Over the next month, the United Kingdoms quietly began executing the plans discussed at the Solmere council.
No declarations were made.
No banners raised.
No public announcements.
The war had simply… changed.
What had once been fought with armies and steel was now being fought in whispers and shadows.
And the first battlefield was information.
Agents began to be identified.
At first, the discoveries came slowly.
A suspicious merchant.
A traveler asking too many questions.
A caravan guard who seemed more interested in maps than cargo.
A courier who took slightly different routes each week.
Patterns began to emerge.
Once a few pieces were found, the rest started falling into place.
Some spies were handled quietly.
Accidents happened.
A man slipped from a rooftop while drunk.
A wagon overturned on a narrow mountain road.
A tavern brawl escalated beyond what anyone expected.
Unfortunate.
But not suspicious enough to investigate too deeply.
In other cases, however, the spies were far more useful alive.
Once identified, they were simply… watched.
Their meetings recorded.
Their contacts tracked.
Their messages quietly intercepted.
Sometimes the spies didn't even realize they had been discovered.
They continued their work, believing themselves invisible.
Meanwhile, everything they did was carefully documented.
What surprised the council the most was how many human spies were willing to turn.
Many of the Empire's informants had never been particularly loyal to begin with.
They had simply worked for whoever paid the most.
But the Main Street Massacre of Alexandria had shaken even them.
Executing over a thousand soldiers—and killing even more civilians during the riots that followed—had planted seeds of doubt.
Some informants quietly approached United Kingdom agents.
Others were confronted and offered a choice.
Many chose cooperation.
Not because they loved the United Kingdoms.
But because they no longer trusted the Empire.
Of course, not all agents were willing to turn.
Some were deeply loyal to the Empire.
Some were simply cruel.
And those closest to General Korvin's network were often the worst of them.
But the deeper the United Kingdom agents dug into the Empire's intelligence structure, the more they discovered something interesting.
The lower ranks were far less ideological.
Most of them were simply doing a job.
And when given the chance to survive instead of dying for an Empire that might execute them anyway…
Many reconsidered their loyalties.
Occasionally, however, problems emerged.
Some informants were discovered to be compromised.
Normally such agents would be extracted immediately.
But Jax made a different decision.
"Kill them," he said calmly during one council meeting.
The room had fallen silent.
King Althandor studied him carefully.
"You're certain?"
Jax nodded.
"They're already burned."
"If the Empire realizes they were spies, they'll know exactly how much information we've gathered."
"And if they disappear?" Althandor asked.
Jax shrugged slightly.
"They'll assume we are on to them. And that is worse."
The first test of that strategy came only days later.
Two agents secretly working for the United Kingdoms had been identified by the Empire as possible double agents.
The Empire had begun making plans to capture them.
Not quietly.
But violently.
Two other agents—still trusted by the Empire—were ordered to help lure the suspects into a trap.
The Empire intended to interrogate them.
Extract everything they knew.
Then execute them publicly.
But when the Empire's retrieval team finally arrived at the rendezvous point…
They found something very different.
All four agents were dead.
The bodies had been left where they could easily be discovered.
The scene was brutal.
Faces mutilated beyond recognition.
Evidence of torture.
Blood everywhere.
It looked like an interrogation had already taken place.
And it had not ended well.
The Empire investigators quickly came to a disturbing conclusion.
If the two suspected double agents had truly been working for the United Kingdoms…
Then why were they tortured alongside the other two?
Why kill everyone?
Why not extract the useful ones?
The evidence made no sense.
Had their reports been wrong?
Had they misidentified the double agents?
Or worse—
Had the information that exposed them been false from the beginning?
Everyone suddenly became a suspect.
For the agents of the United Kingdoms, however, the truth was far more complicated.
The two double agents had not been killed.
They had been extracted quietly hours earlier.
The other two—loyal to the Empire—had been executed.
Jax hated torture.
The idea alone disgusted him.
But he also understood something important.
If the illusion was going to work…
It had to be convincing.
The bodies needed to tell a believable story.
A story the Empire would accept.
So the scene was staged carefully.
Magic and makeup altered the corpses.
Transformation spells distorted faces and bone structure until identification became impossible.
Clothing and possessions were swapped.
Evidence planted.
When the Empire finally arrived, they saw exactly what they expected to see.
Chaos.
Confusion.
And betrayal.
Meanwhile, the two extracted agents were relocated quietly.
New identities.
New assignments.
Some were even sent back into the Empire under entirely different appearances.
Different names.
Different roles.
Different loyalties.
The result was exactly what Jax had hoped for.
Paranoia.
Inside Korvin's intelligence network, questions began spreading like wildfire.
Who had betrayed them?
Had the spies been exposed?
Or had the Empire itself been infiltrated?
Who could be trusted?
What information could be trusted?
Suddenly, every agent began wondering if their neighbors might be the traitor.
And when paranoia spreads inside an intelligence network…
That network begins to collapse under its own weight.
Rather than risk further losses, the Empire began reallocating many of their operatives to other regions of the continent.
Alexandria became quieter.
But the United Kingdoms did not stop watching.
Unlike the Empire, they valued their people.
Whenever possible, informants were preserved rather than sacrificed.
Because in the long war that was beginning to unfold…
Information was far more valuable than vengeance.
And the shadow war had only just begun.