Victory is never clean.
Not when you win by fear, whispers, and broken minds.
The scout I had sent back to the Holy Alliance camp did precisely what I needed him to do, fall apart. He screamed, babbled nonsense, trembled like a child lost in a storm. And now? Now they fear me more than they understand me. That's good. That's the first step.
In the war room of the demon host, I knelt over a crude map of the borderlands. I had drawn out a corridor with black ash, literally. It wasn't elegant, but it did the job. A funnel route, a weak spot I wanted them to think they had discovered through "accidental" leaks.
"Lady Rin", Kaleid said from behind me, arms crossed. "Your trap. Is it ready?"
"Almost", I replied, brushing ash into finer lines. "They'll think it's a gap in our defense. But when they move... the ground will eat them alive."
Kaleid grimaced. "You're frightening when you're like this".
I smirked. "Then I'm doing it right."
He leaned forward. "And if they don't take the bait?"
"They will", I said, standing. "Pride makes fools of them. I should know, I used to fight beside them."
He didn't speak. He rarely did when I mentioned my old life. The betrayal still lingered like smoke in my lungs.
As I moved toward the fire pit, I grabbed a charred stick and began scribbling notes on a cracked slate: Divide scouts. Lure with wounded illusion. Collapse passage. Surround from east ridge. Simple, brutal, elegant.
Watching the flames dance, my mind slipped backward, unexpectedly.
Back to the slums.
To him.
Jinto.
He was my first real teacher. Not the formal kind. He wore rags, drank more than he breathed, and cursed like a sailor. But his mind... sharper than any blade. He had once been a royal tactician, or so the rumor went, until he gambled away everything and landed in the gutter with the rest of us.
He found me crouched in an alley at thirteen, sketching attack patterns with chalk stolen from a vendor's stall. Instead of scolding me, he had laughed.
"That's cute", he said. "But those lines will get you killed."
Then he drew it better. Faster. Smarter.
Every night after that, he would toss me rocks and bottles, making me play war against myself in the dirt. He taught me how to bait, to mislead, to break morale. Not through strength. Through surprise. Through fear.
"Girl, if you can't make the enemy doubt their own eyes, you'll never win a real war."
I carry that lesson still.
Even now.
Even here.
"You're smiling", Kaleid muttered.
"I was just remembering a ghost", I said.
He tilted his head. "A friendly one?"
"Not really", I replied. "But I learned a lot from him."
At that moment, a pair of lesser demon captains entered. They were arguing, loudly.
"General Kaleid, the western scouts want to abandon their posts", one growled.
"Because they think the trees are whispering to them!" the other snapped.
Kaleid sighed. "I told you this would happen."
I stepped forward. "Let them. Pull them back quietly. Make sure the rest see it and ask why."
They blinked. "My lady?"
"Fear spreads best in silence", I said. "No orders. No explanations. Just disappear the scouts."
One of them shuddered. The other grinned.
Kaleid waited until they left. "You're turning into a full villain, you know."
"I was always one", I said. "I just wore the wrong colors before."
He chuckled, and I allowed myself a brief smile.
"Even poison can look like perfume in the right bottle", Jinto used to say. "And girl, you? You're gonna be deadly in glass."
I miss him.
No, I miss who I was when I still had someone to teach me.
Now, I teach others. I shape monsters. I bend warriors.
I lead armies for a demon king who rarely leaves his throne, but even he watches me carefully now.
I am no longer a tool.
I am the hand that holds the blade.
The trap is ready. The Holy Alliance will walk into it. They will think they are clever. They will think they see a weak point in our lines.
And I will show them what it means to bleed without ever being touched.
I turn to Kaleid and give the order.
"Begin phase one. Let them hear rumors of the 'open corridor' near the river ridge. Leak it through that sniveling prisoner who keeps trying to bargain."
"Understood".
As he leaves, I catch my reflection in a broken mirror across the tent.
I see a strategist. A villainess. A war-born woman with dirt beneath her nails and a fire behind her eyes.
I see Jinto's student.
I see someone the world should fear.