The Sanction Letter

The letter came folded once.

No seal. No ribbon. Just a blackened corner, singed by accident or by design.

Raive found it wedged into a ration crate — not delivered, not marked. Hidden like a contraband blade.

He handed it to Darin with two fingers, as if it might bleed ink.

Darin opened it in silence.

There were no accusations, only clarifications.

No names, only titles.

No order, but a notice of expectation.

To the uncommissioned leadership present at Trenchline Black,

Be advised: new reports suggest a concentration of irregular troop formations beyond standard trench distribution. While no direct insubordination is presently recorded, Command requests voluntary clarification on the following points:

Unit designation (if known)Ration approval seal (source origin)Verification of field promotions (if enacted)Mudline banners (current and intended)

Failure to reply within three dusk cycles will result in provisional withholding of supplies for clarity purposes. This is not a punitive action.

This is simply for the record.

Raive read it again.

"They're not asking," he muttered. "They're threatening without threatening."

Jorah kicked a boot at the edge of the firepit.

"They want us to respond. Then they can say we claimed authority we weren't granted."

Darin folded the paper once, slow and flat, and slid it beneath a kettle stone.

"They want me to blink."

That night, at the fire, he called the trench's old core.

Raive, Jorah, Mael, the two brothers from ditch-post five, the cook with the broken hand, even the sullen lad who hadn't spoken since his sister's trench collapsed last frost.

Darin didn't give a speech.

He passed around the letter.

He let them read it for themselves.

When it came back around, he asked one question:

"Did we claim a banner?"

They shook their heads.

"Did we take men who were told to leave?"

No one spoke.

"Did we eat more than we dug for?"

They shook their heads again.

Darin leaned forward.

"Then we keep digging. And we don't write back."

The silence that followed was heavy—but not empty.

It was weight-bearing.

Like a wall of stone being raised around something too precious to shout about.

The next day, the rations arrived late.

No letter. No stamp. Just less of everything.

A smaller sack. Shorter cuts of bread. Harder roots.

Jorah measured it by hand.

"They've shaved us by eight portions."

Raive scoffed. "That's not accidental."

"It's not meant to starve us," Darin said. "It's meant to bend us."

Raive looked at the food again.

"And what if we don't bend?"

Darin looked toward the ridge.

"Then they'll say we stole it. Or someone else will."

That night, the cook split stew by name, not rank.

Every man, new or old, got half a bowl and a boiled root.

No one complained.

No one left.

One of the new arrivals sang quietly — a soldier's prayer from the western hills.

Not a hymn. Just a tune about mud, frost, and holding fast.

Darin didn't stop him.

He hummed the last line along with him.

By morning, another letter arrived.

This one not hidden.

It was pinned—deliberately—to the haft of the trench pike nearest Darin's quarters.

Still no seal.

Just five words, in crisp court-script:

This is not defiance yet.

And beneath it, the faint sigil of the Barony of Lansehall.

DuVaul's house.

Raive took it down with a knife.

"What's your move?"

Darin didn't speak.

He turned, walked toward the edge of the trench, and picked up a shovel.

Raive followed.

"You're not really going to—"

But Darin was already digging.

"Command wants ink," he said. "We'll give them stone."

Jorah caught on first.

He began stacking soil in a line parallel to the trench wall—too wide for a weapon platform, too narrow for a storage pile.

Raive squinted.

"You building something?"

Darin didn't answer.

He just kept shoveling.

And by dusk, the new men were helping, too.

Not because they were told.

Because they saw where the line was.

And that Darin was standing on it.

That night, a third letter came.

Not a threat.

Just an inventory form.

No request for clarification.

No demand for reply.

Just empty boxes where "banner name," "officer rank," and "trench codex compliance" should have gone.

Blank.

Darin filled none of them.

He passed it to Jorah.

And Jorah used the back to sketch a map of the southern ridge expansion.

Then he tucked it into the tool rack and didn't look back.

Somewhere north of them, in the dry towers of court logistics, a clerk with too little sleep and too much pressure wrote in the margin of a different scroll:

Trench Black: Noncompliant. Nonviolent. Structurally stable. Possible symbol risk.

And underlined it three times.

But no one sent a fourth letter.

Because silence speaks, too.