments consistent with mobilisation.”

  “Now imagine every one of those recruits put through this programme,” Orestis said. “At their current pace, Kallistrate will field at least three times the aura-capable soldiers Logrion can muster. Possibly more.”

  Silence settled on the bridge. The guard to Toren’s right shifted his weight—the only visible reaction. Toren himself remained still, processing.

  “If they already have a head start,” Toren said, “then knowing their method doesn’t help us. We cannot replicate it in time, and I would not recommend doing so regardless.”

  “I wouldn’t either. But you don’t need to match their numbers. You need to exploit the flaw they’ve built into their own army.”

  Orestis reached into his coat again and produced a small object—palm-sized, flat, with a dull metallic surface etched with fine lines. It looked unremarkable.

  “This is an artefact,” he said. “When activated, it produces a localised field that agitates and disrupts aura circulation within a fixed radius.”

  Toren studied the object but did not reach for it. “We have too few mages in Logrion to deploy artefacts at scale. Arming a field division with mana-dependent tools is not viable.”

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

  “You won’t need mages. This is activated by aura.”

  The bridge went quiet.

  The mage to Toren’s left broke stillness for the first time—a sharp glance, quickly controlled. The guard’s hand shifted toward his weapon, then stopped. Toren himself did not move, but something behind his eyes recalculated.

  Aura-activated artefacts did not exist. Not in any current understanding of runic theory. Artefacts required mana to function—that was foundational doctrine, taught in every academy, embedded in every schematic. The idea that aura could serve as an activation medium would upend decades of engineering assumptions.

  “That is a significant claim,” Toren said carefully.

  “Test it,” Orestis replied. He held the artefact out.

  Toren took it. He turned it once in his hand, feeling the weight and the etchings. Then he channelled aura into it.

  Orestis noted the ease with which he did so. Reinforcing an external object with aura required Stage II proficiency at minimum—the ability to extend aura beyond the body and into contact surfaces. For an envoy, that was impressive. For the king’s nephew, raised in a house tied to mana-reactive mining and disciplined aura training, perhaps less so.

  The effect was immediate.

  Toren’s jaw tightened. Behind him, both guards stiffened—the mage drawing a sharp breath, the swordsman bracing as though the ground had shifted. Even the sentry on the ridge would have felt it, though at that range, the effect would be muted.

  Within seconds, all three adjusted. Aura circulated through their bodies in controlled patterns, counteracting the disruption with the practised ease of people who trained regularly and had stable foundations.

  Toren deactivated the artefact and looked at Orestis with a different expression. Still guarded. But attentive in a way he had not been before.

  “It works. But we adapted quickly enough,” he said, looking at his companions. “I'm not convinced this would change a battlefield.”

  “You adapted because your foundations are stable. Kallistrate’s accelerated troops will not have that luxury. Their aura pathways are healed, not strengthened. Under disruption, their circulation won’t compensate—it will collapse. The stronger the soldier appears, the more fragile their foundation. Your weakest Stage I conscript would recover faster than their fastest Stage II.”

  Toren looked down at the artefact again. “And the schematics?”

  Orestis produced another set of documents—thinner, denser, technical. “Everything your runesmiths need to build it. The underlying theory is included. I expect they’ll see applications beyond this specific design.”

  Toren took them. He read the first page, then the second. When he reached the materials list, he paused.

  “This resin,” he said. “It’s rare in our territory.”

  Orestis had expected that. The trees that produced it grew only in the south. The resin was valued for its aura-stabilising properties and usually refined into training tinctures. Logrion would have reserves—but not at the scale this required.

  Naturally, he already had the solution.

  “I understand your delegation has been discussing northern expansion with the Aretaios house.” Orestis kept his voice neutral. Yes, he was the one making the deal, but his house was an unknown. Knowing that kind of detail would be suspicious in the wrong way. Aretaios was the name any intelligence gatherer would attach to the deal.

  “The agreement is not yet finalised,” he went on. “If you include the resin in the contract terms, the merchant house will procure it as part of standard trade. Southern-sourced, commercially unremarkable, no questions raised.”

  Toren looked up sharply. “You’re well-informed about a trade negotiation that occurred only three days ago.”

  “It occurred at a public ball,” Orestis stated simply.

  A pause. Toren’s expression did not soften, but it settled—acknowledging the logic without endorsing it.

  The beauty of the arrangement lay in perception.

  By embedding the resin in a legitimate trade contract, Logrion would believe they were strengthening their own bargaining position—demanding materials as a condition of accepting the merchant deal. From their perspective, they were extracting value, not conceding it.

  The resin itself was neither dangerous nor restricted. Given its aura-stabilising properties, even bulk procurement by Logrion would attract no suspicion.

  Moreover, if Toren and his advisors were considering rejecting the deal, this would give them a stronger reason to accept. And Orestis—the merchant, not the masked figure—would appear entirely uninvolved.

  To Logrion, there would be no hidden hand tying the threads together. Just separate interests aligning naturally.

  The best manipulations are the ones where everyone believes they’re winning.

  Toren handed the artefact back. Orestis shook his head. “Keep it. Consider it a demonstration of good faith.”

  Toren weighed it in his palm, then slipped it into his coat.

  “You are offering Logrion a significant military advantage,” he said. “Intelligence. Technology. This is not charity. What do you gain?”

  “Retribution.”

  The word sat on the bridge between them, heavy and unadorned.

  “Against Kallistrate?”

  “I have nothing against Kallistrate,” Orestis said. “I have everything against their branch of the Temple of Demerius.”

  Toren studied him. Orestis could feel the assessment—not suspicion, but recalibration. A man driven by profit was predictable. A man driven by grievance was less so. But a man who admitted his motive openly, without embellishment or justification, was at least honest about the terms.

  “How long do we have?” Toren asked.

  “That, I cannot say for certain. But I estimate less than a year.”

  The programme had begun roughly a year ago. Stage IV degradation became statistically inevitable within two to five years. So a campaign launched at eighteen to twenty-four months would be optimal—new recruits would be capable of using aura, veteran units would have advanced, structural instability would not be visible yet.

  “That is not a long time,” Toren said.

  “No. But it is long enough to prepare, if you begin now.”

  Toren exhaled through his nose—the first unguarded reaction of the meeting. He folded the documents carefully, tucked them into his coat beside the artefact, and looked at Orestis with the expression of a man who had just been handed something too important to refuse and too dangerous to accept lightly.

  “If this works,” he said, “it will change more than one war.”

  He was right. Aura-activated artefacts would not stay on the battlefield. The technology would spread—to industry, to infrastructure, to governance. Nations that had relied on mana scarcity to maintain power would find that advantage eroding. The geopolitical implications were vast, unpredictable, and permanent.

  Orestis knew this. He had known it when he designed the schematic.

  He did not care.

  His goal was the Temple. How the world rearranged itself afterward was not his concern. He had lived long enough to know that consequences propagated regardless of intent, and that trying to control them was a different kind of arrogance—one he had abandoned centuries ago.

  “How do we reach you?” Toren asked.

  “The quarry.” Orestis nodded toward the ridge. “North face, halfway down. There’s an alcove behind the second rockfall. Place correspondence there. I will know when it arrives, and I will respond within three days.”

  He’d already placed the necessary formation around that alcove two days ago.

  Toren glanced toward the quarry, noting the position. “And if we need to meet again?”

  “Same method. Same bridge. I will propose a time.”

  A pause. Toren extended his hand. Orestis took it. The grip was firm, measured, and brief.

  Toren turned and walked back down the bridge. His guards fell into step without a word. They mounted, wheeled their horses, and rode west at an unhurried pace. The sentry on the ridge held position until they passed, then followed.

  Orestis stood on the bridge and watched them go. Once they were out of sight, he teleported back to his room at the inn and removed the mask.

  The distortion field faded. His face was his own again—young, unremarkable, belonging to no one of consequence.

  He had just handed a foreign power the means to win a war, the technology to reshape an era, and the knowledge to dismantle an institution—though, that would come later.

  Patreon, along with extra lore and author notes.