The midday sun hovered lazily over the Ash Company's encampment, casting broad light over tents, golem shells, and the engineers crouched under scaffolded repair platforms. For once, the air wasn't thick with urgency. After weeks of constant tension—battle, logistics, secret messages, and political manipulation—the company found itself in rare equilibrium. Supplies were stocked, the engineers had a backlog but no panic, and the soldiers were, for the most part, allowed to breathe.
That peace, however, was a signal to the younger, less-disciplined minds in camp.
Inside one of the storage tents, Rilo and Klesh—identical twins with too much energy and too little supervision—crouched over a scribbled map drawn on an old tarp. Alongside them were three other children: Mira, age ten, who could disassemble a basic golem frame faster than most adults; Danton, small but fast; and Pae, the only one capable of making Rilo and Klesh shut up by kicking them both in the shin simultaneously.
"You saw it too, right?" Rilo whispered. "He never takes the mask off. Even at night."
"Bet he's hideous," Danton said with a smirk.
"Or a vampire," Pae added, completely serious.
"Or he's hiding a golden mouth," Mira murmured, eyes dreamy. "That's why he's always so calm. He doesn't need to talk—his words are already coins."
"Shut up," Klesh said. "Plan first. We use the golem loader's frame near the water cistern. Swing in with rope from its arm. Danton cuts the tie on the mask. We land. Done."
"What if he screams?" Pae asked.
"Then we're already dead," Rilo answered solemnly. The others nodded. They had accepted the risk.
Fornos stood at the edge of the forward camp, hands behind his back, overseeing a field calibration of a modified Codex circuit. His voice was quiet, instructing a nearby engineer—Thol—to recheck rune alignment on a frame joint.
The camp around him was active, but not tense. Nearby, Konos was deep in conversation with a supply officer, while Wraith polished a half-assembled arm of a long-range artillery golem. Park and Mark loomed like statues beside the gear tents—silent, as always, yet somehow exuding the air of sentinels watching everything.
Which made what came next all the more impressive.
A rope suddenly arced down from above—swung from the golem loader's lifted arm. Rilo, Klesh, and Danton swooped through the air like a flock of reckless birds. Fornos turned only slightly at the whip of rope overhead.
In a flash, Danton reached down, his tiny fingers finding the knot behind the black porcelain mask.
Snap.
They landed in a roll, triumphant. The mask dangled from Klesh's hand like a captured relic.
Silence rippled through the camp like a dropped stone in still water.
Engineers paused mid-weld. Soldiers froze mid-drill. Even the grumpy cook stopped ladling stew.
Fornos stood still, the wind tugging at his dark hair. The left corner of his mouth bore a scar, thin and angled, as if carved by a dagger long ago. But it wasn't the scar that shocked them.
It was the youth.
No beard. No wrinkles. A boyish sharpness to the jaw. Bright eyes—not jaded, not hollowed by decades of war, but intense, focused, and young.
"Nineteen?" someone murmured.
A gasp rolled through the camp. Someone dropped a wrench.
"The elder is a brother?" Mira whispered, clutching Pae's hand.
Fornos tilted his head slightly, looking down at the children.
"Three swing paths," he said. "But only one exit route."
The kids blinked.
"You relied too much on the loader's pivot range. Had it been locked out, the angle would've been too shallow to land cleanly. No contingency for misfire. And Danton—next time, don't land near the person you just stole from."
The five children stared up at him, mouths slightly open.
"You're… not mad?" Klesh asked.
"I'm evaluating your tactics."
Even Konos smirked at that.
The mask was returned without resistance. Fornos took it back with the same neutral precision he used to analyze war maps.
Behind him, a slow murmur began to spread as people tried to reconcile what they had just seen.
"That's the kid who fought Uru-Maul?"
"No—he's the founder. He made the company."
"Trained us, deployed us, planned the whole southbound expansion."
"Wait, that means he started this when he was what? Sixteen?"
The disbelief turned to awe. Then unease.
Suddenly, they were all aware they had been following someone less than half the age of most field captains. A man who'd manipulated southern nobles, fought a Relict, dismantled pirate economies in the fifth continent, and created an elite force from mercenaries, slaves, and madmen.
And he wasn't even old enough to drink at a high-born banquet.
A few stared with envy. Some with fear.
Only Konos and Wraith stood unfazed. Wraith picked up his tools again. "He didn't hide it from us. We just didn't think it mattered," he said, as if explaining the weather.
Konos simply crossed his arms. "You expected a god. You got a man."
From across the way, Roa sprinted over, her two sons trailing behind her like guilty shadows.
"Did you—" she started, but Fornos raised a hand.
"They'll be fine," he said calmly. "Just reckless. Like all good engineers."
Roa squinted at Rilo and Klesh, who both looked like they wanted to dig a hole and live in it.
Fornos turned back to the assembled camp, his voice rising—not loud, but clear enough to carry.
"Let's get one thing straight. Age doesn't equate to vision. History never cared how old its authors were."
He paused.
"We'll talk about this after we reach Varnhollow."
Then, as if the moment hadn't happened, he returned to reviewing the Codex node.
The camp didn't return to work right away. Conversations spiraled. Perceptions shifted. But a seed had been planted—not of doubt, but transformation.
The faceless genius was now a boy they followed. Not out of fear.
But because they realized they had been led by someone willing to carry a burden that would've crushed most grown men.