Chapter 6: Truth in the Quiet / Chapter 7: The Shape of Lies

Isa

It was the small things that began to whisper first.

Elias packed like a soldier, but not a footman—he handled his gear like someone trained to leave nothing behind. He disappeared sometimes in the early mornings, always with an excuse that felt too polished. And once, just once, she saw him reading a scrap of paper by the fire—and then burn it without a word.

Isa didn’t confront him.

Yet.

Instead, she started watching.

How he reacted when their route was suddenly diverted by a false report. How his jaw tightened when she mentioned seeing other scouts—how he always knew too much about their insignia, their movements, their habits.

That night, she pretended to sleep.

Elias left at exactly 02:00.

She opened her eyes ten seconds after the door shut.

Elias

The rendezvous point was a burned-out grain mill two kilometers west, marked with a rusted wind vane shaped like a crow. He approached with care—countersigns given in rhythm. Two short knocks. One pause. One long.

The trapdoor lifted.

He dropped inside.

Two men waited—both in gray coats, both armed. One was his direct handler, “Mikhail,” if that name was even real.

“You’re late,” Mikhail said.

“I had company,” Elias replied coldly. “The girl’s sharp.”

“Then she’s a risk.”

Elias’s jaw tensed. “She’s still clean.”

“For now.”

A file was slid across the table. “Your final coordinates. Command wants confirmation: is Amaranth still viable, or have you gone soft?”

“I’ve stayed on mission.”

“But your heart’s off-book.”

Elias didn’t answer. The room chilled around him.

“You’re burning time, Dvorák,” Mikhail said. “This war doesn’t care about your conscience. If she becomes a liability—”

“I know the protocol,” Elias cut in. “I wrote half of it.”

The handler nodded. “Then prove it. Signal us in three nights. With or without her.”

As Elias turned to leave, Mikhail’s voice followed:

“She won’t forgive you, you know. If she finds out.”

Elias didn’t stop. “That’s not the plan.”

“And when the plan breaks?”

He paused at the door.

“Then I break with it.”

Isa

By the time Elias returned just before dawn, she was sitting by the fire, wide awake.

He froze in the threshold. “Couldn’t sleep?”

She looked at him, her voice calm. Too calm.

“No. But you seem to sleepwalk well.”

For just a moment, Elias’s expression shifted.

Then, the mask came back.

“We all have ghosts,” he said.

Isa stirred the fire absently. “Yours seem to wear uniforms.”

Chapter Seven: The Shape of Lies

The mission was simple on paper: recover the wounded from a collapsed communications post on the southern ridge. No firepower. No resistance expected. Just ice, ash, and silence.

Elias didn’t like it.

Isa didn’t say it, but she didn’t either.

They moved fast through the forest, snow crunching underfoot. The radio operator—a teenager with a fractured leg and frostbitten fingers—had triggered a distress signal before going dark. The wind howled as they crossed into the clearing, the tower barely standing, its metal skeleton twisted like a broken spine.

Inside, they found the boy. Barely breathing. Elias hoisted him over his shoulder, Isa stabilizing his leg with gauze and wooden splints.

As they moved out, Isa finally said it.

“You knew the patrol path before I finished reading the map.”

Elias kept walking. “I studied this sector before the collapse.”

“Did you?”

She didn’t sound accusing. Not yet. Just… testing.

“And yesterday,” she continued, “you knew the call sign of the enemy scout team before they even fired.”

“I’ve been listening to their frequencies.”

She stopped.

“So have I,” she said slowly. “But I didn’t recognize it.”

Elias turned, face unreadable.

“We don’t have time for this.”