Chapter 120: Silent Wood
The Veilwood did not want visitors.
This was not metaphorical. The forest that covered Lythari’s territory — a dense, ancient woodland stretching across the kingdom’s central-western region — actively discouraged entry. The trees grew close, their canopies interlocking to block sunlight. The undergrowth was thick, tangled, arranged in patterns that channeled travellers in circles. The paths that existed were narrow, poorly marked, and had a tendency to move — a Shadow domain effect that meant a trail you’d walked yesterday might not be in the same place today.
Thresh navigated. Of course Thresh navigated — this was his uncle’s territory, and navigating the Veilwood was, presumably, somewhere between Module Seven and Module Nine of whatever intelligence curriculum the Myrvalis family inflicted on its children.
"The Veilwood is the Crucible’s intelligence heartland," Thresh said, leading Ryn along a path that looked identical to the three paths they’d already rejected. "Lythari joined the Anvil voluntarily — Year 120 AF. He was a tiny god. Shadow and Silence domains. Fewer than three thousand believers. His civilization was a network of hidden camps — assassins, spies, information brokers. He had no military, no agriculture, no infrastructure. What he had was intelligence — the ability to gather, analyze, and weaponize information."
"Why did the Sovereign want him?"
"Because a god commanding vast powers and a million believers who doesn’t know what his enemies are doing is a god who loses wars. Lythari provided the Sovereign’s missing capability — covert operations. Infiltration. Assassination. The things that armies can’t do and intelligence agencies can." Thresh paused at a fork in the path, sniffed the air — actually sniffed, his Kobold nose twitching with the particular sensitivity of a species that processed scent information the way Humans processed visual data — and turned left. "In exchange, the Sovereign gave Lythari everything he’d never had: territory, resources, protection, and a position within the Anvil that made his three thousand believers part of a million-strong civilization."
"Good trade."
"The best trade Lythari ever made. And he knows it, which is why Shroudist priests are the most loyal sub-religion in the Anvil. They serve because serving the Sovereign gave them relevance. Before the Anvil, they were parasites — feeding on other civilizations’ information. After the Anvil, they’re the immune system."
***
Veilwatch — the Veilwood’s primary settlement — was invisible until you were in it.
Not hidden by physical camouflage — hidden by the Shadow domain itself. Lythari’s divine power extended a perceptual field over the settlement that made it uninteresting. Your eyes slid past it. Your attention deflected. The buildings were there — you could touch them, walk into them, stub your toe on their doorframes — but your conscious awareness treated them as background, the way you treated the individual leaves on a tree or the individual grains in a sand dune.
"Veil Step’s architectural application," Thresh said, apparently unaffected. "The same principle that makes Veil Step assassins invisible makes Veilwatch unnoticeable. Lythari’s domain creates a perceptual blind spot. If you don’t know the settlement exists, you can walk through it without registering its presence."
"That’s terrifying."
"That’s the point. And that’s not even the terrifying part. The terrifying part is the Umbraleth."
Ryn waited.
"Lythari’s divine creature," Thresh said, his voice dropping — not for secrecy but out of what seemed like genuine respect. "It doesn’t have a visible form. Or rather, its form is invisibility — it exists in the space between perception and awareness. The Umbraleth is the reason the Veilwood’s perceptual field extends beyond what Lythari’s domain alone can cover. The creature amplifies the blind spot. Every shadow in this forest is partially the Umbraleth’s body. Every moment of inattention you feel? The creature’s influence."
Ryn looked at the shadows between the ironwood trees. The shadows looked back. Or didn’t. He couldn’t tell, and that, he realized, was the point.
The settlement materialized — not suddenly but gradually, like a painting coming into focus. Ryn felt the moment his awareness locked on: a physical sensation, a click in perception, as if his brain had been looking at the wrong channel and someone had tuned it. Suddenly there were buildings. Wooden structures, low, dark-toned, built from the Veilwood’s native ironwood and covered with bark shingles that blended with the surrounding trees. No windows — or rather, windows that appeared opaque from outside and transparent from inside, a material that Ryn strongly suspected was a Shadow domain creation.
The population was small — maybe a thousand permanent residents. They were mixed race, but every one of them moved with the particular quality that Ryn had learned to recognize: the quietness. Not just low volume — actual, trained silence. The way they walked (heel-to-toe, minimal ground contact, zero unnecessary motion). The way they stood (still, balanced, ready). The way they watched him (everyone was watching him; he could feel it; none of them appeared to be watching him).
"Intelligence operatives," Thresh said. "All of them. Veilwatch is not a civilian settlement. It’s a training and operations base. The Ministry of Whispers maintains its central campus here, and every resident is either active intelligence, training intelligence, or retired intelligence."
"Retired intelligence operatives live here?"
"Where else would they live? They know too much to live anywhere else. And the Veilwood is the one place in the kingdom where nobody can find you unless you want to be found."
***
The training facility was underground.
Thresh obtained access through means that Ryn didn’t ask about, because asking about Thresh’s means produced answers that made Ryn feel like a civilian in a world that was significantly more complicated than civilians were supposed to know about.
The facility was a warren of tunnels, chambers, and exercise spaces carved into the bedrock beneath Veilwatch. The air smelled like damp stone and sweat and the particular metallic tang of weapons that had been used recently and wiped clean but not washed. The lighting was minimal — oil lamps at intersections, darkness between.
"Module Three training ground," Thresh said, leading him through a corridor. "Architectural vulnerability assessment. Students learn to read buildings — identify structural weaknesses, escape routes, guard blind spots, and optimal breach points. Every structure in the kingdom has been mapped and filed. The maps are classified at the highest level."
They passed a chamber where trainees — young, mixed-race, wearing the dark grey that seemed to be the Veilwood’s only color — practiced infiltration techniques on a mock-up of a building interior. The exercise was silent. No instructor calling directions. No trainees speaking. Communication was hand signals, body position, and the particular eye contact that Ryn was beginning to understand meant I see you, you see me, we are coordinated without having spoken.
In the corner of the chamber, something shimmered. Not light — the absence of light shifting, a patch of darkness that breathed. Ryn’s eyes slid past it three times before Thresh caught his arm and pointed directly at it.
"Watch the corner. Don’t blink."
Ryn watched. His mind wanted to look away — a physical urge, like the desire to close your eyes against bright light, except this was the desire to close your attention against something that existed in the peripheral space between seeing and ignoring. He held. For three seconds, four, five —
The shadow moved. Not dramatically — a subtle ripple, the way water moved when something vast passed beneath its surface. A shape that was less creature and more concept — the idea of darkness given weight and attention. Two points of pale grey appeared in the ripple. Not eyes. Awareness. The creature acknowledging that it had been seen.
Then it was gone. The corner was a corner again. Empty. Ordinary.
"Module Four," Thresh said quietly. "Trainees practice operating within the Umbraleth’s perceptual field. If you can hide from a creature that is perception’s blind spot, you can hide from anything."
"Module Five," Thresh said. "Infiltration and extraction. Basic course. Four months."
"What’s the advanced course?"
"Twelve months. You don’t survive it if you didn’t survive the basic."
"Survive is an interesting word choice."
"It’s an accurate word choice."
They descended further. The next chamber was different — not a training space but an archive. Rows of shelves, floor to ceiling, holding files. Paper files, in a kingdom that had printing presses and could have converted to a more efficient storage system decades ago. The files were paper because paper couldn’t be hacked, scryed, or magically duplicated. Paper was secure by virtue of being primitive.
"Operational files," Thresh said. "Current and historical. Every intelligence operation the Ministry of Whispers has conducted since Year 120. Every agent deployed. Every target surveilled. Every asset recruited."
"How many operations?"
"The current active operations board — the one my uncle reviews daily — has approximately six hundred entries. Operations inside the kingdom: two hundred. Operations in neutral territory: one hundred and fifty. Operations inside enemy territory: two hundred and fifty."
"Two hundred and fifty operations inside Demeterra’s territory?"
"Inside the Green Accord’s combined territory. Not just Demeterra. Gorvahn, Thalveris, Durnok, all of them. The Ministry has sleeper agents in every Accord territory. Long-term embeds — operatives who have been living under foreign identities for years, decades in some cases. Building relationships. Gathering intelligence. Waiting for activation."
Ryn stood in the archive and felt the weight of the kingdom’s unseen machinery — the invisible infrastructure that operated beneath the visible one, gathering, analyzing, weaponizing information in the service of a god who treated knowledge as a strategic resource.
The Veilwood. The Silent Wood. The place where the kingdom’s secrets lived and where the people who kept them were trained to be invisible, tireless, and — when necessary — lethal.
Every kingdom has shadows. The Sovereign’s kingdom has a god of shadows, a creature made of shadows, and a thousand operatives trained to move through them. And all of it serves willingly, because serving gave the shadow a purpose brighter than darkness.