Verada Requiem

During a two-day army rest at Thornfield, Ren reunites with his scattered companions: Harsk forging at the anvil, Nella commanding twenty-eight soldiers, Fossick running supply-chain corrections, and Callum tending the wounded.

Ren scouts the Cathedral Province border, discovering the demons have adapted patrol formations and camouflage to counter the army methods from the southern campaign.

The Army of the Immaculate launches its first assault on the Crucible. The demons are organized and the mountain itself fights back with adaptive terrain — boneglass eruptions and shifting slopes that learn the army's tactics. 347 dead in four hours.

Ren leads his twelve scouts in a flawless smoke-and-misdirection ambush killing seven demons in a ravine, returning to camp with zero casualties. Over morning tea with Nella, Harsk, and Fossick, they discuss the branded observers watching their operations and the political friction as common...

Ren, a seventeen-year-old thief's apprentice, picks a Kellmar six-pin lock to steal shipping contracts from merchant Aldren Coss under mentor Tik's silent watch.

Ren scouts the abandoned village of Thornfield solo for boneglass contamination, finding it clean after a methodical sweep of all forty-seven structures.