The battlefield became organized violence.
Lucien did not let the entire army surge.
That would have been suicide.
He divided the basin into layers and gave each layer a purpose.
The outer ring existed to stop reinforcement.
The middle ring existed to protect support units.
The inner assault teams existed to cut marked feeding lines.
The strike team existed for the center.
Anything else was vanity.
The Keepers tried to disrupt that order.
They attacked flags.
They mimicked retreat.
They sent wounded bodies crawling toward healer camps, only for the bodies to unfold into black rhythm mines.
They used captured voices to issue false commands.
Three allied squads almost moved because of one.
Then a Lucien replaced it with a flat announcement.
"Enemy imitation. Poor quality. Report for correction never."
The soldiers who had almost obeyed froze.
Then one laughed despite the blood on his face.
