Viola took the first watch.

She sat with her back against a broken section of wall, sword across her knees, eyes fixed on the forest beyond the firelight. The flames crackled softly, casting orange shadows across moss-covered stone and vine-wrapped pillars. Every now and then, she shifted her posture, scanning left and right, listening for anything that didn’t belong.

Ludger and Luna lay down near the shelter.

Neither of them truly slept.

Ludger closed his eyes and tried to let his body rest, but his mind kept circling the same questions, time not matching, the labyrinth’s rules shifting, the way the guardian’s design felt too intentional. He drifted, but never sank. Every small sound pulled him back to full awareness.

Luna was worse.

She didn’t even pretend. Her breathing stayed shallow, her posture too controlled, as if she were waiting for a blade to slide out of the dark.

When Viola’s watch ended, Ludger took over without ceremony. Viola didn’t argue. She crawled closer to the shelter, wrapped herself in her cloak, and within minutes her breathing smoothed into something deeper and steadier.

After a while, it became almost a soft snore. That was when Luna opened her eyes. She sat up slowly, silent as a shadow, and looked at Ludger across the fire.

“I want to scout the area,” she said.

Ludger didn’t react immediately.

He asked anyway. “Why now?”

He already knew the answer. Viola was sleeping.

And Luna trusted Ludger’s alertness more than she trusted Viola’s. More importantly, Luna believed that if they were going to scout, it had to be done while they were still close to the labyrinth, while they still had a known point of retreat, while the terrain around them was still familiar, while they could still triangulate back to the entrance if something went wrong.

Luna’s gaze flicked toward the dark trees.

“This is the best moment,” she said quietly. “Before we move farther away. Before we lose our anchor.”

Ludger exhaled slowly, watching the firelight reflect in her eyes.

“Don’t go far,” he said at last.

Luna nodded once.

And then she slipped into the darkness, soundless, leaving Ludger alone with the fire, the ruins, and the steady breathing of the sleeping girl who had no idea how close the night really was.

Luna lingered at the edge of the firelight instead of leaving immediately.

Her gaze flicked once toward Viola’s sleeping form, then back to Ludger.

“There’s another reason,” she said quietly.

Ludger didn’t respond, but his eyes told her to continue.

“Viola would make a fuss if you left,” Luna said. “And you were thinking about leaving. Even if only for a short sweep.”

Ludger exhaled through his nose. “She’d make a fuss if you left too.”

Luna’s expression barely changed. “She wouldn’t.”

“She would,” Ludger said flatly.

Luna’s jaw tightened slightly, the only sign of irritation she ever allowed herself. “No. She trusts me.”

“She trusts you when you’re standing next to her,” Ludger replied. “Not when you disappear into a forest she doesn’t understand.”

The fire popped softly. Shadows shifted across ruined stone. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Luna’s voice came out quieter than before.

“I’m disposable,” she said.

The words were delivered the same way she delivered everything else, calm, controlled, almost professional. Like it was a fact from a report rather than something about her own life.

“Unlike you,” she added. “And unlike Viola.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed.

“Who decided that?” he asked.

This time, Luna didn’t answer. She looked past him, past the fire, into the dark line of trees, expression unreadable. The silence stretched long enough that even the crackle of the flames felt loud.

Ludger waited. Luna remained still.

Then, without a word, she shifted her weight slightly, as if preparing to move anyway, still carrying that quiet certainty that her role was to be used up before anyone else had to be.

And Ludger’s gaze hardened. Because the forest wasn’t the only thing hiding teeth tonight. The silence stretched until Luna finally spoke again, voice quieter than the fire.

“I want your runes,” she said. “To scout faster.”

Ludger didn’t ask why. The answer was obvious. Speed meant less time exposed. Less risk. Less chance of something deciding she was prey.

He nodded once and lifted his hand.

Mana gathered between his fingers, controlled and dense. He wrote the rune in the air in a tight spiral, the strokes crisp even in the flickering light.

Wind Overdrive.

But this one wasn’t the short-burst version he used for combat. He fed it extra mana, enough to keep it stable for a while. A sustained construct meant for movement, silence, and distance without fatigue.

The rune hovered for a heartbeat, then drifted toward Luna and sank into her chest.

She inhaled sharply as the effect settled in, her body lightening the same way it had in the ocean, drag and resistance peeling away like a second skin.

Ludger’s eyes stayed on hers. “If you find anything, you return immediately.”

Luna nodded.

“I’m not going to go looking for you in the middle of the night” Ludger added, voice flat. “Not when Viola wakes up groggy, confused and realizes you’re gone.”

Luna’s expression tightened for the briefest moment, acknowledgment, not argument.

“Understood,” she said.

Then she turned and stepped into the darkness.

No dramatic vanishing act. No flourish.

She simply stopped being where the light was.

Her footsteps were so light that Ludger barely registered them even with Seismic Sense, the wind rune stealing weight and sound until she was less a person and more a moving absence threading between trees and broken stone.

Within seconds, she was gone. Only the fire remained. And the quiet breathing of Viola behind him. Ludger kept his gaze on the treeline, listening for anything that would prove the forest was watching them back.

Ludger kept his eyes on the treeline, but his mind wasn’t on the forest.

Disposable.

The word had landed wrong. Not because it was dramatic, Luna didn’t do dramatic, but because it had sounded rehearsed. Like something she’d repeated often enough that it stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like a rule.

He’d known Luna for six years.

Six years of watching her move like a shadow glued to Viola’s side. Maid in daylight, bodyguard in crowds, assassin when it mattered. She was always there when danger was possible and gone when danger became certain. Efficient. Quiet. Never asking for praise. Never asking for anything at all.

The “perfect” servant.

The kind nobles loved because they didn’t have to think about them as a person.

Luna should be sixteen now. Maybe seventeen.

Old enough that most people started looking past orders and missions and asking ugly questions like what happens after? Old enough to imagine a life that wasn’t dictated by someone else’s schedule.

When she was a kid, believing her only purpose was to protect Viola had made sense. Children needed simple structures. A role. A duty. Something solid to hold onto in a world that constantly shifted under their feet… But the world was shifting.

The Empire was unstable. Power was moving away from old houses and toward whoever could actually hold territory, resources, and people. Lionsguard was growing into something that didn’t fit into noble plans. Labyrinths were proving they weren’t just holes in the ground.

Everything was changing. Which meant Luna should be changing too. Not in skill. Not in discipline. In… ownership.

Her place in the world shouldn’t be limited to “the blade behind Viola’s shoulder.” Not anymore. If she stayed locked in that mindset, if she kept treating herself like a tool meant to be used up, then eventually someone would take her at her word.

And throw her away.

Ludger’s jaw tightened slightly as he watched the darkness where she’d vanished. He didn’t know who had taught her that she was disposable….

Ludger sighed.

Not because he was tired.

Because he was carrying too many problems at once, and his mind kept trying to pick up more.

Luna’s “disposable” comment itched at him in a way he didn’t like. It was the kind of quiet damage that didn’t bleed until years later, when it was too late to fix. He knew that.

He also knew he didn’t have room for it right now. His hands were already full.

Even before agreeing to help Viola look for Lucius, he’d been juggling Lionsguard’s expansion, training schedules, recruitment discipline, logistics, contracts, politics, and the long, unpleasant work of preparing for a future that would not be kind to his enemies. Every day there was another fire to put out. Another weakness in the system to patch before someone exploited it.

And now he was here, on the far side of a labyrinth, in an unknown land, chasing a vanished noble who had decided curiosity was worth turning the world upside down. Ludger rubbed his forehead and exhaled again.

The thought that he would probably have to head into another labyrinth after this, just for resources, just to keep the guild supplied in a new endeavor, almost made his head ache.

Almost. It didn’t.

Because there was at least one small comfort buried inside the irritation. He wasn’t doing this for free.

Lucius might be missing. Lucius might be manipulated. Lucius might be an idiot in a dozen different ways. But Lucius was still a noble with money and responsibilities.

And when Ludger dragged him back, when he dragged him back, he would demand compensation for every hour wasted, every risk taken, every plan delayed.

That didn’t make the situation better. But it made it tolerable.

Ludger stared into the firelight and let his focus settle again. Worrying about Luna’s future could wait. Right now, he needed to find Lucius. Then he could collect what he was owed.

Around the time Ludger started to worry that the Wind Overdrive rune was about to burn out, his senses caught a familiar presence cutting back through the forest.

Light. Controlled. Fast.

He didn’t move, but his attention sharpened instantly. Seismic Sense brushed the ground in a shallow sweep, just enough to track foot placement and distance.

Then Luna appeared.

She stepped out of the darkness into the firelight so suddenly that it looked like she’d been standing there the whole time and only decided to be visible now. Sweat darkened the edges of her hairline and clung to her collar and sleeves. Dirt streaked one knee. Leaves had snagged in her cloak.

But her breathing was perfectly steady. Not even slightly ragged.

Wind Overdrive still hummed faintly under her skin, keeping her movements efficient, stripping fatigue out of the journey’s worst parts.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. “You found something.”

Luna nodded once.

“There’s more ruins,” she said quietly. “A much bigger city. Not just scattered buildings, an actual city footprint.”

She swallowed, gaze flicking briefly toward the sleeping Viola before returning to Ludger.

“And it looks like Lucius was there,” Luna continued. “Very recently.”

Ludger’s posture tightened.

“How recent?”

Luna’s expression stayed controlled, but there was a faint edge to her voice now, something between urgency and certainty.

“Recent enough that the trail isn’t cold,” she said. “If we move at first light, we can catch up.”

The fire popped softly. In the background, Viola shifted in her sleep. Ludger stared into the darkness beyond the flames, mind already shifting into route planning.

Finally.

A real lead.

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