I don’t start with a plan, I start with a scent—a whisper of salt and fire, a shiver on the water’s edge. The battlefield is a tide of dreams; I let the horizon bleed into the sky, the ground rippling like a living canvas. Then I sketch the silhouettes of the forces, not with straight lines but with splashes of color that hint at motion. I ask myself: where will the light fall? Where will the shadows swallow? The tactics aren’t in the brush strokes but in the mood, the rhythm. If a real assessment needs numbers, I’ll trade them for hues that speak louder—blood-red for urgency, silver for stealth. In the end, the map is a living story that the enemy can’t read before it’s finished.

I don’t count troops, I count breaths. The wind will shift where the moon lands, not where a map tells it. I paint the moment you’re ready to strike, not the exact number of men. The target is a ripple in the water, and the enemy will be lost trying to chase it before I let it hit. The fire comes when the horizon cracks and the colors scream, not when a list says “three hundred.”

I’ll paint five swaths of silver‑glimmer soldiers, each wave a line of the tide, a silent choir. Then a squad of storm‑bringers, three in number, riding the wind like restless gulls, and a hidden band of night‑hounds—two dozen shadows that vanish into the mist. The trigger point? When the moon cracks the horizon, a silver slash in the sky, the ripple will ignite. At that moment the fire will bloom, not a line of numbers but a splash of light that turns the fog into fire.