The Radiant Order was crumbling from within.
Veylan could see it in the silent glances exchanged between officers who had once trusted each other with their lives. He could hear it in the hushed whispers that stopped the mont he entered a room. Paranoia had spread like a disease, faster than any enemy could march upon their gates. The true war wasn't fought with swords or spells anymore—it was a war of trust, a battle against the unseen enemy that had embedded itself deep into their ranks. And it was winning.
The grand halls of the Order, once filled with the crisp footsteps of disciplined soldiers, were now quieter than they had ever been. Conversations were kept short, clipped, wary. n and won who had fought side by side, who had bled and killed for each other, now hesitated before eting their comrades' eyes. A single wrong word, a single misplaced movent, and suspicions would coil around them like a noose.
It had started subtly. A missing soldier here, an inexplicable death there. But the disappearances had grown more frequent, more alarming. No traces were left behind—no trails, no signs of struggle. So were found in their quarters, their throats slit with the precision of a master assassin. Others had simply ceased to exist, as if they had been erased from reality itself. The clerics who examined the bodies reported no foreign magic, no evidence of possession or mind control. The killers walked among them, unseen, unchecked.
The mind alchemists had failed him. Despite their expertise, they found themselves grasping at smoke. Every suspect pulled in for questioning showed no signs of compulsion, no magical traces of forced coercion. And yet, the pattern continued. Their thods of identifying infiltrators—rituals, psychic probes, divine revelations—proved useless. The corruption adapted, shifted, evaded every attempt to expose it.
At first, the officers had accepted these disappearances with grim determination. These were warti losses, they told themselves. But the unease took root, spreading like rot through the ranks. Then the rumors started. So whispered that entire battalions had already been compromised. Others dared to suggest that their leadership had been infiltrated from the very beginning.
And then, the worst of them all—the whispers that Veylan himself had been turned.
At first, he ignored it. The murmurings of desperate n could be dismissed. But then he saw it in their eyes. The hesitation when they saluted. The half-second pause before they obeyed his orders. The unspoken question lingering between them.
Could their own Inquisitor be the enemy?
That was when he knew the enemy had already won.
Paranoia was a poison that needed no blade, no spell, no army to spread. It did not charge at the gates. It seeped through the cracks, turned brother against brother, made n hesitate at the mont they needed to act. If this continued, the Order would not fall to an external threat—it would destroy itself from within.
Veylan had fought countless battles, had broken n under interrogation, had seen entire cities razed to the ground. He had never known fear. Not like this.
Because this was not a war he could win with strength alone.
Even now, as he walked through the once-glorious war chambers, he could feel their gazes follow him. Officers and strategists, hardened n and won who had led the Order to countless victories, now stood in uneasy silence. So subtly distanced themselves from each other, as if afraid that even standing too close would invite suspicion.
Every step he took was heavier than the last. The air was suffocating.
At the center of the chamber, his most trusted lieutenants gathered—n who had served at his side for years, who had pledged their lives to the cause. And yet, even among them, trust had frayed to the point of breaking.
Malakar stood with arms crossed, his scarred face unreadable. But Veylan knew him too well—his posture was too rigid, his shoulders too tense. Even Malakar, his most loyal commander, had begun to doubt.
He wasn't alone. Across the chamber, Lord Vasrik, one of the Order's high marshals, rested a hand on the hilt of his blade, as if at any mont he expected treachery. Beside him, the scholar-priest Kethrin held his prayer beads a little too tightly. There was no certainty left in any of them.
"This cannot continue," Vasrik said at last, his voice rough with exhaustion. "We are unraveling, Inquisitor."
Veylan did not reply imdiately.
He let his gaze sweep across the room, taking in the faces of his officers—these n and won who had stood unshaken against armies, against beasts of the abyss, against powers that should have crushed them. And yet now, they trembled.
He exhaled slowly.
"Tell , Vasrik," he said, his voice deceptively calm. "Who do you trust?"
Vasrik hesitated, then frowned. "What?"
Veylan tilted his head slightly. "Who do you trust? If you had to place your life in another's hands right now, who would it be?"
Silence.
The kind of silence that suffocated.
Vasrik's mouth opened, then closed. His fingers flexed against the hilt of his sword.
"I…"
He could not answer.
Veylan let that silence stretch. Let them all feel the weight of it.
Then, softly, he spoke.
"There is no war more dangerous than one fought in the mind." His voice was quiet, asured, but it carried through the chamber like the edge of a blade. "Not knowing your enemy is a death sentence. Not trusting your allies is worse."
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He stepped forward. "And right now, we have neither."
Kethrin clenched his jaw. "Then what would you have us do?"
Veylan turned away, looking toward the massive banners that lined the chamber—once symbols of their victories, now reminders of how far they had fallen.
What would he have them do?
The answer was simple.
A lesser man would try to soothe them. Rebuild their trust. Restore their unity.
But Veylan was not a lesser man.
Fear had already taken hold of them. And fear was a weapon.
He let out a slow breath, his decision forming with absolute clarity.
"We will let it fester," he murmured.
Vasrik stiffened. "What?"
Veylan turned back to them, his expression unreadable. "We do not fight the enemy by reassuring our n. We do not fight them by convincing ourselves that everything is fine. That is what they expect us to do."
He stepped forward, his voice sharpening.
"So we do the opposite."
Malakar narrowed his eye. "You an—"
"Yes." Veylan's lips curled into sothing that was not quite a smile.
"We will let the fear spread."
Gasps rippled through the chamber.
Kethrin looked appalled. "That is madness! You would let our own n tear each other apart?"
"No." Veylan's gaze darkened. "I would let the infiltrators believe they've already won."
Understanding dawned, slow and cold.
Vasrik swallowed. "You an to—"
"I an to force them into the open." Veylan's voice was sharp now, final. "Right now, they hide because they still fear exposure. If they think we have already turned on each other, if they believe the Order is already collapsing, they will make mistakes."
The plan was brutal. rciless.
It was also necessary.
"They want us to destroy ourselves," Veylan continued, his voice unwavering. "So we let them believe we have."
The chamber was silent once more. But this ti, it was not hesitation that filled the air.
It was understanding.
Slowly, Malakar let out a breath. "A bold move."
"A necessary one," Veylan corrected.
And so, he decided to let the fear fester.
____
The fabricated list of suspected traitors was disseminated through carefully manipulated channels. No na on it was real. Every na, every rank, every accusation was nothing more than an illusion, designed to serve a singular purpose—to force the true infiltrators to act. To make them feel the noose tightening around their throats, to make them panic.
And panic, they did.
The result was chaos.
Tensions that had been simring beneath the surface for weeks finally erupted like a dam breaking under pressure. The fortress, once an impenetrable bastion of discipline, beca a seething pit of distrust and desperation.
Veylan stood atop the balcony of the war chamber, gazing down at the Order's central courtyard. The training grounds, where recruits once honed their skills in synchronized drills, had beco sothing else entirely—a battlefield of uncertainty. The Order, once the embodint of discipline, had turned upon itself.
Shouts rang through the air, accusations cutting sharper than steel. "I saw him near the restricted archives!" "She's been acting strange since last week!" "Why did he leave his post without explanation?" "He was missing the night of the sabotage!"
Paranoia had taken hold like an unchecked wildfire, spreading through the ranks, consuming whatever fragile trust had remained.
So refused to sleep, standing guard at their own quarters with weapons drawn, terrified that their own comrades would slit their throats in the dead of night. Others sought safety in numbers, forming secretive factions within the Order, whispering about purging potential traitors before they themselves could be accused.
Then ca the first crack in the foundation.
A lieutenant, a man by the na of Jasker, was found dead in his quarters, his own dagger buried deep in his gut. His n swore it was a suicide, that he had broken under the weight of the accusations.
But Veylan knew better.
There had been no sign of a struggle, no overturned furniture, no defensive wounds on his body. It was clean. Too clean.
Soone had silenced him.
And then, as if the floodgates had been opened, the killings began.
Friends turned on each other. Officers who had served together for years suddenly refused to share information. So took matters into their own hands, hunting down colleagues they believed to be compromised. Several lieutenants attempted to flee, only to be cut down by their own n before they could even leave the compound.
By the second night, the stronghold had transford into sothing unrecognizable.
Six separate skirmishes had broken out within the fortress walls—clashes between squads who had once fought side by side. Blades clashed, n shouted accusations before cutting each other down. The halls of the Order were no longer silent, filled instead with the sound of steel against steel, the cries of the wounded, the frantic pleas of those who still clung to the belief that this was all a mistake.
Veylan stood at the edge of the chaos, unmoving.
To his left, a group of soldiers had cornered one of their own, a young recruit barely past his first year of service. His hands were raised in surrender, his face pale with terror. "Please," he stamred, "I swear, I don't know anything—"
A veteran officer silenced him with a strike to the jaw, sending him sprawling into the dirt. "That's what they all say," the officer sneered. "Until they gut you in your sleep."
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