When truth could be explained in a hundred different ways, deduction became little more than a contest of whose lie sounded the most convincing.
The Narkals being a threat was an indisputable truth. The problem was not proving it. The problem was making enough people believe it to matter.
And in this case, the audience happened to be all of humanity.
Fortunately, Lucia considered herself a rather skilled liar.
*
"Before we discuss execution," Lucia said, "we need to agree on what we are actually fighting."
Her wine remained untouched. She had no use for it at the moment. Her posture had straightened, and after a brief silence, she rose from her seat, taking the cup with her. She began to pace at a measured, unhurried rhythm, as if the room itself had become a board and she was moving pieces across it in her mind.
"The Narkals are not our greatest obstacle," she said. "Humanity's indifference is."
Cornelia's eyes stayed on her. Ashen said nothing, leaving Lucia the center of the room without contest.
"Two centuries at this wall, Commander. You have seen the same reports, the same corpses, the same border incidents repeated until they are no longer incidents at all." Lucia's voice stayed calm, almost detached. "And yet the moment those facts reach a Sin Lord's desk, they become abstract again… A distant problem... A blood tax paid somewhere at the edge of the world, then forgotten until the next tally arrives."
She turned the glass slowly between her fingers.
"That distance is our enemy."
Cornelia's expression did not change, though her attention sharpened.
"Tell me something I have not already considered for two hundred years," she said.
"I intend to." Lucia continued pacing, her gaze low for a moment before lifting again. "You understand the problem. What may not be as clear is why reason alone keeps failing."
Cornelia waited.
"The Sin Lords are rational," Lucia said. "That is exactly why they do not move. Rational people do not act when the threat feels remote. They move when denial becomes inconvenient, and only when they are forced to will they embark on the distasteful chore of revising their beliefs. What we need is a situation that revises itself inside their heads."
Ashen leaned forward slightly. He already had a sense of where this was going. Cornelia had not reached it yet.
"You are saying we do not convince them," Cornelia said slowly.
"I am saying we create the conditions that force them to convince themselves."
Lucia stopped pacing near the table, then resumed with the same measured pace. Her tone remained matter-of-fact, as though she were solving an unpleasant but simple equation.
"Fear is reliable. So is pride, and neither requires our fingerprints."
She glanced once at the cup in her hand, then went on.
"First, destabilization. Commander Cornelia and I will widen the fractures already forming along every border between human and Narkal territory. We do not need fabricated atrocities. The Narkals already provide enough truth on that front."
Her eyes moved from Cornelia to Ashen and back again, but her attention seemed inward, as though she were describing pieces locking into place one by one.
"The incidents that disappear into reports and forgotten casualty counts will be brought into the light. Border attacks that are usually buried under routine language will be documented where they cannot be ignored. Military movements that would normally remain sealed inside fortress records will be pushed into the hands of people who cannot afford to look away. The evidence already exists. Humanity has simply grown accustomed to filtering it out."
She rotated the cup in her hand absent-mindedly.
"The Narkals do not need to become more dangerous. Humanity only needs to stop pretending it has not noticed what is already standing at its doorstep."
Cornelia's gaze narrowed slightly, but she did not interrupt.
"The frontier has already been worsening for three seasons," Lucia said. "That is not something we manufacture. We simply make certain it can no longer be dismissed."
Lucia continued pacing.
"The second phase is narrative. Once fear begins to spread, it does the work for us. People do not need a complete understanding of strategy, geopolitics, or long-term attrition. They only need to feel threatened. A frightened population turns to authority for answers, and a frightened authority cannot afford to look idle."
Ashen's voice broke the silence. "They will probably see through it."
"So what?" Lucia answered without hesitation. "They will see exactly what is true."
She held the cup near her chest, still not drinking.
"Every incident we expose will be real. Every pattern we highlight will be genuine. The manipulation is not in the facts. It is in the timing, the sequence, and the framing. 'If we wait, they will eventually destroy us' is not propaganda, Commander. It is a truth humanity has been fortunate enough to keep at a distance."
A brief silence followed.
Cornelia studied her for a long moment, then said, "The Sin Lords will understand what is happening. How will they cooperate if they knew the ruse?"
"Some of them will," Lucia said. "Maybe all of them will. That is acceptable. Once the public is afraid and the evidence can no longer be denied, they will not be able to remain visibly passive. Pride will not allow it."
She looked at them with a faint smile, "…Self-preservation will not allow it."
She finally lifted the wine to her lips and took the smallest of sips; it was more of an unconscious gesture than indulgence.
"Powerful people survive by projecting control," she said. "They can survive cruelty. They can survive incompetence. What they cannot survive is looking weak in front of those beneath them. Once that fear takes root, action becomes inevitable."
Ashen's reply came quietly. "The curse of the strong. They cannot be seen flinching."
Lucia's eyes shifted to him for a moment. "Exactly."
Then she looked back to Cornelia.
"But there is one final step," she said. "The one that gives the rest of it teeth."
She resumed pacing, slower now, as if the thought had become more precise in the telling.
"Typically, we relocate refugees into the Wrath domain when villages are burnt, and towns are assaulted…"
"Stop doing that." Her voice went cold. "That would be too orderly. Too easy to digest. Too easy to forget once the first wave of panic passes."
Her fingers tightened faintly around the glass.
"Send the most ruined of them first. The ones who survived by the skin of their teeth, by luck, by little more than breath and stubbornness. The ones who saw what happened and lived long enough to carry it with them. We place them where the inner domains cannot avoid them."
Cornelia's gaze remained fixed on her.
"Let the commoners see them. Let them hear the stories directly from the mouths of people who lived through them. Let them describe what they saw. How their friends died beside them. How their families were torn apart. How their neighbors were butchered while they ran."
Lucia's voice stayed calm, but the room felt tighter for it.
"Let them bring the smell of smoke and blood into clean streets. Let them speak until the people who have never once had to flee for their lives begin to understand what it means to lose everything in a single night."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Fear is strongest when it becomes personal. Reports and rumors could only bring us so far. We need a voice to tell the tale, a face to relate to the tragedy. And a constant memory that refuses to leave. Once the refugees begin to speak, the question will no longer be whether the threat is real."
She finally let a smirk mar her stoic face.
"The question will be whether it is already on its way to them."
"...."
Lucia continued before the silence could settle.
"And when that question takes root in the minds of the common people, they will ask the only thing that matters…"
"What guarantee do I have that this madness will not reach me next?"
Ashen did not speak, but even he could feel the precision of it now.
'She's using fear as a weapon, guiding its path, moving it from the border to the fortress, from the fortress to the inner domains, and finally into the hands of people who had spent their lives in ignorance…'
Cornelia exhaled slowly through her nose.
"Carefully chosen refugees… visible incidents…. public pressure… Sin Lords cornered by their own pride… hmm…"
"Correct," Lucia said. "The moment they feel the danger at their backs, they will move on their own. By then, we won't need to do any convincing. They will dance on their own for us."
Cornelia's eyes remained fixed on her, but her thoughts seemed elsewhere entirely. Lucia noticed. She let the silence stretch, giving the Sin Lord time to untangle whatever storm was moving behind her gaze.
The more observant Ashen noticed the eerie familiarity in her expression. It was the look of someone recognizing a kindred soul. And somehow, he felt the intent behind that gaze was not directed at Lucia herself.
His hunch was true.
The woman's thoughts weren't on the con artist before her.
Cornelia had spent two centuries at the wall. She had spoken to every type of person humanity produced; cowards, zealots, opportunists, patriots, fools, and the rare few who understood the stakes but still chose comfort over duty. She had learned long ago not to expect much from conversations. People disappointed her less when she expected less from them.
And yet.
There was a man across from her now who had reached the same conclusions she had, though by an entirely different route. He had not drifted toward them. He had forced his way there, dragged by his own fury and refusal to yield, and then had the audacity to speak to her as if the truth were an accusation against the world itself.
That kind of person was rare.
She had stopped looking for one.
She had not expected to find it here, in a room she had entered out of mild obligation and lingering gratitude, only to discover that the shape of her own defiance had somehow been reflected back at her.
Defiance was what she valued most in herself. It was the one thing she would not surrender, even when everything else around it began to crack.
To see it mirrored so clearly in someone this young was strange enough to leave her quiet for a moment.
She had spent two centuries alone in this.
Apparently, even solitude had limits.
"Commander."
Cornelia blinked and looked up. Ashen was watching her.
"Were you listening?"
"Of course," she said, which was only half a lie.
Lucia's voice cut back in smoothly. "I was asking whether you have a reliable contact in the inner domains."
Cornelia straightened. The old shape of her composure returned in one motion.
"I have several," she said. "All of them deeply unhappy people, which I assume is exactly what you need."
"Perfect," Lucia said with a small nod of satisfaction.
Cornelia glanced toward the window for a moment, then back to the table.
"Fine," she said. "Let's begin."