For the next few days, Ludger acted as if nothing had happened.

He trained the recruits at the same pace as before. Corrected stances. Rotated drills. Adjusted equipment. He spoke when needed and stayed quiet when he didn’t, his expression composed, movements precise. If anyone expected tension or sudden changes, they didn’t get them.

Life in Lionfang continued.

Kaela, Maurien, and Gaius returned from the capital near the end of the week. Dusty, tired, but intact. Their report was short and unremarkable, no pursuit, no sudden interest in Lionsguard after their departure, no hidden pressure applied from the shadows.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Maurien said. “Aside from the rumors.”

Kaela snorted. “Everyone’s whispering about the imperial family. Succession, regency, conspiracies. Same nonsense, louder than usual.”

Gaius nodded. “But nothing tied to us. At least, nothing we could see.”

Ludger listened, acknowledged it with a brief nod, and dismissed them to rest.

That was all.

Arslan watched him closely during those days.

Too closely.

From the outside, Ludger was the same as always, efficient, focused, annoyingly reliable. If anything had changed, it was subtle. He spoke less. Joked not at all. When conversations drifted toward speculation or politics, he shut them down with a look instead of words.

No outbursts. No recklessness. No late-night disappearances. Nothing obvious.

That was what unsettled Arslan the most.

Ludger wasn’t spiraling. He wasn’t lashing out. He wasn’t even visibly frustrated.

He was just… quiet.

And Arslan knew his son well enough to recognize that silence wasn’t emptiness.

It was pressure, carefully contained.

Whatever Ludger was doing, or planning, was happening entirely behind that calm surface.

Before long, time moved on.

The twins turned three, loud, energetic, and entirely unaware of the strange currents shaping the world around them. Not long after, Ludger turned thirteen. The milestones came close enough together that Elaine decided to combine them into a single, modest celebration at home.

Nothing extravagant. Just family, a few close faces, and food prepared with care rather than display.

The house filled with laughter as the twins chased each other from room to room, shrieking with delight. Candles were blown out, several times, because the twins insisted on helping. Ludger accepted his own with a quiet smile, enduring the attention with practiced tolerance.

Elaine watched him carefully.

She could tell something was bothering him. Not in the obvious ways, no tension in his posture, no sharp words, no restless pacing. It was subtler than that. A weight carried too neatly. A thought revisited too often behind steady eyes.

She didn’t ask. Elaine had learned when questions helped, and when they only added pressure.

Later, when the twins had finally worn themselves out and the house settled into something quieter, Arslan filled in the gaps. He spoke plainly, without embellishment, laying out what had happened and why Torvares’ visit had gone the way it did.

Elaine listened without interrupting.

When he finished, she sat quietly for a long moment, hands folded in her lap.

“That’s…” she began, then stopped, choosing her words carefully. “Troubling.”

Arslan nodded.

“But,” Elaine continued, “I can’t fully blame him.”

Arslan looked at her.

“He protected a child,” Elaine said softly. “An innocent one. Whatever his reasons, that part matters.”

She sighed, gaze drifting toward the door where Ludger had disappeared earlier.

“And Ludger knows that,” she added. “I think that’s why he hasn’t said anything.”

Arslan frowned slightly. “You don’t think he’s angry?”

“Oh, he is,” Elaine replied without hesitation. “But not in the way people expect.”

She leaned back, expression thoughtful. “If he truly blamed Torvares, there would be confrontation.”

Silence, on the other hand…

“It means he’s still sorting out where responsibility ends and understanding begins,” Elaine finished.

Arslan let out a slow breath. Outside, the night passed quietly.

Inside, the family celebrated what they could, aware that some things would take longer to resolve, and that not every burden needed to be shared all at once.

As for Ludger, his thoughts rarely lingered on anger. They circled something far less comfortable. Mistakes.

He had relied too much on Torvares, on his reach, his intelligence network, his ability to negotiate quietly where Ludger could not. For years, that reliance had paid off. Doors opened. Problems dissolved before they became visible. Complications were handled without blood or spectacle.

It had been efficient.

And that was exactly the problem.

Torvares had helped him in too many areas at once, politics, intelligence, diplomacy, shielding the guild from pressures Ludger didn’t want to touch yet. Over time, Ludger had stopped questioning how those results were achieved. He trusted the outcomes instead of the process.

Because Torvares had earned that trust.

Because Ludger had helped Viola. Because Torvares had protected Lionfang. Because every previous gamble had worked.

Until this one.

Ludger understood now that the mistake wasn’t trusting Torvares as a person, it was letting him become a single point of failure. One perspective. One filter through which too much information passed. One man deciding, alone, which truths were safe to share and which were better buried.

And Ludger had accepted that. Not blindly. But comfortably. That comfort had cost him clarity.

He hadn’t lost control of the situation, but he had lost ownership of it. And for someone who prided himself on planning several steps ahead, that realization cut deeper than betrayal ever could.

He leaned back, staring at nothing in particular, and let the thought settle.

This is on me.

Not on Torvares for acting as he always had.

On Ludger, for letting himself depend too heavily on someone else’s judgment in areas he personally found troublesome.

That price had already been paid. The only question now was whether he would pay it twice.

Not long after, the system responded again.

Ludger felt it while overseeing drills, nothing dramatic, just a subtle shift in how exhaustion faded from the yard. Bruises dulled faster. Breathing steadied sooner. Recruits who should have needed longer breaks were ready to move again after only a minute or two.

Then the confirmation arrived.

[The Guild Master Job reached level 35]

New Skill Unlocked: Shared Recovery: Increases Health Regeneration of all guild members by +10% per skill level

Ludger exhaled slowly, a quiet satisfaction settling in his chest.

This one mattered.

Raw strength and coordination won fights. Recovery won campaigns. Faster healing meant fewer lingering injuries, shorter downtime, and less attrition over time. It meant mistakes didn’t compound as brutally. It meant the guild could keep moving.

And more importantly… It confirmed a pattern.

If health regeneration had a dedicated skill, then mana and stamina regeneration would follow. They always did. And if those scaled the same way…

At level one hundred, a tenfold increase wasn’t unreasonable.

Ten times the recovery. Ten times the endurance window. Ten times the margin for error. That wasn’t just power. That was sustainability.

For a few minutes, the realization pushed everything else out of his mind. The politics. The silence. The mistakes he’d been turning over again and again. He watched the trainees recover faster than they should have, saw discipline hold even under mounting fatigue, and allowed himself a rare moment of quiet approval.

This is working, he thought.

The feeling didn’t last. It never did.

Soon enough, his mind drifted back to the same unresolved threads, to trust misplaced, to dependence he hadn’t noticed forming, to problems that couldn’t be solved by training harder or leveling faster.

The system could make people stronger. It couldn’t undo judgment calls. Ludger straightened, refocusing on the yard. The satisfaction faded, but it didn’t vanish entirely. Progress was still progress. He just couldn’t afford to let it distract him for too long.

Once the training session ended, Ludger wrapped things up the way he always did.

Final corrections. Dismissal. A few quiet words to the instructors who lingered. Then he left the guild and headed toward home, following the same route he’d taken for months.

Or at least, that’s what he usually did.

Today, he stopped.

Halfway down a narrow alley, he stepped out of the open street and pressed himself into the shadow between two stone buildings. His breathing slowed. His presence faded, folded inward until even an attentive passerby would have felt nothing more than an absence.

He waited a heartbeat.

Then activated Seismic Sense.

The world unfolded beneath his feet, not as images, but as pressure and motion. Vibrations traveled through stone and earth, painting a precise, unavoidable map.

And there they were.

Three familiar signatures approaching from the north.

Light steps. Careful spacing. A practiced rhythm meant to blend into the background.

And one smaller presence among them, distinct even without comparison.

Eclaire.

They were coming back from the Frost Labyrinth. He could feel the faint, unmistakable weight of froststeel carried in packs, the subtle drag it put on their movement. Not much. Just enough to confirm the purpose of the trip.

So that’s how they’re doing it, Ludger thought.

Timing.

They returned every day around this hour, right when he would normally already be home. Close enough to routine to avoid suspicion. Far enough from his presence to avoid notice.

They knew his habits. They planned around them. Avoided him.

Ludger stayed still as they passed near the guild, their steps never faltering, their formation tight but casual. To anyone watching from the street, they were just another group of young delvers doing honest work.

To Ludger, the pattern was obvious.

They didn’t want me involved, he realized. Or worse, they didn’t want me to notice.

The thought didn’t anger him.

It sharpened him.

He let Seismic Sense fade and remained in the shadows until the vibrations disappeared into Lionfang’s deeper streets. Only then did he step back into the open and continue toward home, expression unchanged.

But the routine was broken now.

And once Ludger noticed something like that… He didn’t ignore it.

Ludger walked the rest of the way home in silence, his thoughts tightening around the problem instead of circling it.

Banishing them would be pointless.

It wouldn’t change anything, in a way that mattered. They would keep working. Keep delving. Keep moving froststeel through channels that already existed. Removing their names from that process wouldn’t make it disappear; it would only make it harder to see.

And worse, it wouldn’t even be justified.

Those two kids and Eclaire had been doing their work cleanly. Efficiently. Better than most full members, in fact. No complaints. No incidents. No unnecessary risk-taking. If anything, their discipline put some veterans to shame.

Kicking them out would raise questions instead of solving problems.

Especially now.

Since the Lionsguard had accepted the northerners, the unspoken rule had settled into place: anyone who contributed was welcome. Strength, effort, reliability, those mattered more than origin, blood, or politics. That policy had stabilized the guild in ways Ludger hadn’t fully appreciated at the time.

It lowered friction.

It killed resentment before it could form.

People stopped whispering about favoritism when they saw a seven-foot northerner hauling stone alongside them, getting the same pay, the same expectations, the same consequences. Trust didn’t come from speeches, it came from shared exhaustion and shared risk.

But that openness had limits.

It protected the guild from internal fractures, yes. It made Lionsguard resilient, adaptable, hard to destabilize from within.

What it didn’t do was protect it from context.

Outsiders saw the policy and drew their own conclusions. If Lionsguard welcomed anyone who contributed, then it was neutral. Apolitical. Useful. Which was true. And also dangerous.

Because neutrality invited projection. Anyone could imagine the guild as aligned with their interests, right up until the moment it wasn’t. And when bloodlines and imperial secrets entered the equation, that ambiguity stopped being a shield and started becoming a liability.

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