Building a Kingdom as a Kobold-Chapter 71: A Signature Without a Soul

Ashring wasn’t on fire, which was the baseline I tried to work with these days. The problem was that it felt like it should be. Which was worse.

I sat at the provisional command shelter—a sloped wall of mosscrete shielding a table that no longer had legs—and shuffled through four different reports that each contradicted the last one. The southern perimeter node was either overheating, flickering, or offline entirely. Food stores were stable, unless you asked Bitterstack, in which case we were three days from ration collapse. And the latest trade proposal from the goblin envoy included something called "fermented dust eggs," which sounded like a trap.

I rubbed between my eyes. The system still hadn’t updated the Sovereign’s status marker.

[Sovereign Presence: Displaced]

[Local Authority Thread: Inert]

[Command Status: Acting Officer – Provisional, Non-Myth Aligned]

Which was a lot of words to say: no one’s listening.

"Quicktongue," said Embergleam, stepping into the shadow of the shelter. She held a charred scrap of mossbark in one claw, flame-singed along the edges.

"You’re not here to tell me we’ve achieved bureaucratic stability, are you?" I asked without looking up.

She dropped the mossbark on the table. The scorch mark carved across it wasn’t accidental.

"Splitjaw’s scouts found this near the trench wall. Burned in. It doesn’t match any of our command glyphs."

I studied the shape. Harsh edges. Fire-stamped, not carved. And definitely not ours.

"Could be a flare signature," I said. "A scout marker."

"Could be," Embergleam agreed. "If it weren’t upside-down. And mirrored."

"Someone’s mimicking our flameprint."

"Badly."

I sighed. Folded the bark in half. Filed it into the pile labeled ’definitely our problem.’

Five minutes later, Hoarder appeared.

He didn’t announce himself. Just limped into the shelter like he’d been there all along and dropped a soot-streaked stone relay chip on the table.

"Three relay towers show drift."

I raised an eyebrow. "Drift as in unstable?"

"Drift as in doubled."

He tapped the chip. A faint, repeating flicker danced across its surface. Standard Ashring ping, followed by a half-second echo.

"Someone copied our signal," I said.

"Badly," Hoarder added. "But enough to pass through the net."

"They’re not just mimicking fire marks," I muttered. "They’re speaking in our voice."

Hoarder didn’t reply. He never needed to.

Embergleam leaned forward. "Think it’s the guild?"

"No," I said, already thinking three steps ahead. "They’d at least sign their warnings with smug policy jargon."

The system pinged again. Not loud. Not urgent. Just one of those background syncs that always made my tail twitch.

[Sub-Sovereign Recognition Thread: Strained]

[Node Consistency: Fluctuating – Minor Delay in Civic Reinforcement]

[External Signature Detected: Flame Authority – Unverified]

[Tracking Error: Myth Drift Imminent]

I rubbed my temples.

"This is fine," I muttered. "This is just barely-contained cultural sabotage with minor existential implications."

"That’s not a joke, is it," Embergleam said.

"Not even a little."

Bitterstack didn’t knock.

No one ever did, but she had a special gift for arriving precisely when I was about to finish a sentence in peace. She dropped a ledger slab onto the mosscrete table hard enough to make the soot scatter.

"We’re short again," she said. "Not dramatically. But enough to annoy me."

I frowned. "Which stock?"

"Trailroot. Smoked fungus. A full pot’s worth of broth-grade bone shards. None stolen. Just... gone."

"Did someone mislabel?"

"No. I rechecked it myself. Three times."

Embergleam, perched nearby and stirring her own drink, raised an eyebrow.

"Could be the wounded," she offered. "Extra portions passed through hands too quickly."

Bitterstack hesitated.

"No. I checked their rations, too. They’re stable. This isn’t redistribution." She flicked the slab. "It’s replication."

I stared at her. "You’re saying people are cooking... unofficially?"

"Late night. Small scale. Minimal fireprint. They’re not stealing."

Hoarder grunted quietly from the corner.

"Spotted some hotstone discoloration near the southeast culvert," he said. "Looked like someone cooked stew off-flame. Left no ashes."

"So not sabotage," I muttered. "Not ration hoarding."

"Imitation," Embergleam said softly.

The silence that followed wasn’t tense.

Because it made sense.

They were aspiring.

And in doing so, they were fracturing our food system. Unintentionally.

"They’re copying her," I said. "The Sovereign. Now others want to serve, too."

Bitterstack grumbled. "They’re doing it badly."

"They’re doing it out of care," Embergleam added. "It’s clumsy. But... meaningful."

"Meaningful doesn’t refill the salt bins."

I stood. Picked up the slab. My claws left little indentations in the mosscrete table edge.

"If this keeps up," I said, "we’re going to have three hundred personal hearths and no communal rhythm."

Embergleam must’ve been thinking the same thing. Her next words came slower, softer. "That’s the risk. "When culture blooms, it doesn’t ask for permission."

"And when coordination breaks, it doesn’t wait for orders," I muttered.

The system chose that exact moment to ping.

[Sub-Sovereign Recognition Thread: Strained]

[Mythic Signature: Simulated Flame Authority – Source Unknown]

[Warning: Civil Thread Drift Detected]

[Node Signal Consistency: Degrading – Peripheral Zones]

I didn’t flinch.

But I felt it.

Not betrayal. Not defiance.

Just too many voices trying to say the same thing, at the same time, in different tongues.

---

The trench was quiet at night. No construction, no shouting. Just the crackle of the flame node in the center and the distant hum of the moss reactors still being recalibrated.

I walked the perimeter, claws brushing the mosscrete wall, until I reached the eastern post where the glyph had been found.

The glyph was still there. Faint. But not fading.

This one was newer than the others. The curve of the flameprint had been sharpened. The pulse stroke centered just enough to fool an outer node reader. And that shouldn’t have been possible.

Not without access to internal calibration data.

I crouched beside it. Not touching. But watching.

The center line was off.

Hoarder stood beside me without speaking.

I didn’t look at him when I spoke. freeweɓnøvel~com

"This isn’t a message."

He didn’t reply.

"This is a signature."

Still no response.

I looked up at the stars.

"They’re not trying to copy her style. They’re trying to claim her place."

A wind passed over the trench. The glyph flickered.

And for a moment, it almost looked like it recognized me.

But then the light died.

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