Chapter 998

Kharnek let out a low breath through his nose.

“Cannot blame them.”

“No,” Arslan said. “But we need to stop them before others get the same ideas.”

Gaius leaned over the map, bracing both hands on the table. “If Torvares forces lose cohesion, we can’t hold another full attack. Not properly. Lionsguard is exhausted, the northerners took burns pushing the golems, and half our reserve healers are dry.”

“I know,” Arslan said.

“There is also the civilian problem,” Yvar added.

Arslan looked at him. Yvar grimaced.

“The civilians helped with the wounded. That was good. Necessary. But they saw the bodies. They saw the captured being carried away. They heard enough names to understand this was not some distant battlefield beyond the walls.” He tapped the ledger lightly. “Fear is spreading faster than official updates.”

“Rumors?” Arslan asked.

“Several. Ludger is dead. Ludger is marching back with an army. Lord Torvares was captured. Lord Torvares killed the Emperor. Viola betrayed the Empire. Viola betrayed Lionfang. The northerners are leaving. The northerners are taking command. The Regent has ten more armies. The Regent has made a deal with labyrinth guardians. Someone claimed the runic golems eat children.”

Maurien tilted his head. “Do they?”

Yvar stared at him.

Maurien shrugged. “Worth confirming.”

“They do not eat children,” Yvar said.

“So far,” Maurien replied.

Arslan rubbed the bridge of his nose. For one wild moment, he missed Ludger’s reports.

His son’s reports were unpleasant, blunt, and usually included phrases like acceptable civilian casualties if the wall collapses here, which no father enjoyed hearing from a child. But at least they were organized.

This meeting was organized too, technically. It just happened to be organized around the collapse of several important things at once. Arslan looked at the map again. Lionfang had survived the first major assault.

Barely.

They had lost two hundred. Another two hundred could not fight. Fifty captured. Torvares forces cut in half. Their lord missing. Their heir missing. Ludger missing. The enemy still had runic golems, hidden assets, prisoners, and enough discipline to set emotional traps.

Wonderful. Truly, a beautiful day.

He wondered if Ludger had a prepared document titled What to Do If Everything Is Terrible and Also On Fire.

Knowing his son, probably. Knowing his son, it would have sub-sections. Arslan exhaled.

“First priority,” he said. “Stabilize morale.”

Kharnek’s head snapped toward him. “First priority is the prisoners.”

“No,” Arslan said. “First priority is making sure we still have an army capable of rescuing them.”

Kharnek’s expression darkened. Sigrid placed two fingers against his forearm. He inhaled slowly through his nose. Arslan appreciated the effort. Mostly because it meant he did not have to fight a grieving northern chieftain in the middle of a strategic meeting. His day had enough charm already.

“We send scouts,” Arslan continued. “Small groups. They track the golems, identify the holding site, and return. They do not engage unless they can save someone without revealing themselves.”

Kharnek’s hands clenched.

“Your trackers,” Arslan said to him, “will lead the first group.”

That helped. Not much. Enough.

Kharnek nodded once. “They will find them.”

“I know.”

“Then we go.”

“Then we plan.”

Kharnek’s cheek twitched, right under Sigrid’s handprint.

Sigrid said, “Then we plan.”

Kharnek grumbled something in northern. Sigrid answered in the same language. His mouth shut. Arslan decided not to ask.

“Second priority,” Arslan said. “Torvares forces. We need a message that holds them together without lying.”

Yvar frowned. “We do not know Lord Torvares’s condition.”

“Then we do not claim to.”

Darnell nodded slowly. “We say Lady Viola escaped with Lord Torvares. We say Silva is with them. We say scouts are watching for their return. A bunch of people saw the direwolf being summoned after all. Only Ludger can do that and Silva can solo the frost skeletons labyrinth.”

“That is true?” Gaius asked.

“It is true enough,” Darnell said. “Silva was with them when they left. Unless the world has gotten even worse in the last few hours.” No one answered. Because the world had been very committed to that theme lately.

“Third,” Arslan continued. “Civilian rumors. We need public work, visible order, and names.”

Yvar looked up. “Names?”

“Those confirmed dead. Those wounded. Those missing. We do not hide numbers. Not now.”

Darnell’s expression tightened. “That will hurt morale.”

“Lies will kill it.”

Maurien nodded faintly. “Fear hates empty spaces. Fill them with facts before imagination starts breeding monsters.”

“Exactly,” Arslan said.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Yvar wrote faster.

“Fourth. Defensive readiness. Gaius.”

Gaius straightened with visible effort. “Still standing.”

“Can you reinforce the southern gate?”

“With help and mana potions, yes. Alone, no. My mana is mostly gone.”

“You’ll have help.”

“Good. Because if you said inspirational nonsense, I was going to throw up on your map.”

“Do not. We need that map.”

Then the door opened. A runner stepped in, soaked to the bone, face pale. Everyone turned.

The boy stiffened under the attention and saluted so quickly he nearly smacked himself in the forehead.

“Report,” Arslan said.

“Guildmaster. First civilian count from the western district is complete. Shelters held. Some injuries from crowding and panic, but no enemy breach.”

One small mercy.

Arslan nodded. “Good. Bring the written report to Yvar.”

The runner hesitated. There was always more. Arslan waited.

The boy swallowed. “Also… people are asking when Vice Guildmaster Ludger will return.”

The room went silent again. A different silence this time. Not numbers. Not anger. Something more fragile. Arslan’s eyes lowered to the map. There were no markers for Ludger. No confirmation he had escaped the capital. No confirmation he was alive. No confirmation he was dead.

Only the fact that the Empire had not stopped being terrified of him. Which, admittedly, was a decent sign. Arslan looked up.

“What did you tell them?”

“That he is still fighting,” the runner said.

Arslan studied him.

The boy’s face reddened. “I didn’t know what else to say.”

For the first time since entering the room, Arslan smiled faintly. It was small. Tired. Sharp at the edges.

“You told them the truth.”

The runner blinked.

“Go.”

The boy saluted again and left. Kharnek stared at the closed door.

“Your boy better still be fighting.”

Arslan looked at the map.

“He is.”

Sigrid’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You know this?”

“No.”

Arslan placed one finger on the capital marker.

“But if Ludger were dead, the Regent would have announced it loudly enough for the entire empire to complain.”

Maurien raised his cup. “A sound argument. Depressing, but sound.”

Gaius nodded. “Also, if he died, something probably would have exploded and took half of the empire alongside it.”

Yvar paused in his writing.

“Something did explode,” he said.

They all looked at him. Yvar blinked.

“I mean, reports from distant watchers mentioned unusual light over the capital direction before the rain thickened. It could have been weather. Or magic discharge. Or…” He trailed off as several expressions changed. “I was saving that because we had other catastrophes.”

Arslan stared at him. Yvar slowly lowered his pen.

Outside, the rain struck the roof harder. Inside, they bent over maps, numbers, and ugly choices. Two hundred dead. Two hundred too wounded to fight. Fifty captured. Half of Torvares’s force gone. Their strongest young monster missing somewhere beyond the capital.

Their lord behind enemy lines. Their enemies disciplined, prepared, and cruel enough to understand exactly where hope hurt most.

Arslan looked at the retreat paths again. He could still see the prisoners being carried away. He could still hear Kharnek shouting. He could still feel the weight of the order he had given. Whatever happened to them was on him.

A commander who could not carry guilt had no business giving orders that killed people.

The scouts left before the night had fully settled. Just six figures slipping through the rain like guilt given legs. Three northerners, chosen by Kharnek himself. Two Lionsguard shadows, both pale from exhaustion and still stubborn enough to stand. One runner who knew the southern gullies better than most people knew their own kitchens. They left through a drainage cut beneath the western wall, crawled through mud, vanished into the dark, and took Lionfang’s last clean hope with them.

Their orders were simple. Track the runic golems. Find where the prisoners were being taken. Do not engage. Do not be seen. Return before dawn if possible.

The town remained on guard through the night, though “guard” was perhaps too generous a word for what many of them managed.

Men leaned on spears because their legs shook too badly to stand straight. Archers sat beneath awnings with bows across their knees and fingers wrapped around strings like they were afraid the weapons might run away if unattended. Northerners stood along the wall in burned cloaks and bandaged arms, glaring into the darkness as if offended that the enemy had not come closer for a proper murder.

Healers moved in shifts that were not really shifts. A shift implied there was someone to replace you. Mostly, one healer worked until their mana guttered out, another crawled over, and the first collapsed somewhere.

The rain never stopped.

It drummed over roofs, walls, helmets, corpses, carts, and the broad stone streets Ludger had insisted on reinforcing months ago. The drains swallowed red water all night, carrying the battlefield away one thin stream at a time.

No attack came. That almost made it worse. An enemy charge would have given people something to hit. Something to scream at. Something to throw fear into until it became violence.

Instead, Lionfang got waiting. Waiting with wounded people groaning in the halls. Waiting with fifty captured comrades somewhere beyond the walls. Waiting with no word from the scouts. Waiting with every distant sound turning into imagined engines.

The enemy did not attack. They let exhaustion do it for them.

No one slept well. Some did not sleep at all. Arslan was one of them.

He remained in the headquarters, standing over maps that had become less useful with every hour. The enemy’s positions were wrong now. Their numbers were wrong. Their intentions had always been guesses wrapped in ink.

The only things that remained accurate were the walls, the roads, the casualty lists, and the empty space where the scouts should have returned.

Arslan hated empty spaces. They invited imagination. And imagination, when given a battlefield and no answers, became cruel.

A lamp burned on the table beside him. Its flame trembled each time the door opened and closed. Runners came and went, bringing reports that all said the same thing in different words.

No sign of the prisoners. No word from Viola. No word from Ludger. The last one sat in Arslan’s chest like a stone. He told himself Ludger would be fine. He had told others the same.

Knowing Ludger, the boy was probably crawling out of rubble, insulting someone twice his age, and preparing a spell that would make scholars develop headaches for generations. Ludger had a remarkable talent for surviving situations that should have killed him, then complaining afterward that everyone else had made things inconvenient.

That thought should have reassured him.

It did not.

Because Ludger was still fourteen… no, fifteen, his birthday was tomorrow already… an young man who could build walls, fight monsters, and make hardened commanders feel underprepared for reality.

And Viola was younger than any of this deserved. Arslan stared at the capital marker on the map. There had been no confirmed message from her group since they fled.

Viola, Luna, Silva, and Lord Torvares were somewhere between the capital and Lionfang. Alone. Moving through enemy lines. Exhausted. Hunted by enemies and whatever else the Regent had scattered across the road like caltrops.

Arslan’s hand tightened over the edge of the table.

When morning finally came, it did not arrive with sunlight.

The sky only shifted from black to a miserable iron gray behind the clouds. Rain softened into a colder drizzle, thin enough to see through and heavy enough to keep everything wet. Smoke lingered in low sheets beyond the southern wall. The battlefield outside Lionfang looked like a graveyard that had not yet learned it was one.

Arslan was still in the meeting room when the messenger entered.

The boy could not have been older than sixteen. One of the newer members. Thin face. Wet hair plastered to his forehead. His cloak dripped onto the floor, forming a small puddle that spread around his boots.

He stepped inside, saw Arslan, and froze.

That was enough. Arslan straightened.

“What is it?”

The messenger opened his mouth. No sound came out. His eyes moved around the room.

There were people nearby. Too many. A few new members sorting supply slips. Two wounded recruits resting against the wall with cups of watered broth. A Torvares soldier speaking quietly with one of Yvar’s assistants near the shelves.

People who could hear. People who would repeat. Arslan understood before the boy said anything. His stomach went cold.

“Darnell,” Arslan said.

The captain looked up from the far side of the room.

“With me.”