The clash of blade and footwork drew louder whispers, more boots crunching into a loose circle around the spar. Even exhausted men who had been too tired to lift their heads now stood straighter, eyes sharp with something close to hope.

The tent flap snapped open.

Lord Torvares stormed out, cloak dragging through the dust, his scowl already set in stone. His voice thundered like rolling drums:

“What in the hells is this circus—”

But the words froze in his throat.

His gaze locked on Viola, her sword blazing with enhancing as she drove herself into another Overdrive burst, her hair wild, her stance steady even through her panting. He turned then to Ludger, weaving away with smooth, precise steps, gauntlets flashing as he flowed around her strikes like water avoiding fire.

The old man’s eyes widened. His jaw, so ready to unleash fury, slackened instead. The murmurs of the soldiers reached him—whispers of awe, not mockery. Hope, not doubt.

Torvares’s fists unclenched. His scowl eased, not into a smile but into something sharper, more thoughtful. He didn’t bark, didn’t break the moment. He simply folded his arms and stood in silence, watching.

For the first time in weeks, the camp wasn’t weighed down by despair. For the first time in weeks, the men were talking not of wounds or losses, but of skill, of fire, of bloodlines that still burned like steel in the forge.

Ludger noticed her grandfather at the edge of his vision, but he didn’t flinch. He just smirked faintly, slipping past another slash, his voice carrying in the hush.

“Eyes up, Viola. Everyone’s watching now.”

And she swung again, fiercer than ever.

Ludger’s smirk sharpened. Enough dodging—it was time to end this.

Viola charged again, sword raised high, Overdrive bursting in her legs. Her blade cut down with all the fury she could muster—only for Ludger to pivot, his armguards hand snapping up.

Steel met steel with a sharp clang. His other hand drove forward, twisting her wrist just enough—her sword ripped free from her that hand grip, almost clattering into the dirt.

Gasps rippled through the watching soldiers. Viola staggered, her chest heaving, knees threatening to give. For a heartbeat, it looked like she would collapse outright.

But instead of falling, she grabbed her blade point-first into the ground, catching it with trembling hands. She leaned on it, shoulders shaking, but she stayed upright. Mud spattered her boots, sweat slicked her brow, but her eyes burned with defiance.

Maybe it was willpower. Maybe it was pride. Or maybe she simply refused to let the ground claim her, not here, not in front of them all.

The soldiers exchanged glances, whispers rising again—not mocking, but admiring. “She won’t fall.” “Even beaten, she stands.”

Ludger straightened, lowering his fists, his smirk fading into something steadier. He didn’t taunt her, didn’t gloat. Instead, he gave the smallest nod, acknowledging her stubborn strength.

Lord Torvares’s eyes narrowed, studying the two of them. His anger had cooled into something else entirely—a mix of calculation and pride he didn’t bother to hide.

The spar was over. But the impression it left behind was carved deep into the camp.

By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, the camp was swallowed in the orange glow of fires and the dim light of lanterns. The smell of ash clung thicker now, the air heavy with sweat and smoke.

Ludger sat on a low stool outside one of the healer’s tents, arms resting across his knees. His palms still tingled faintly from channeling [Healing Touch] again and again, mana running thin as he’d moved from cot to cot beside Aronia. She worked until her hands shook, but with Ludger at her side the pace was faster, steadier. For the first time that day, she’d been able to sit down without immediately passing out.

Now, the boy let his muscles relax, smirk faint as he exhaled into the night. Around him, soldiers moved slower, quieter. Some gnawed on hard bread, some leaned on their spears like they might fall asleep standing, some didn’t even bother with food—just dropped to the dirt, too tired to care.

No alarms. No sudden calls to arms.

It was strange. Ludger had expected barbarians to thrive in the dark, to launch wild raids that cut throats while men slept. But the camp was still, too still.

He scanned the horizon, the line of black against black where the ruined town sat. No torches bobbing in the distance, no drums or horns. Just silence.

They’re not even testing the walls at night, he thought, brows knitting. Do they have no scouts, or are ours just that good?

The soldiers around him didn’t seem worried. Some laughed in low voices. Others dozed where they sat. But Ludger wasn’t sure if it was calm… or exhaustion so deep it looked like peace.

He leaned back, eyes half-lidded, listening to the quiet crackle of the fires. For now, at least, the night was theirs.

But in the back of his mind, the unease stayed sharp. No raids, no movement. Either they’re too disciplined to waste the effort… or they’re planning something worse.

Ludger finally pushed himself off the stool and slipped back to his family’s corner of the camp. The night was cool, the firelight painting long shadows across the mud. Soldiers snored nearby, others leaned in quiet clusters, their voices low and tired.

Inside the tent, Arslan was stripping out of his dented armor piece by piece, every motion deliberate, as if each buckle weighed a ton. The stink of steel and sweat clung to him. Ludger sat down opposite, stretching out his legs.

“When’s the next push?” Ludger asked flatly.

Arslan glanced up, brow furrowed. “Push?”

“You know what I mean,” Ludger pressed. “When are we attacking again?”

For a moment Arslan just stared, then gave a sharp exhale that was half a laugh, half a groan. He shrugged, the motion heavy.

“Only when Viola’s grandfather thinks we’ve got a chance in hell of winning,” he said at last. “Until then, it’s just… waiting. Patching wounds, burying bodies, keeping the men from falling apart.”

Ludger leaned back, frowning. So that’s it. No plan. Just bleed and stall until Torvares calls the next gamble.

Arslan’s voice was quieter when he added, “Don’t think I like it, either. But that’s war. You don’t swing unless you think you can land the hit.”

Ludger smirked faintly, though his eyes stayed sharp. “Guess I’ll save my strength then. No point showing off in a fight that isn’t coming.”

Ludger lay back too, staring at the canvas ceiling. Only when Torvares decides there’s a chance of winning, huh? He closed his eyes, unease gnawing at his chest. Then we’d better pray he decides right.

Ludger waited until Arslan had scrubbed the last rivet from his armor and sat back on his cot, the lines of the man’s face sharper in the brazier light. He pushed himself up on an elbow, voice low.

“Okay,” he said. “If we want that wall back—what actually beats those bastards holed up there? Brute force isn’t working. Sieges are boring. What else do we have?”

Arslan let the question sit. He rubbed his jaw, thinking like a general—supply, morale, magic, and the blunt geometry of the battlefield. When he spoke, it was calm and slow, the kind of answer you hear after a long fight.

“Shamans,” he said. “They’re the spine of this mess. The men we face don’t fight as barbarians anymore because somebody has taught them to fight together. The shamans give them order: rites to steady the courage, tricks that blind our scouts, fires that don’t behave like normal fire. Cut the shamans and the spine goes limp.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed. He’d heard the strange magic the barbarians used — not crude, but threaded, like someone taught them to use the labyrinth’s noise. “So take the shamans.”

Arslan nodded. “But not by throwing men at them. Shamans sit deep in the defenses or behind the walls—protected. You can’t just run at them and expect to survive. You have to drag the magic out and smother it.”

Ludger pictured it: a controlled burn of enemy magic, a counter that unstitched their rhythm. He felt the plan forming like a knife being sharpened.

Ludger chews the inside of his cheek, watching the way the fires lick the tents. The plan in his head is a clean thing — more mages, more control; drown the shamans’ channels in supervised mana so their rites fizzle instead of roaring. Make the battlefield a chessboard of flames and fog you can steer.

He opens his mouth to say it.

Arslan cuts him off with a shake of the head, slow and tired. “You think we don’t know that?” he says. He pins Ludger with that same look he used to pin down a crate on a ship. “Mages aren’t like spearmen you can pull off a wagon. They’re expensive in coin, in food, in protection — in loyalty. They need wards and apprentices and constant supplies. They want pay, privileges, houses that don’t smell like a field hospital. You keep a mage here, you feed an entire annex of politics with him.”

Ludger blinks. The simplicity of his suggestion runs headlong into the camp’s reality. “So we don’t have them because… we can’t afford the circus?”

Arslan’s laugh is a dry thing. “Not just the circus. A mage is leverage. Keep one too close and he becomes bargaining chip or target. Keep too many and the capital asks questions—‘Why so many mages at the border? What are you planning, Torvares?’ Then you have nobles sniffing, the treasury tightening, and the whole thing collapses into memos and indecision.” He looks at the rows of wounded and the stacks of wood and the empty eyes of the men. “We don’t have the luxury. We have what we have: Aronia, Cor, the odd freelance who comes by for coin. We make do.”

Arslan sat on a stump near the firepit, gnawing at a strip of jerky, his sword propped lazily against his shoulder. The firelight caught in his sharp gaze , but his eyes carried the same fatigue as the rest of the camp.

Ludger approached, arms crossed, face serious. No point in sugarcoating it.

“Father. If my ideas about stretching mage power aren’t enough, then I’ll fight too. At the very least, I can heal the wounded before they’re useless. That way, we can keep the pressure until their shamans burn out of mana.”

Arslan froze mid-chew. Slowly, he tore the last of the jerky with his teeth, swallowed, and gave Ludger a long look. A flicker of pride passed through his features, but it was tempered with something harder.

“Eight years old and already talking like a commander.” He chuckled, though his voice was low, wary. “If Torvares hears that, he’ll try to chain you inside a tent.”

“I’m not asking him.” Ludger’s tone was flat, his small hands clenched at his sides. “You know I can do it. I helped Aronia today. I kept men standing that would’ve been dead weight. If I do the same on the field, we bleed slower than they do. And if I have to use my fists—” He flexed his arm, the faint gleam of red-silver under his sleeve catching firelight. “—I will.”

Arslan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at his son. For once, the usual grin was gone.

“You’re serious.”

“As serious as the graves we’ll be digging if no one plugs the holes.”

For a moment, only the crackle of fire filled the silence. Then Arslan laughed softly, shaking his head.

“Gods damn it, Ludger.” He rubbed his unshaved beard, then reached over and squeezed Ludger’s shoulder. “Alright. But if you’re set on this, you stick close to Aronia and Cor. Heal first, fight second. Got it?”

Ludger folded his hands and said it plainly, the kind of blunt logic adults rarely heard from children and even more rarely answered. “It’ll be faster if I stay close to the frontlines. I patch someone up at the edge, they get back in the line. I patch three, four—pressure stays on. And if I get lucky, I can snipe a shaman or two before they coil a spell. Disrupt the rhythm, force them to waste mana.”

He didn’t try to dress it up with bravery. He sounded like someone calculating coin yields. Short, efficient. Arslan watched him, jaw working under his beard. The fire painted Ludger’s face in orange and shadow; the red-silver on his armguards flashed like a promise.

Arslan sighed—not the easy laugh-sigh Ludger expected, but a slow, tired sound that carried salt and old iron. For a second his expression softened, then hardened again. “You’re stubborn,” he said, not unkindly. “Like me. Like a mule who thinks cliffs are just inconvenient hills.” He pushed his plate away and spat into the dirt. “But you also think in numbers, Luds. You think like a commander or a damn ledger.”

Ludger shrugged. “I think like someone who doesn’t want to dig graves faster than we can fill them.”

Arslan’s eyes went colder then, the way they did when he’d slept in wet armor and seen brothers drown in a river of blood. “You don’t understand half of it.” He rubbed his temple. “I don’t pretend I care about every life the way Elaine does—her heart’s too big for camp life—but I’m not stupid. I know when we need bodies in the field and when we need them breathing. You getting up close will save lives, maybe cost some. That’s war.”

He looked at Ludger like a man measuring a blade’s weight. “If you’re going to be within knife’s reach of rune smoke and bone-magic, you’ll learn fast what it does to a boy. Don’t be proud. Don’t be theatrical.” He cleared his throat. “And if you try to take a life…make sure you’re ready for what that leaves behind.”

Ludger only nodded. He’d seen Arslan fight, clap a man’s head off, laugh, then wake the next morning like nothing had happened. That indifference—Arslan’s ability to treat killing as a tool—sat in Ludger’s chest like a lodged coin. He didn’t admire it. He learned from it. He felt, too, a bitter relief: if his father could do that, maybe Ludger could do what needed doing without getting crushed by the weight of it.

He tightened the straps on his armguards until the red-silver metal hummed faint against his skin. “I’ll stay close. I’ll heal first, hit second. I’ll keep my head.” He wasn’t sure whether that last promise was to Arslan or to himself. The night swallowed the words and the camp settled back into restless sleep, the battlefield a dark thing waiting for them all.

Arslan stared into the flames like he was reading the shape of his own end. The fire painted his face in hard planes—lines carved by years on the road, by nights sleeping with one ear for ambush. He breathed out slow, as if the words had weight he needed to set down.

“If I die out there,” he said finally, voice low enough that only Ludger heard, “I’ll accept it. I’ve broken enough nights on this road to know how it ends for a man. I won’t beg for it to be soft.” He gave a humorless little laugh that didn’t reach his eyes. “Hell, Elaine will make a storm out of the bones. She’ll burn the world twice over to drag me back—or she’ll bury me and make a blade out of the grave. Either way, she won’t let my corpse be an excuse for peace.”

Ludger felt the name like a strike. Elaine—soft, fierce, all the parts of a mother that broke and rebuilt in equal measure. Arslan’s mouth twitched. “She won’t let any of us go clean. That’s her nature. If I go, she’ll make the war personal. She’ll raise ghosts if the price is right.”

He turned his gaze back to the boy. “But that’s not what scares me.” The flames snapped. “I can stand to die. I can stand to be cut and buried and cursed a hundred ways. The thing I won’t stand for is this—” His hand brushed Ludger’s arm, callused and warm. “—is to fail you and Viola. To be the man who couldn’t make sure you two woke up into a day that wasn’t full of shouted orders and funeral lists.”

Arslan’s voice narrowed, honest and ragged. “I can take a hundred wounds if it means you two get to grow up in a world that doesn’t smell of blood. I can take fire, sword, whatever. I can die a hundred deaths if each one stitches a little peace onto what’s left. But if I die and the only thing I leave is you two learning how to bury people—” He stopped, jaw working. “I won’t forgive myself. I can’t.”

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