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He begins as a peasant. A name no one bothers to learn. When war calls, he joins—not for glory, not for honor, but because refusal is a rope around the neck.

In the mud and fear, among the screams of men whose blood matters more than his, he survives.

Not by strength. But by perception. Structure. Obedience that becomes command. Calm that turns to instinct.

He rises. Slowly. Visibly. From footsoldier, to file leader, to sergeant. He drills when others drink. He watches when others fight. He speaks when silence stings—and men listen.

A captain. A banner. A village. A holdfast.

The kingdom fractures. Nobles splinter. War returns in waves.

He builds what others forget: order, discipline, belief.

He is knighted. Not as courtesy. As necessity.

He commands. Then governs. Then inspires. Soldiers seek him. Outlaws swear to him. Minor lords ask his judgment. Not because of blood—but because of outcome.

And when at last he is crowned, it is not inheritance. It is design.

His kingdom is not forged by divine right. But by salt, sweat, and seen deeds.

He was never meant to inherit. He was meant to unify.

By Right of Conquest

The fire was burning low when it happened.

They had just finished the night ration — root-thick stew and barley rounds soaked in vinegar. The trench was quiet. A lull hung over the earth like fog, thick with frozen breath and worn fatigue. Darin sat hunched near the end of the fireline, polishing a dull belt hook with a cloth that used to be his shirt sleeve.

That's when the new man — the older one from Westwatch, with the dueling scar on his temple and the blue thread woven into his collar — stepped forward.

—and then he knelt.

But with the steady, methodical calm of a man trained to do it.

One knee in the dirt. Fist across chest. Eyes lowered.

A guardsman's salute.

The kind not used here.

Not in this ditch. Not under Darin.

Raive was the first to react. His chair scraped backward.

Jorah froze mid-handful of crusted stew. Even the two brothers, who had long since ceased reacting to anything but arrows and frostbite, looked up.

His voice was hoarse, low, unashamed.

"I saw you bleed. And I saw you refuse the banner they tried to hang on you."

"Because I didn't bend you. You bent yourself."

The man rose. Slowly. Face unreadable. But not ashamed.

As if waiting for a rule that never came.

Later, at the fire, Raive wouldn't sit near Darin.

Some laughed it off. "Old guardsman, caught in habit."

Others whispered louder than usual that night.

One man — a mud-soaked lad named Ollen — was heard saying:

"He knelt today. Someone else'll do it tomorrow. Then we'll be taking turns on who bows fastest."

To the fire crackling. To the wind against the dirt walls.

To the weight of a silence shaped like expectation.

In the morning, two men asked if they could shift their sleeping post "closer to the command end."

By midday, Raive approached with a folded rag.

Inside it: a carved pin, shaped like a downward-facing blade. Crude. Hand-whittled. But intentional.

"Westwatch. The one who bowed. He says it's not a banner. Says it's just a 'mark of the ditch.'"

Darin turned the pin over. The wood was pine. Still smelled of sap.

No initials. No sigils. Just the blade — and the base carved in black.

"Four men wearing them already," Raive muttered. "One pinned it to his blanket."

"They're making you a banner, whether you want one or not."

That night, Darin didn't speak to the men.

He walked the wall twice. Tapped the pike handles once each. Ran his hand over the grit-slicked shovel blades.

"If they bow, and I stay standing, who leads who?"

The Man Who Saluted