Kaelen pushed his chair back. He stretched. He walked to the window. Outside, the city was waking up—cars, people, the soft commerce of peace.
Then he closed the curtains.
Kaelen's hand hovered over the mouse. He could feel the weight of the seventy-two hours—the burnt fields, the drowned elephants, the ghost general. He could also feel the real world pressing in: dawn light through the blinds, the hum of a forgotten refrigerator, the distant bark of a dog.
Pixels rearranged themselves into the visage of an ancient war chamber. Bamboo scrolls unspooled across the monitor, their ink characters dripping like fresh blood. A voice, dry as sun-scorched earth, whispered from his headphones:
He was given a ruined fortress on a river delta. Thirty peasants. A single mangonel. His enemy: a Mongol warlord named Genku, who had once been his ally in the main campaign. The objective was not to kill Genku. It was to humiliate him.
He double-clicked the icon.
