Rewrite That Witch
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Chapter 1307: Flaw

Three days later, the letter passed through several hands before landing at the command headquarters at Cage Mountain. Hill Fawkes broke the seal, read it, and stamped it with the highest-priority classification before sending it directly to Edith.

The Pearl of the Northern Region skimmed it once. Her brow tightened.

“How many people are currently on Archduke Island?” she demanded.

The advisors exchanged glances. Morning Light answered first.

“My Lady — over three hundred from the First Army stationed on the island, around twenty-five hundred from the construction teams, and roughly the same number of island civilians. If you need the detailed breakdown by unit composition, I can pull the—”

“That won’t be necessary.” Edith cut him off. “Bring Iron Axe and the other officers in. We need to revise our plans immediately. Move.”

“Revise—?”

“Soldiers, construction workers, Graycastle citizens, Kingdom of Dawn, Kingdom of Wolfheart — everyone evacuates Archduke Island. Immediately.” Her voice was level, which made the words land harder. “That island is already dead ground.”

A burst of noise moved through the room. But their training held, and the advisors were already moving before the echo faded.

Edith’s gaze dropped to the second piece of paper in her hand — the one that had come folded inside the letter. She looked at it for several breaths, then closed her fist around it and let out a slow exhale.

The senior officers of the First Army assembled quickly. The letter passed from hand to hand around the table, each person reading in silence, and the room filled with the particular quiet that precedes bad news being absorbed — not the silence of ignorance, but of understanding arriving.

“Sky Lord Hackzord.” Brian’s face had the color of old ash. “If what’s written here is accurate, this ability is obscene. Several kilometers, repeatable, no warning — given enough time he could reduce all of Everwinter to nothing. Not even the most heavily fortified city would slow him down.”

Lightning and Maggie had encountered a high-ranking demon near the Rapture. Its power had been enough to earn it a permanent place on their list of threats to avoid. Now they understood that demon was almost certainly the Sky Lord Ursrook had named — and what they had witnessed was far from its full capability. Not only could Hackzord move through his own portal, he could move entire armies through it. The strategic weight of that was almost beyond calculation.

The full meaning of the title grand demon lord settled onto the room like cold.

No one argued about the evacuation. Getting onto Archduke Island was simple enough; getting off was another matter. If the strait — their only natural barrier — could be negated at will, it would stop being a defense and start being a trap.

There was no time to waste.

According to the drafting patterns described in the letter, combined with what the general staff had already inferred, the demons had likely assembled a substantial force along the frontline. An attack could come at any hour.

Iron Axe spoke with the flat authority of a man who had already decided. “Stop all construction and fortification on Archduke Island. Begin moving everyone immediately — and I mean everyone. Every rented ship, every boat that floats. I want all of it participating in this evacuation.”

“Yessir.”

The room emptied.

Agatha waited until the last footsteps faded down the corridor, then said quietly, “Why didn’t a demon this powerful appear in the second Battle of Divine Will?”

“I can think of three reasons.” Edith’s voice didn’t change. “First: Hackzord hadn’t advanced to the rank of grand lord yet, and didn’t have these abilities. Second: the demons considered humans a secondary concern and were focused entirely on the Sky-sea Realm. Third—” she paused a beat— “the higher-ranking demons judged that Hackzord was not suited for direct combat against humans.”

Iron Axe studied her. “You believe it’s the third.”

“The first is technically possible, but it sidesteps the question. The second doesn’t hold — even though demons have always been fighting the Sky-sea Realm, their obsession with the divine relics is total. If they could have crushed the Union easily, they would never have let the relic escape. Underestimating your enemy is the most expensive mistake you can make in a war for your species’ survival.” She set the letter on the table. “Which means I think they had already committed everything they had. Hackzord’s power was too valuable for open battle — so they kept him back.”

The Ice Witch’s gray eyes sharpened. “But the Union never had firearms. If even city walls are useless against him now, they might not have had time to move the relic before falling.”

“Which is exactly what makes this worth thinking through carefully.” Edith tapped the table surface once, not addressing the worry directly. “There are details in this letter that interest me. According to the few interactions the writer observed between Hackzord and the Everwinter nobility, the Sky Lord never once used his ability to enter a feudal lord’s castle directly. He rarely met with multiple nobles simultaneously. Almost all of his commands came through intermediaries — Sigils — as if proximity to the nobles themselves posed a genuine threat. That behavior costs him loyalty. You can see it in how the letter reads. But what threat could a group of human nobles possibly pose to a grand lord?”

Something moved behind Agatha’s eyes. “You’re thinking of God’s Stones of Retaliation.”

“I can’t see any other explanation.” Edith nodded. “Extraordinaries can be born as ash or as books. Why must a grand lord be immune to Magic Slayer effects?”

Agatha went still.

The fundamental distinction between a high-ranking demon and a Mad Demon was the depth of their power. There was no evidence that advancement automatically conferred Magic Slayer traits. And if it didn’t — everything that had puzzled her clicked into place. The Sky Lord’s absence from the Fertile Plains battles wasn’t caution; he simply wasn’t built for direct combat. Invading a city founded on God’s Stone mines, facing Extraordinaries wearing God’s Stones of Retaliation, taking the full force of Divine Will — any of those would have been catastrophic for a demon who wasn’t a Magic Slayer. His power was too important to risk in engagements like that.

So they had kept him away from the fighting. Until now.

“But this time he’s participating personally,” Iron Axe said, half to himself.

“Something changed that left him no other choice.” Edith walked to the window and looked out toward the northern mainland, gray under a gray sky. “Perhaps Ursrook or another grand lord was always meant to lead the western front. Something happened and Hackzord was forced into the open. If that’s true, it’s good news for us — facing one grand lord is better than facing several.”

“You already have a plan for dealing with him.”

“His ability to reposition armies at will is extraordinary on a strategic level, but as an offensive tool it has limits,” Edith said. “As long as we don’t suffer heavy losses on Archduke Island, the outcome is still open. The most important thing right now is to get as many people and as much weaponry off that island as possible. Especially the cannons.”

Iron Axe exhaled — a long, slow breath that carried more relief than words. “From what you’ve described, this piece of intelligence is extraordinary. I’d like to know who wrote it, and who sent it. If the information holds, we owe him more than we can repay.”

Silence followed. Edith held it for a moment.

Then she unfolded the crumpled piece of paper and held it out to Iron Axe.

A few brief lines. Written by one of Hill’s subordinates before he sent the letter on.

I do not know his name.

When I found him, his body was already frozen solid.

At his chest, I found this letter.

Only this one thing still held any warmth.

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