Ludger let it happen for a few seconds. Then movement at the guild entrance caught his eye. Yvar.

The scholar-archivist had clearly been inside, working, until the commotion finally forced him out. He stepped into the doorway with his usual controlled posture, eyes already scanning the convoy, counting heads, counting injuries, counting crates, and building a mental ledger before anyone handed him a physical one.

He spotted Ludger and approached.

Ludger didn’t waste time.

“Yvar,” he said. “Pay the kids properly today.”

Yvar blinked once. “Today?”

“Today,” Ludger repeated. “They earned it. They’re tired. If you make them wait, they’ll spend their week off being angry instead of recovering.”

Yvar’s mouth tightened in that way it did when he wanted to argue but knew the logic was clean.

He nodded. “Understood.”

Ludger jerked his chin toward the stacked cargo. “We sort materials after. Silk, feathers, anything else. Inventory can wait a few hours.”

Yvar nodded again, already turning the plan into steps. Understood.”

“Good.”

Ludger watched him for a moment, then asked the question he’d been holding since the port.

“Was everything alright while we were gone?”

Yvar hesitated. Just a fraction. But Ludger caught it anyway. Yvar’s eyes flicked away, toward the yard, the walls, the moving people, like he was choosing which truth to present first. Then he looked back at Ludger and spoke carefully.

“Things were all right,” he said.

Another pause, smaller than the first, but heavier.

“…From a certain perspective.”

The noise of celebration kept going around them, but for Ludger, it dulled.

His gaze sharpened.

“Explain,” he said, quietly. Not angry. Just ready.

Yvar swallowed once… And that single motion told Ludger more than the words had.

“We’ve been receiving complaints,” he said. “More than a few.”

Ludger’s expression didn’t change. “From who?”

“From neighboring territories,” Yvar replied. “Specifically the lords whose roads we’ve been using for deliveries.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed a fraction.

Yvar said, already anticipating the next question. “We’ve been sending escorts.”

He paused, then added carefully, “Including northerners.”

Ludger didn’t interrupt. He just listened.

Yvar continued. “Not alone, of course. Mixed escorts. We kept it controlled, clear rules, clear routes, no unnecessary stops.”

“And yet,” Ludger said.

“And yet people are still complaining,” Yvar finished. “They’re writing to the local lords, claiming the northerners are ‘causing trouble’ in their lands.”

Ludger’s gaze hardened. “Define trouble.”

Yvar’s mouth tightened. “That’s part of the issue. The complaints are vague. ‘Intimidating presence.’ ‘Rude behavior.’ ‘Unsettling the locals.’ A couple of accusations about threats and aggressive conduct, no specifics, no names, no consistent details.”

He tapped the side of his ledger once, as if knocking sense into it.

“I haven’t questioned the northerners yet,” Yvar said. “Because they are complaints for now. Not charges. And if I start interrogating our allies every time a noble gets uncomfortable, we create a real problem ourselves.”

Ludger nodded slightly. “But it could become something.”

Yvar’s eyes flicked up. “It might. If the lords decide to make it a political issue rather than a social one. Even baseless complaints can be sharpened into restrictions. Fees. Route closures. ‘Protective’ patrols that just happen to slow our wagons.”

Ludger was quiet for a moment, then asked the simple question.

“Do you believe the complaints are true?”

Yvar shook his head once.

Not hesitant. Not uncertain. One clean motion.

“No,” he said.

Ludger’s eyes narrowed further. “Why?”

“Because I’ve read enough of them,” Yvar replied. “They don’t match behavior. They match a narrative.”

He leaned in slightly, voice dropping.

“It feels like a reaction,” Yvar said. “A coordinated one. People trying to make the northerners look like a problem so our alliance looks unstable.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched, not amusement, recognition.

“So,” he said, “someone wants to demoralize the Lionsguard.”

Yvar nodded. “Or pressure us into dropping the northerners. Either outcome weakens us. It isolates Lionfang. It makes us easier to manage.”

Ludger stared past Yvar, out across the yard where new members were still buzzing about wages and bracers and time off, oblivious to the blades being sharpened somewhere outside the walls.

He exhaled.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “Then we treat it as hostile action until proven otherwise.”

Yvar closed his ledger with a soft snap, like he was sealing the conversation into a task list.

“Go home,” he told Ludger. “I’ll handle storage. Inventory. Sorting. The silk, the feathers, everything.”

Ludger blinked once, then nodded.

There wasn’t much else he could do today anyway. Not without turning “help” into “standing in the way.” Yvar was built for this part, the boring, critical work that kept a guild from collapsing under its own success.

The yard was still loud. People were celebrating their week off, talking about pay, dragging each other toward the barracks like sleep was a sacred ritual. The sun was already sinking, staining the stone walls orange.

Fine, Ludger thought. Might as well.

He started walking.

Home wasn’t far, but it felt distant in the way it always did after an expedition. Like you came back as a slightly different person and had to pretend the old routines still fit.

He’d need to let his family know he’d returned. Elaine would have noticed the moment he stepped through the gate, even if nobody told her. Arslan would pretend to be calm and then ask questions that cut straight to the dangerous parts. The twins would probably climb him like he was a tree.

Viola wasn’t here, which would reduce the shouting by at least half.

That was a blessing. Still… Ludger’s mind snagged on the next part. Explaining.

Not the easy details. Not “we harvested silk and fought spiders.”

The real parts.

The Spider Queen’s voice. The city inside the labyrinth. The implication that the Empire had always known about sapient guardians and had chosen to sit on it like a secret meant to rot. What would change. What needed to change. And what Ludger needed to do.

He rubbed at his wrist absently, feeling the forearm guard there like a reminder that everything he touched turned into more responsibility. Even now, walking home, his thoughts were already reaching past the expedition and into the next ugly layer.

People were bothering him. Not physically, not yet, but politically. Noise around the guild. Pressure around Lionfang. The capital’s games are still echoing out here, in the form of complaints and whispers and “concerns.”

It made certain options feel… tempting. He’d been considering it again lately. The plan he’d kept in the back of his skull like a knife hidden in a boot: Taking labyrinths from other guilds.

Especially after what had happened at the capital, after seeing how the Empire treated power when it didn’t belong to them. If he didn’t secure resources, someone else would. Someone worse. Still… he wasn’t that reckless. Not yet.

It would be better to wait a bit longer. Let the current members stabilize. Let the new recruits become actual Lionsguard, not just people wearing bracers and confidence. Let the guild learn to run deliveries and escorts and training without him micromanaging every breath. Because if he expanded too fast, it wouldn’t matter how many labyrinths he claimed. The foundation would crack. And cracks were where enemies crawled in.

Ludger exhaled slowly and kept walking, the last light of the day stretching his shadow long across the street. Home. Family. A warm meal. A conversation he couldn’t avoid… And behind it all, the quiet certainty that the next steps were already forming, whether he wanted them to or not.

On the walk back, Ludger’s mind wouldn’t shut up.

Lionfang was growing. The Lionsguard was growing. His influence was spreading in slow, steady lines like roots under stone. But roots weren’t enough.

If he wanted the Lionsguard to become the heart of the north of the Empire, the place people thought of first when they needed protection, work, training, trade, or answers, then “we have a guild” and “we have businesses” wouldn’t cut it.

Businesses were good. They made money. They pulled people in. They didn’t change belief.

He needed something truly revolutionary. Something so obvious and undeniable that even idiots with titles would have to admit: this place is different.

A thing you could point at. A thing you could feel. Easier said than done.

His thoughts spiraled through options like a smith turning metal over a flame. Infrastructure. Training academies. Runic workshops. Healing services. Logistics hubs. A town layout built around defense and trade efficiency. An actual, honest system that didn’t rely on noble moods.

Each idea was solid. Each idea was also another workload landing on his shoulders. Ludger exhaled slowly.

He had so many things to do that, for a ridiculous moment, he genuinely considered learning some absurd spell, shadow clone, mirror self. Something that would let him split the work in half. Let a copy of himself deal with paperwork and planning while the real one slept, trained, or handled the dangerous parts.

It would be incredibly useful. It was also a perfect sign that he was thinking like an idiot. Because the real answer wasn’t magic. It was delegation. He didn’t need another Ludger. He needed to get better at using the people he already had.

Arslan. Yvar. Darnell. The captains. The new members with fire in their eyes. Even the northerners, if he structured it right. A guild wasn’t a weapon you swung alone. It was a machine, and he was still trying to get every gear at once.

Learn how to delegate, he told himself, the thought sharp and unpleasant like swallowing a bitter herb.

He was still thinking about that, about systems, about revolutionary proof, about the shape of the future, when he reached home.

The familiar door. The familiar frame. The quiet, warm smell of living people and cooked food and safety that didn’t have teeth.

He pushed the door open. Absentminded. That was the mistake.

The next second, something small and fast slammed into his legs with the force of a siege ram that had discovered joy. Ludger’s balance vanished. He went down. Hard.

The world tilted, the ceiling rushed into view, and for a heartbeat his brain tried to treat it like an ambush before it caught the high-pitched sound that followed.

“LUDGER!”

“Ludger! Ludger!”

Arash and Elle, tiny, terrifying, and apparently fueled by infinite stamina, had tackled him like they’d been training for it all week. Small hands grabbed at his clothes. Little bodies climbed him like he was a mountain that needed conquering.

He lay there, staring at the ceiling, stunned in the specific way only family could stun you.

Their faces popped into his view, wide eyes, bright smiles, messy hair, pure accusation that he had been gone too long. They kept calling his name like it was a spell.

Ludger didn’t move for a moment. He just… breathed. Let the tension drain out of him in one slow release. He stared at the ceiling, twins on top of him like living weights, and the thought finally landed with quiet certainty. He was home.

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