The morning sun had barely crested the horizon when Markos stood beside the makeshift range, arms crossed, watching his recruits fire volley after volley.
The Scolacian recurved bows twanged with rhythm, but their arrows thudded harmlessly against the old armor mounted on wooden posts. One even bounced off a rusted breastplate with a laughable clink. Markos scowled.
"This won't do," he muttered.
One of the younger recruits, bright-eyed and freckled, stepped beside him. "Sir?"
Markos turned to him. "Fetch me the quartermaster."
Minutes later, Markos stood before the grizzled quartermaster, a man with more beard than teeth and a face like dried leather.
"You want a what?"
"A crossbow," Markos said plainly.
The man blinked. "A cross… bow?"
Markos drew into the dirt with a stick. "A mechanical bow mounted on a tiller. Short range. Slow to reload. But with a heavy bolt, it can punch through plate armor at fifty paces."
The man frowned. "That sounds… made up."
Markos gave him a look that had silenced warlords. "It's not. What I need are these materials—iron, good wood, steel cable, and a working bench."
"…I'll see what we can muster," the man grumbled, walking off as if Markos had just asked him to forge a dragon.
For the rest of the morning, Markos toiled in the shade of the smithy, sleeves rolled, sweat beading his brow. Slowly, piece by piece, the first crossbow began to take shape — its frame carved of polished ash, a crude winding mechanism fitted into the stock, a bow of composite horn-laminate. He worked with practiced precision, guided by memory.
A crowd began to gather.
Some were nobles, veiled in fine robes, pretending to pass by.
Others were soldiers, whispering among themselves, exchanging glances between the strange weapon and the foreign commander.
And from the overlooking tower — high above, behind an arched window — stood Helena, arms folded, gaze sharp. She watched in silence, the corners of her lips twitching — a mix of curiosity, pride… and possessiveness.
"Only he would dare remake the art of war in another's land," she whispered.
By noon, Markos loaded the first armour-piercing bolt, tipped with sharpened steel and carefully weighted. He positioned the weapon, locked the mechanism, and pointed it toward a weathered cuirass on a wooden post fifty paces away.
A hush fell.
He pulled the trigger.
TWANG—CRACK!
The bolt hit dead center. Not only did it puncture the cuirass — it snapped the post in half, sending the shattered wood spinning to the ground.
Gasps followed. Some stepped back. Others crossed themselves.
The same freckled recruit from earlier muttered, "Gods preserve us…"
Markos turned to his onlookers. "I call this the skorpios. Even your proudest knight cannot stand long against it."
The nobles exchanged uneasy glances.
One muttered, "Too dangerous to remain a novelty…"
But from above, Helena's eyes glittered with a secret smile.
"Let them fear you," she thought. "The more they fear… the more they'll need you. And the closer you'll stay."
The following dawn came not with birdsong, but the clattering of iron and murmurs of anticipation. Markos stood before his detachment of one hundred forty men — gambeson-clad infantry, sun-darkened scouts, and the thirty newly drilled horsemen whose pride had begun to rise beneath his teaching.
At his feet lay six of his newly built creations: the skorpios, lined like sleeping beasts. The men stared at them, half in awe, half in suspicion.
"These," Markos said, sweeping his hand over the weapons, "will change everything."
One of the senior footmen, Ector, scratched his beard. "Looks heavy, sir."
Markos gave him a grin. "So's your mother, but we march with her anyway."
Laughter rippled through the line.
"But aye," Markos continued, "they are heavy. And slow. They won't loose arrows like the Scolacian recurves. But when they strike…" He pointed to a battered suit of mail hung on a wooden frame nearby. "...they kill, even through the armor of a proud knight."
For the rest of the morning, the men learned to load, crank, and fire. Markos watched closely, correcting their stance, the angle of aim, and the speed of their reloads.
"Keep your shoulders square," he barked. "Set the bolt flat. Crank, don't yank. The enemy won't give you a second chance!"
The first few bolts went wide.
Then came a string of solid hits — dull, meaty thunks as they embedded into wooden dummies and dented armor.
The men began to cheer each other on. Even the doubters began to nod.
"This thing bites," one muttered.
"Bites harder than my wife," another replied.
"And your wife's got teeth," added Ector.
Markos allowed a smirk.
But it wasn't just brute force he taught them.
By noon, the drills had changed. Markos split them into groups: one to load, one to aim, one to fire in staggered volleys.
He showed them how to protect the crossbowmen with shielded infantry between volleys, creating a deadly rotating rhythm that allowed for constant pressure.
"Remember," he told them, "you are not skirmishers. You are wall-breakers. You don't harass — you end things."
The idea of ending a battle before it began had never been a thought in these men's minds — but now it was burned there.
In the shade, Helena watched once again. This time not from a high window, but beneath a merchant's awning, cloaked and veiled. She said nothing, but her gloved fingers curled slightly each time Markos shouted a command.
"You're teaching them your ways," she thought. "And with every breath, they'll forget their own gods for you…"
Late in the day, as the drills wound down and the sun sank low, Markos sat beneath a tree, a skin of water in hand. A few of his men lingered around him.
"Commander," Ector said, "where did you learn all this?"
Markos drank slowly. "Where I come from, war is… constant. And brutal. You adapt or you die."
One of the younger lads leaned forward. "Is it true what the scouts say? That the Lady Stratega watches you?"
Markos raised a brow. "She does?"
The lad nodded. "She was seen watching your crossbow tests. And today. We saw a figure with her eyes."
"Her eyes?" Markos repeated.
"Deep," another said. "Like fire wrapped in frost."
There was a pause.
Then, in jest, Ector elbowed Markos and said, "So… she your wife or something?"
From behind the tree, a suppressed chuckle echoed — barely audible.
Markos stood, hands on hips, and looked to the branches.
"Str-Stratega!" he shouted upward. "They said thou art my wife!"
The men howled with laughter.
From the other side of the courtyard, Helena, now visible to none, smiled.
But unlike before, it was not a smirk of amusement, nor a flicker of mischief — it was genuine, warm, and frighteningly gentle.
"If only," she whispered, "they knew how true that will become."
However he realizes something, that it began with a miscalculation.
Markos had spent the previous night hammering away under flickering torchlight, laboring in the foundry with a dozen curious onlookers, tinkering and adjusting tension frames, reinforced stocks, and larger winching levers.
He was trying to improve the reload speed and stopping power of the crossbow. Instead, he had accidentally created a siege weapon.
When dawn broke, the hulking construct stood in the center of the training yard — its bow limbs made of thick yew, reinforced by horn and sinew, drawn back by a winch nearly the size of a cartwheel. It was mounted on a wooden base with turning joints for elevation and rotation.
A long, thick bolt the length of a spear rested in its groove.
"…Sir," one recruit said slowly, "is that… another skorpios?"
Markos, rubbing the soot from his arms, stared at the machine.
"…No," he muttered. "That's a mistake."
He stepped back, wiping his hands, and added:
"…But a useful one."
The men gathered as Markos tested the new weapon. With effort, they cranked the oversized winch, locking the bowstring into place. He placed the first bolt and took a moment to adjust the angle.
At the far end of the field, an old wagon was set up as a target.
Markos gestured. "Stand back."
He released the trigger.
THWHAM!
The bolt launched with a shriek of force, striking the wagon with such violence that the entire frame shattered into splinters. The force continued — slamming through the wagon's remains and embedding itself halfway into the earth beyond.
Silence followed.
Then one of the lads muttered, "…Gods…"
A grizzled veteran behind him added, "That thing could skewer three men and their horses."
Markos stepped forward. "This is not for skirmishes. This is for gates. Walls. Siege towers. If the enemy thinks we're just a band of footmen… they'll learn otherwise."
Word spread like wildfire.
By noon, knights, scribes, servants, and nobles had begun to peer into the training yard, whispering, questioning.
The Magistrate of Sepultana himself sent a messenger, requesting a demonstration. Several skeptics scoffed, calling it a theatrical contraption.
That was, until they saw it fired again — through a stack of shields and into the bark of a tree that would take three men to wrap around.
Markos, ever practical, immediately began drawing up plans to scale it down again.
"This is good for siege," he muttered to Ector, who had grown into his unofficial second. "But we need the one you can carry."
"Sir?" Ector blinked.
"A refined Skorpios. Not just a bow — a soldier's fist that spits death from fifty paces. I want one that fits under your arm. Reliable. Rugged. Reloadable in a pinch."
"You want a knight-killer that can march with us?"
Markos nodded. "And I'll build it."
By evening, Markos had done just that.
The true Skorpios was born.
It had a short, hardened tiller of ash wood, reinforced with iron. A laminated prod of composite horn and sinew. A rolling nut mechanism crafted with help from the blacksmith's apprentice. The bolts — short, broad-tipped, heavier than arrows — were designed to punch through shields and armor both.
Markos fired the prototype at dusk — standing beside his men with a hard grin — and the bolt struck the heart of a training dummy squarely in the chest.
The dummy collapsed backwards, the bolt buried so deep it nearly passed through.
"It's small," Ector muttered.
"It's deadly," Markos corrected.
Helena watched once again from the shadows, perched in a shaded balcony with her cloak drawn, golden eyes glinting.
"He builds weapons," she mused, "but he does not know he is one."
Behind her, a whisper echoed through the wind.
"Scelestus… the humans grow stronger under him. Shall we—"
"No," Helena cut them off, her voice frost and fire. "Let them grow. Let them learn to fear him before they ever dare challenge me."
Two days after the Skorpios was completed, the alarm bells rang from the south.
A scouting party of bandits-turned-raiders—emboldened by rumors of civil unrest—had begun pillaging hamlets near the outskirts of Castarno, threatening a vital trade route and the villagers under the local castle's protection.
Markos volunteered.
He gathered fifty men, including his best riders and twenty newly armed infantry. Five of them were assigned to carry Skorpios prototypes. Two portable ballistae, mounted on mule-drawn carts, followed behind under a special engineer detachment that he created which he called skapaneís.[1]
It was time.
They reached the outskirts of the village of Castarno at dusk. Smoke rose from the far side of the hills — a village burned, livestock scattered, the scent of ash clinging to the wind.
Markos knelt by a cart track, inspecting broken wheel grooves and boot prints.
"Forty or so. Mostly footmen. No siege, no cavalry," he murmured.
Ector, at his side, pointed toward a grove. "They've circled back. They're digging in by the river bend."
Markos rose. "Then we won't wait."
He issued orders swiftly — infantry to the left flank through the wooded ridge, cavalry to circle and hold position east. The two ballistae would set up at a clearing, just within range of the raiders' palisade.
"Tonight we show them the bite of the old world," he told his men. "Steel, fire, and thunder."
The battle began at twilight.
As the raiders jeered from behind hastily erected barricades, Markos signaled the ballista crew.
THWAM.
The first bolt obliterated a watch post, splinters scattering like hail. The second struck the barricade itself, piercing two shieldmen behind it and pinning them against the earth.
The enemy faltered.
Markos charged with the cavalry, leading the spearhead — his lance struck a bandit square in the chest, throwing the man off his feet.
Behind them, his footmen advanced — and the Skorpios bearers unleashed their bolts. The air thrummed with mechanical twangs as the new crossbows found their targets with deadly precision.
One man reloaded and fired thrice in under a minute. Each bolt found flesh.
Even the hardened among the bandits began to retreat.
But the fight wasn't over yet.
A hulking raider, armored in chain and leather, emerged with a two-handed axe, roaring as he cleaved through Markos' front line. Three men fell before they could regroup.
Markos dismounted, drawing his spatha.
The clash was brutal.
Steel rang against steel. Sparks flew. The brute swung low — Markos dodged and stabbed deep under the arm, finding soft meat. The giant staggered.
But behind him, another attacker crept forward.
A thwip sliced the air.
A Skorpios bolt slammed into the ambusher's throat, flinging him backward.
Markos glanced to the shooter — the youngest recruit, eyes wide, hands trembling.
Markos gave him a curt nod. "Good shot."
The boy blinked in shock, then grinned like a fool.
By nightfall, the raiders were crushed. The survivors fled south, broken and leaderless.
The Skorpios had proven itself.
Back at camp, Markos tended to the wounded himself, moving from cot to cot. His voice was low, encouraging. He shared water, tore strips of cloth, even lent his shoulder to carry the dying.
He had become something else in the eyes of his men — not just a commander. A bulwark. A flame.
From high above the battlefield, Helena watched through veils of shadow and fog, her lips parted slightly in wonder.
"He builds. He bleeds. He teaches."
"And still," she whispered to herself, "he does not ask for worship."
A shape behind her stirred. A voice like boiling oil and frost crackled.
"You will lose yourself in him, Scelestus."
"I already have," she said simply. "And still, I do not regret it."
The report came wrapped in red wax and haste.
Within the cold marble halls of the City of Florentine a group of scribes and lords huddled under golden chandeliers, their breath visible in the morning chill. The scroll was unfurled and read aloud:
"…enemy repelled near Castarno. Markos of the East employed newly-fashioned torsion weaponry—portable ballistae of unknown design—inflicting substantial losses to the raiding host. Victory secured. Casualties minimal."
The room fell silent.
It wasn't the victory that alarmed them.
It was the line: "torsion weaponry of unknown design."
Word spread like wildfire.
By dusk, envoys from Scolacium arrived at the Citadel, requesting a demonstration. The Nafonian Strategos, already irritable from internal rebellions and suspected Scolacian provocations, accused Markos of sharing military secrets with their rivals.
Worse, rumors reached Florentine that Markos was developing a new siege variant capable of penetrating castle walls with frightening ease.
One whispered phrase echoed across councils and barracks:
"The Knight from the Hollow Sea has brought weapons of gods to a land ruled by fools."
In the Citadel, Markos stood before the High Council, now wary rather than welcoming.
The Primarch of Steel, Lord Evandros, leaned forward. "Is it true, Markos? That you built this… Skorpios?"
Markos nodded, firm but calm. "Aye. With local materials. It is no divine invention — just the wisdom of an older world. It won us the battle without needing to bury more sons."
An older Scolacian general scoffed. "Or it won you favor among the nobles. Power comes with price, foreigner."
Helena — or rather, Stratega Althenea — remained by the stone window, her arms crossed, her golden eyes narrowing ever so slightly. She had said little all session.
She wanted to speak. To burn them for doubting him.But no — not yet.
The Archminister of the Ledger, a Nafonian loyalist, muttered, "Swords are one thing. But siege engines… in the hands of a man with no oath of allegiance? That borders on heresy."
Markos held his gaze. "Then give me someone to swear to. Until then, I'll fight for those who can't."
The room murmured. Not anger — but uncertainty. He had made them doubt themselves.
The Nafonians being quite skeptical, was amazed at Markos' creation and began to devise a plan to hire him against the Scolacians.
That night, Markos retired to the training yard, where his recruits polished gear and whispered about the day's events. He watched them, these once-farmers and stonemasons — now warriors with fire in their eyes.
One of them approached — the young lad who'd saved him in battle with a Skorpios bolt.
"Sir," he said hesitantly, "they say you scare the council. That your weapons… change things."
Markos chuckled tiredly. "Weapons don't change men. Men change when they're afraid of what they don't understand."
The boy nodded, but asked, "Do you think you'll be punished?"
Markos looked to the torchlight glinting off the newly forged Skorpios beside them. "If truth is punished, then so be it. We don't have time to wait for perfect approvals. We need to survive."
Elsewhere, in the veiled hallways beneath the Citadel, nobles whispered to one another.
Some saw Markos as a threat to their feudal traditions, a man who brought foreign war doctrine that could shatter knightly honor with wooden arms.
Others saw opportunity — a rising commander who could reshape the military order in their favor.
And in one darker chamber, a hooded priest said coldly:
"He is reshaping the future.And the gods — old or new — may not accept it."
In her quarters, Helena stood alone, watching the firelight dance in her polished armor. She could still hear Markos' words echoing in the council:
"Then give me someone to swear to."
A part of her longed to be that someone.
Another part feared what that oath would make her do.
The night was unnaturally quiet.
A thin mist curled along the edges of the Citadel's stone terraces, moonlight fractured by clouds creeping over the high towers. The torches sputtered gently in the halls — not even the wind dared interrupt the silence. Markos had just removed his tunic, the scent of oil and steel still clinging to his arms. The room was lit only by a single lantern on the windowsill.
And then… he felt her.
The air shimmered, and a shadow pulled away from the wall — graceful, silent, hooded.
"Helena?" he asked, already knowing.
She didn't answer at first. Her golden eyes glowed faintly beneath the hood. She stepped forward, slow, hesitant — not like the proud Stratega who barked orders in court, nor the Black Knight who felled a score of enemies in his defense.
No — this was something else. Something raw.
"I shouldn't be here," she said, voice breaking slightly. "But I… I can't keep this up."
Markos stood still. "What do you mean?"
Helena stopped just short of him. "You fight, lead, invent, inspire — and all the while you never ask why I keep showing up. Why I save you. Why I defy the Council for you." She looked away. "I've kept… too much hidden. And the more I try to protect you, the closer you come to breaking everything."
Markos stepped closer, softly. "Is this about what the nobles are whispering? Or the Skorpios?"
She shook her head, trembling. "This is about me. Who I truly am."
There was a long pause.
Then, she began to remove her gauntlets — and then her cloak — revealing the sigils beneath her armor: ancient markings, once worn by Veltrana, the lost goddess of Astonicum. Her fingers glowed faintly as a familiar shimmer of dark-violet fire trailed up her wrists. Something celestial and infernal lingered beneath her skin.
Markos staggered back. "You… you're not just the Black Knight."
Her gaze turned soft. "No. I never was."
But before she could speak the name Scelestus —
BOOM.
A thunderous blast rocked the Citadel. The sound of horns cut through the air, followed by rapid footfalls and shouts from below. The room's lanterns flickered violently.
A messenger burst in, pale and bloodied.
"Sirs! Lady Stratega! Zariphon burns! The Pazzonians have crossed the eastern fork. Nafonian watchtowers have fallen. They are coming — for all of us!"
Helena's face turned to steel in an instant, her emotions locked behind the mask of command. The warmth vanished.
"How many?" she asked.
"Too many. A full host. They fly their black banners with iron thorns."
Markos, already strapping his sword belt on, looked at her. "They're not just probing anymore. This… this is a full invasion."
The messenger nodded. "And the Nafonians — they're begging for your help. Your help, Commander Markos. They say you're the only one who can lead the counter-offensive while the generals are away."
Helena looked at him, anguish behind her golden eyes. This moment — the truth — would have to wait.
Markos clenched his jaw. "Then I ride. Get my men ready. All of them."
The messenger dashed off.
Helena turned away to hide the tears she could no longer shed.
"Helena," he said, pausing before he left, "we will finish that talk. I don't care what you are. But I need to know who you are."
She didn't turn to him. But her words were clear.
"I am the flame that watches over you. Even if I burn everything else."
As the Skorpios were wheeled out by torchlight and Markos mounted his horse, he saw Nafonian banners streaming down the road from the west. A rare sight — Scolacians and Nafonians fighting side by side.
The Pazzonians had overplayed their hand. They thought this land divided.
But war had a way of uniting enemies.
And the fire in Helena's heart was not the only one ready to ignite.
[1] Sappers in english, they are engineers that are responsible for artillery, fortifications, etc.