Beneath the afternoon sun small contingent of horsemen began their descent from the high hills.
There were less than twenty of them. Not enough for a charge, not enough for a battle. Just enough to speak, to gamble with words rather than blades. Their horses picked their way down the slope with slow, deliberate steps, as if even the beasts knew the weight of the moment they carried on their backs.
At the forefront rode the men whose names had already been etched into infamy at least in books of the loyalist.
Niketas, the golden lordturned-traitor, wore a breastplate untounched dust or blood , but his eyes still burned with that old, dangerous clarity—the kind that had rallied thousands behind him in the early days, when rebellion still tasted like hope rather than desperation.
Beside him, Gregor rode heavy in the saddle. His broad shoulders hunched forward. He looked less like a man riding to a parley and more like a butcher inspecting the livestock.
