Silk & Sabotage

Part 2: Inheritance of Ashes

POV: Irina Kael

The war didn't begin with bombs. It began with a line drawn in someone else's ink.

Irina Kael stood over the live-projected map of Ruham, its holographic terrain stretched across the obsidian table in the Drax estate's subterranean war chamber. Every breath she took misted slightly in the cold vault air—an old legacy bunker repurposed for strategic operations. On the glowing satellite overlays, fractured rivers shimmered like veins beneath a scarred body, edged by dotted red lines that danced with every minor skirmish. Laced within the shadows of Lazura's broken ridgelines pulsed the real prize—Zerion ore, glowing faintly in infrared. It blinked like a warning. Or a heartbeat.

Ruham wasn't just a disputed territory—it was a geostrategic wound. An infected corridor that had been cut open and cauterized and carved again by two nations that no longer knew how to speak to each other, only how to wound. Once a peaceful transit belt connecting the eastern arm of Rica to the southwestern trade ports of Lina Loas, Ruham Corridor had now become a militarized twilight zone. Its roads were sandbagged veins, its skies patrolled by autonomous drones, and its air hung thick with the burnt scent of ozone and diesel.

Irina rotated the projection, watching time peel across the land like pages of a history book warped by lies. Before the war, Ruham had been neutral ground. Monitored jointly. A series of rural villages and ancient footpaths threading between trade posts and forgotten temples. No borders. No flags. Just earth, and the people who remembered her.

Then Rica arrived.

First with merchant deals. Then with construction teams claiming to 'modernize' forgotten land. Then with convoys of tech-fused drilling rigs, cloaked under the pretense of infrastructure development. What they found—what changed everything—was Zerion ore.

Zerion was no ordinary mineral. In raw form, it looked like metallic obsidian laced with crimson veins. But refined, it became the core component in next-gen targeting systems, stealth tech, and energy-displacement warheads. Whoever controlled Zerion didn't just win battles—they dictated global warfare. And Ruham, riddled with it beneath centuries of volcanic crust, became the unspoken crown jewel.

Lina Loas accused Rica of colonial theft. Rica denied it, citing maps signed under old imperial trade agreements. Lina Loas responded with militia camps and divine claims—invoking sacred treaties and tribal sovereignty. Rica deployed the Black Sand Division in response, disguising elite military operations under mining consortiums and private contractors. Every death was written off as 'local unrest.'

The Phantom Divide—the line that no map officially showed but every soldier obeyed—cut Ruham like a surgical scar. It bisected river deltas, temples, and burial grounds, dividing even families across invisible checkpoints. The Treaty of Vernav had once promised joint control. But that treaty was older than Irina, and deader than Elias.

She narrowed her eyes as data from the western flank shimmered. A new Zerion vein had been detected near the Yereni village cluster, dangerously close to the Loasian side of the Phantom Divide. The blinking red dots indicated Black Sand mobilization. Covert. Silent. Lethal.

And no one would stop it. Because both nations believed the other had no right to stop them.

Irina exhaled slowly, her breath ghosting in the cold air. She had bled on this land. Killed on it. Worn medals for it. And yet—she had never belonged to it. Not truly. Born in Veyaria, raised under Rica's steel banners, trained in silence and deception. Her blood was a mix of truths and state-forged lies.

"They made me kill for a flag I was never born under," she whispered to no one.

On the map, Sonhane glowed softly in blue. Lina Loas' capital. Mia's throne. Ground zero for what Irina called the soft war—the one where love, legacy, and betrayal were the weapons. And Mino? Mino was the deepest of them all. A dagger in velvet. A ghost with Kael Sarin's blood and her own fingerprints on his future.

Irina hadn't sent Mino to kill. She had sent him to seduce, to infiltrate, to shatter Mia from within. If a queen cracked, the country followed.

But Diego Veyra was too careful. And Mia had grown cunning. Too cunning.

That's why Irina had turned to Lucas. To keep her enemies close.

Irina also needed the help of True ghost.

Echo sentinel —the last true heir of Rica's most dangerous bloodline. Cipher to rica. Erosion catalyst of lina loas. Assassin in the shadows. He was the linchpin—the one soul who could burn all three bridges at once and walk away untouched.

No one knew the true weight of the Cipher bloodline. Their wealth was understated. Their control, absolute. If Zerion ran through Ruham, then Rica's veins ran through Echo Sentinel. He was the war god "Thyrix" whose wars were made of flesh - Brutal and Ruthless conquest.

Irina knew this. She knew that she needed the intel from Echo sentinel to control Dahlia.

She also knew war wasn't won by soldiers anymore.

It was won by those who rewrote the map in ash and silence—and remembered where the first line had been forged.

And Irina remembered everything.