Chapter 171: Spy’s Report
Agent Pale-Seven returned to Ashenveil on the fourteenth of Scorchend — three weeks after the Border Incident, two weeks after full mobilization, and exactly on schedule according to the extraction timeline that Vrenn Myrvalis had established when the agent had deployed south nine months ago.
Pale-Seven was a code designation. The agent’s real name would never appear in a Ministry document, because the agent was still alive and the Ministry’s information security protocols were built on the principle that living agents had names that could be tortured out of captured operatives. The Ministry didn’t protect identities out of courtesy — it protected them because every name that remained secret was a name that couldn’t be screamed under interrogation.
The debrief was conducted in the Ministry’s primary safe house — a residential building in Ashenveil’s Temple Quarter that appeared, from the outside, to be a boarding house for visiting priests. The interior contained three soundproofed interrogation rooms, a document analysis laboratory, and the particular atmosphere of a workplace where secrecy was not just practiced but architectural — the walls were double-layered to prevent sound transmission, the windows were positioned to prevent visual observation from adjacent buildings, and every piece of furniture was inspected daily for the enchanted listening devices that foreign intelligence services occasionally attempted to plant.
Vrenn conducted the debrief personally. He always debriefed Pale-Seven personally — the agent was his most productive source inside Demeterra’s territory, and the intelligence that Pale-Seven produced was too sensitive to be processed through normal analytical channels.
"Full picture," Vrenn said. "From the beginning."
"The Green Accord’s operational plan is called ’Verdant Storm,’" Pale-Seven reported. The agent’s voice was flat — the deliberately affectless tone of a person who had spent nine months pretending to be someone else and who had not yet fully re-occupied their real identity. "The plan has three phases."
***
Phase One: Breach
"The primary assault will target the Ashwall at Verdant Pass — Concentration Alpha’s 120,000 troops will advance on a fifteen-kilometer front centered on the Pass, which is the terrain corridor that allows the largest force to deploy simultaneously. The assault will be preceded by a forty-eight-hour softening operation: Demeterra’s Earth domain will target the wall’s foundation at three pre-identified points — structural assessments conducted by Accord agents posing as traders over the past five years identified the wall’s three weakest foundation sections. The earth-shaping will create breaches approximately forty meters wide at each point."
"How does she identify the weak points from distance?"
"She doesn’t need distance. She placed agents inside the kingdom who physically touched the wall’s foundation during maintenance operations. The Earth domain works through contact memory — once Demeterra’s domain has been in contact with stone, she can manipulate that stone from any distance. The agents touched the wall. The wall remembers their touch. The touch is Demeterra’s anchor."
The room was silent. The intelligence was devastating — not because it revealed a new capability but because it revealed that the capability’s deployment had been prepared for years. The agents who had touched the wall’s foundation were already inside the kingdom, already in custody, already interrogated. But the damage was done. The contact memory was established. The wall’s vulnerability was permanent.
"Phase Two: Penetration," Pale-Seven continued.
"Once the breaches are established, the assault force divides. Durnok’s 50,000 Crushist heavy cavalry and siege troops exploit the primary breach at Verdant Pass — a column assault through the forty-meter gap, heavy cavalry leading, followed by siege engineers who will widen the breach for sustained infantry transit. Simultaneously, Gorvahn’s 40,000 Mireist swamp troops will create a secondary penetration at the Marshlands Gate — not a breach but a *bypass*. Gorvahn’s Swamp domain will convert the terrain east of the Ashwall into marshland, creating an impassable zone that the kingdom’s forces cannot traverse but that Mireist Frogman infantry can. The Marshlands Gate assault is not designed to break through the wall — it’s designed to flow around it."
"And Phase Three?"
"Exploitation. Once the first two phases establish breaches or bypasses, Demeterra’s main force — 130,000 Rootist infantry — advances through the gaps and into the kingdom’s interior. The objective is not Ashenveil — the capital is too far north for an immediate assault. The objective is the Southmark — the kingdom’s southern province. If the Accord captures the Southmark, they control the territory between the Ashwall and the Ironfields. The kingdom loses its southern agricultural output, its southern fortification infrastructure, and the strategic depth that allows the military to organize a counter-offensive."
"Timeline?"
"Phase One: forty-eight hours. Phase Two: seventy-two hours after Phase One completion. Phase Three: begins immediately upon Phase Two’s success. The entire operation is designed to be completed within ten days — a blitzkrieg-style offensive that captures the Southmark before the kingdom can fully mobilize its militia reserves."
"Ten days," Vrenn repeated.
"Demeterra knows that her sustainability advantage only matters if the war is long. But she also knows that a short war — a decisive breakthrough that captures critical territory before the defender can react — ends the war before sustainability matters. Verdant Storm is designed to be short. If the Ashwall holds, the war becomes long, and the Accord’s advantage shifts to sustainability. If the Ashwall falls, the war is over in ten days."
***
"What about the northern front?"
Pale-Seven’s expression shifted — the subtle contraction of facial muscles that intelligence operatives displayed when the information they possessed was incomplete and they knew it.
"I have limited intelligence on the northern element. What I know: Demeterra recruited a northern ally — a god called Morglith — for the Verdant Storm operation approximately two years ago. The recruitment was an activation of a pre-existing relationship; Morglith has been part of Demeterra’s strategic network for decades, but the specifics of their history are beyond my access. Powers: stone-shaping and decay. Strength: lesser god, estimated comparable to one of Demeterra’s weaker vassals. The arrangement was transactional — Demeterra offered Morglith territorial guarantee in exchange for a diversionary probe on the kingdom’s northern border during Verdant Storm. The probe is designed to force the kingdom to split its forces — northern reinforcement drawn from the southern defensive line, weakening the Ashwall garrison."
"Is Morglith a formal Accord member?"
"No. Morglith is an independent operator taking payment for services. The relationship is transactional, not ideological. If the payment stops — or if the cost exceeds the payment — Morglith withdraws."
"What’s the payment?"
"Territory. Demeterra promised Morglith a chunk of the Frostmarch’s eastern sector after the war — land that Demeterra doesn’t own and can only deliver if she wins. Morglith is gambling on a Demeterra victory."
Vrenn processed this. The northern probe was, as suspected, coordinated — but loosely. Morglith was a mercenary, not an ally, and mercenaries’ loyalty extended exactly as far as their payment. If the northern containment made Morglith’s operation costly, Morglith would withdraw regardless of Demeterra’s promises.
"Sylvaen’s forces?"
"Deployed as the Pale Coast naval siege element — 25,000 Tidalist naval and aquatic assault forces positioned to blockade Tidewatch and deny the kingdom use of its western port. Sylvaen will not engage inland. Sylvaen’s role is maritime denial — preventing reinforcement and supply through the coastal route."
"Kreth?"
"Kreth’s 5,000 Gleanists are deployed behind the main force as scavenger and sabotage units. Their primary mission is logistics disruption — targeting the kingdom’s supply lines if the Accord achieves a breach. Kreth himself is nervous. My assessment: Kreth has been approached by someone offering better terms. He didn’t say this directly, but his deployment pattern — keeping his forces behind the main line, maintaining independent communication with his territory — suggests contingency planning. He’s ready to defect."
"SERPENT GARDEN is working," Vrenn said, not as a question.
"Your asset reached Kreth three months ago. Kreth is listening. He hasn’t committed. He won’t commit until the war’s outcome becomes clear. But the channel is open."
The debrief continued for six more hours. Every detail of the Accord’s deployment, logistics, command structure, divine coordination mechanisms, and internal tensions was extracted, documented, and categorized. By the end, the Ministry had the most complete intelligence picture of an enemy’s war plan that had ever been compiled in the kingdom’s history.
The picture was clear. The plan was sophisticated. And the kingdom had approximately twenty-eight days before Phase One — the earth-shaping attack on the Ashwall’s foundation — would begin.
Twenty-eight days to prepare for the war that would determine whether 1.4 million people’s kingdom would survive or become a Chapter in someone else’s history.