That got more than the previous question had. Not much. But enough.
Gustav’s eyes shifted back to him fully now, the defeated haze in them sharpening by a degree. Rufas himself said nothing, but the tension around him tightened again. Even some of the nearby retainers, who likely did not know the full depth of what had been done in the dark under noble orders and military convenience, seemed to feel the change in the air.
Ludger continued before anyone could interrupt.
“And do you know,” he said, voice just as flat as before, “who the Guildmaster of the Obsidian Sword is?”
That landed harder. The reaction this time was not explosive. It was narrower than that, which made it more interesting.
Gustav did not flinch. He froze. Just for an instant. A small pause. A slight locking of the breath. The kind of reaction most people missed because they were too busy waiting for louder signs.
Ludger did not miss it. Because that was the useful kind of answer. Not spoken yet. But real, while the dim lantern light cut across Gustav’s worn face and the improvised chair beneath him.
Gustav stayed quiet for long enough that the entire space around the improvised chair seemed to draw tighter. Then he spoke.
“I was the leader of the Obsidian Sword.”
Ludger’s eyes opened wider. Just slightly. But in that moment, that tiny shift was more alarming than if he had shouted.
The air around him changed.
His aura darkened at once, not in color exactly, but in presence. The pressure rolling off him lost the controlled neutrality he had maintained since entering the hidden field and turned into something heavier. Colder. Sharper. It felt like standing too close to a storm that had decided it was done pretending to drift harmlessly overhead.
All around the center of the camp, people reacted instinctively. Weapons tightened in hands. Mana flared.
Several of the Dalmoren retainers shifted their footing despite their injuries, readying themselves in pure reflex because they did not understand what had just happened, only that Ludger had gone from dangerous to genuinely furious in less than a breath.
Even Rowan and Jennifer straightened further.
Not because they feared Ludger turning on them, but because they knew that whatever Gustav had just said had ripped open something ugly.
Only Eclaire understood immediately. Her expression changed with a speed that would have gone unnoticed by most people. The forced calm vanished. The uncertainty vanished. In their place came a cold, grim understanding.
Because she knew what the Obsidian Sword meant to Ludger. They were the ones responsible for the deaths of Arslan’s parents. And Arslan’s sister. Old blood. Family blood.
The kind that did not fade just because years had passed and new enemies had appeared.
Ludger did not move. That was the worst part.
He just stood there, staring at Gustav, while the dark pressure around him thickened enough that even the people who knew nothing about the history behind it began to realize that this was not ordinary anger. This was something more personal. Something old.
Gustav, to his credit, did not recoil.
He looked tired, broken, and painfully aware of how bad this had become, but he did not try to walk the statement back. Instead, he continued.
“Armandis decided to dispose of me,” he said, his voice rough, “because one of the bases tied to my guild was attacked and destroyed.”
His eyes stayed on Ludger.
“He knew that anyone who found a place like that would eventually find me. And once they found me, they would find the connection between us.”
The meaning settled over the camp in pieces. Not cleanly. Not for everyone. But enough to make the silence worse. Gustav exhaled faintly.
“I assumed,” he said, “that was you.”
That was when the last pieces clicked into place. For Ludger. For Eclaire. The prison. The execution order. The urgency behind the purge. The convenient decision to erase Gustav and everyone around him before questions could spread too far.
It all fit now.
Armandis had not simply wanted a loose end removed. He had wanted a trail burned out before someone could walk it back to him. Rufas looked between them, his brow tightening.
“What,” he asked at last, “does that mean?”
His voice carried the strain of a man who knew the answer mattered and hated that everyone important in the conversation seemed ahead of him by several steps.
Eclaire glanced once at Ludger first. He had not moved. Had not spoken. Which was exactly why she answered.
“It means,” she said, her voice controlled and much calmer than the atmosphere deserved, “that the Obsidian Sword wasn’t just some criminal organization tied to Armandis.”
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She looked at Rufas directly.
“They were responsible for the deaths of Ludger’s grandparents on his father’s side.”
A few people nearby stiffened.
Then she added, without softening any of it, “And Arslan’s sister.”
That landed like a hammer. Rufas’s eyes widened. Not from the political implication first, but from the immediate obvious consequence standing right in front of him. Because once that was said aloud, Ludger’s silence stopped feeling mysterious.
It became alarming in a much more direct way. Eclaire’s gaze flicked back toward Gustav, then to Ludger again.
“And right now,” she said, with grim bluntness, “Ludger is probably wondering why he shouldn’t just smash Gustav’s head under his foot.”
Nobody in the camp mistook that for exaggeration. Not with the way the darkness around. Ludger felt. Not with the way his eyes remained fixed on Gustav. Not with the simple fact that, if he chose to do it, there were very few people here in any condition to stop him.
For several long seconds, no one spoke. Gustav sat in the wheelchair, too broken to flee and too tired to pretend he had not just placed his neck under the heel of a man with every personal reason to crush it.
Rufas looked suddenly torn between stepping in and knowing that stepping in carelessly might get someone killed faster.
Rowan remained ready, but did not interfere. Jennifer’s face had lost all trace of amusement.
Eclaire stood still, watching Ludger with the focused caution of someone who knew this was one of those moments where a person could become someone else if they leaned too hard in the wrong direction.
And in the middle of it all, Ludger finally moved. Just one step. Forward.
The camp tightened as one. Weapons rose a little higher. Someone near the back drew in a breath too sharply. Rufas uncle tensed beside the chair as if instinct still demanded he try something, broken odds or not.
Ludger stopped in front of Gustav and looked down at him. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet.
That made it worse.
“You were the leader,” he said.
Not a question. A confirmation. A fact dragged into the open. Gustav held his gaze.
“Yes.”
Ludger’s jaw flexed once. The dark pressure around him pressed outward again, enough to make nearby people feel it like weight on the chest.
Then he asked, in that same low voice, “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you now.”
And this time, nobody in the camp believed for even a second that it was an empty threat.
Gustav met Ludger’s stare without looking away.
“If you want to kill me,” he said, “then do it.”
The words came out tired, but not weak. Not brave either. Just stripped down to the point where fear no longer had enough energy left to pretend it could bargain by itself.
His hands shifted slightly against the arms of the improvised chair. Not enough to rise. Not enough to defend himself. Just enough to show that some stubborn part of him was still present beneath all the damage.
“I only gave the order after I was told those apothecaries were a problem,” he continued. “But I was still the one who told Hans what to do.”
That made the air feel even colder. Eclaire’s expression hardened further. Rufas closed his eyes briefly, as if hearing the shape of the confession mattered even less than the fact that it existed at all.
Gustav went on anyway.
“I don’t mind dying after all this,” he said. “I lost everything.”
There was no drama in it. No self-pity either. Just ruin stated plainly.
Then his gaze sharpened, and for the first time since they reached the center of the camp, something like real resistance appeared in him again.
“But unless you promise me your revenge ends with me and with those above me,” he said, “and not with everyone around here, I won’t say anything else.”
That shifted the tension again.
Several of the people nearby stiffened, not because they understood every name and thread in play, but because they understood the core of it well enough. Gustav was placing himself between Ludger and the rest of them. Whether out of guilt, obligation, or simple necessity hardly mattered in that moment.
Ludger looked down at him, expression unreadable.
Then he asked, voice flat enough to scrape, “Why do you think you have any room to demand anything from me?”
Gustav let out a faint breath through his nose. Because that was the real question, wasn’t it? Why was a broken man in a wooden chair trying to negotiate with someone who could crush his skull before the next heartbeat ended?
“Because,” Gustav said, “I know enough to make your revenge reach everyone involved.”
That drew silence across the camp. Not empty silence. Interested silence. Dangerous silence. Gustav’s gaze stayed on Ludger’s face.
“Without me,” he said, “your revenge won’t be complete.”
There it was. Not arrogance. Leverage. Ugly, desperate leverage, but real all the same. He was not claiming strength. He was claiming usefulness.
Claiming that if Ludger killed him now, then the blood debt might remain unpaid in all the ways that actually mattered. The dead would still be dead, but the chain behind their deaths would stay partly buried. Some names would remain hidden. Some collaborators would slip free. Some hands would never be cut off because the man who could identify them had already been silenced.
Ludger understood that immediately. Of course he did. That was what made Gustav dangerous despite his condition. Not his body. Not the camp. Not even the Dalmoren name.
Information.
The one thing Ludger had come for in the first place.
The dark pressure around him did not lessen, but it changed shape slightly, pulled tighter rather than spreading outward. More controlled. More focused.
Rufas said nothing, but his shoulders eased by the smallest degree. Not relief. Just recognition that Gustav had found the one argument worth making. Ludger stared at Gustav for another long second.
Then another. The camp did not breathe. Finally, he spoke.
“You’re in no position to protect anyone,” Ludger said.
Gustav’s mouth twitched faintly. “Probably not.”
“But you think you can buy them time.”
“Yes.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed.
“And you’re betting I care more about finishing this properly than I do about killing you quickly.”
Gustav did not answer right away. When he did, his voice was rough but steady.
“I’m betting,” he said, “that if the people your father lost matter to you as much as they should, then you won’t settle for half a grave.”
That was a dangerous sentence. A very dangerous one. Not because it was insulting, but because it was close enough to truth to be worth hearing. Eclaire shifted slightly, ready in case Ludger took it the wrong way.
He didn’t. At least not visibly. His aura remained dark. His gaze remained hard. But the impulse to kill Gustav where he sat had been forced to share space with something else now.
Purpose. Because Gustav was right about one thing. Dead men ended conversations. And Ludger was not done with this one yet.
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