The square near the dryad quarter buzzed with restless energy. Banners rippled—gaggles of nadic women in factory worker uniforms glared at Shale beneath Glaive standards, spearpoints entwined with ivy, while merchants stood beneath their guild colors, and the worn cloaks of commonfolk, gathered from every corner of Matiran, filled out the rest of the crowd. Nadics of every kind—dryads, psyads, maenads—stood shoulder to shoulder with humans, faces hard from famine and fear. Curiosity, skepticism, and anger swirled through the crowd like a storm about to break.

  Shale stepped toward the makeshift podium—little more than a battered crate set before a crumbling fountain. His heart thudded. Sweat pricked beneath his collar.

  Before he could open his mouth, a voice rang out.

  “I’d sooner trust a snake in my bed than a soldier on a podium.”

  A dryad woman pushed her way to the front, stepping onto a crate beside Shale. she had scarred bark tracing up her arms, but her presence was commanding. Her voice carried sharp as a blade.

  The crowd stirred, laughter and jeers rippling through the square.

  Shale, unsure how to respond to the upstart, glanced toward her, his voice cracking over the tension. "What’s your name?"

  She smirked, arms crossed. "Faedra Blackvine. You might not know me, soldier, but I, sure as all the gods, know you." She turned to the crowd, voice rising. “You know this one—marched under the eagle banner, enforcing the emperor’s peace.”

  Shale’s jaw clenched. “You think we marched for ourselves?”

  Faedra didn’t miss a beat. “You marched for the emperor. We kept the empire running. While you were off fighting in Solokhia, we ran the furnaces, harvested the grain, held the world together. And when you came home?”

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  Her gaze swept the crowd. “We weren't criminals. We weren't rebels. We were workers—women who kept the empire's heart beating while the soldiers marched. And your Black Cloaks dragged us from our jobs so the soldiers could work again. Same soldiers that beat us in the streets.”

  The crowd rumbled. A few soldiers near the edges scowled, others folded their arms, waiting.

  Shale snapped back, heat rising in his chest. “We froze in trenches while nobles sat fat. We died for scraps of land so you could keep your precious fields. And we came home to find nothing left.”

  Faedra’s smile twisted bitter. “And you blamed us for it. We built what you bled for, and they discarded us the same. But your emperor made sure we were thrown out first.”

  “I lost men,” Shale growled, voice rough, his throat tightening. His eyes burned, holding back tears as the weight of their names pressed down on him. “Watched them starve and hang.”

  Faedra stepped closer, her voice dropping. “I’ve buried sisters beaten to death in the streets, dragged from factories by Black Cloaks. I’ve seen psyad mageia scorch the flesh off my friends’ bones.”

  The crowd quieted. Some nodded grimly, others shifted, the air thickening.

  Shale hesitated, his anger faltering beneath the weight of Hawthorn’s ghost, the burn scars on his arms, earned on the Solokhian front. He rolled up his sleeve, baring the seared bark. “They burned us too. Left us to rot once the fighting was done.”

  Faedra unfastened her tunic, revealing burnt bark-scars across her chest. “We carry the same marks.”

  Their eyes locked.

  Shale looked at Faedra, his voice raw, almost lost beneath the tightness in his throat. "What choice did we have? We bled for the emperor’s glory!"

  Faedra met his gaze, steady, unflinching. She raised her fists high. "And now we bleed to break his chains!"

  The square erupted. Chants rang out: “Down with the eagle!” Fists and banners lifted, the crowd surging together, voices blending into one defiant roar.

  Shale stood beside Faedra, breathless, realizing he’d become more than a soldier.

  The spark had caught flame.

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