When they returned to Lionfang, the group split up soon after entering town.
No dramatic pause at the gate. No long exchange about everything that had happened. The trip back had already stripped most of the useless words away, and Lionfang itself had the same rough, steady rhythm as always, people working, guards moving, voices carrying through the air, life continuing because frontier towns did not have the luxury of stopping just because the world kept proving itself rotten.
So once they were inside, they separated naturally. None of them looked entirely at ease.
They were satisfied, at least in one narrow sense, that Ludger had not killed everyone in that hidden camp. That mattered. More than they had expected at one point. The version of events they had feared most had not happened. Rufas and the others had escaped. Gustav had died by choice and purpose rather than dragging the rest of his family into the grave with him. The hunt was over, at least on the surface, and the Dalmoren line had not been wiped out under Ludger’s heel.
That was enough to count as a victory. A very unpleasant one, but still a victory. And yet none of them seemed lighter for it.
Because the farther they had gone into the truth behind Gustav, Orleandul, Armandis, and the Regent, the harder it had become to pretend they were dealing with a single hidden rot that could be cut out cleanly. Every answer had led to more filth. More dead ends. More powerful men nested inside systems large enough to hide them.
The darkness inside the Empire did not look finite anymore. That was the problem. It looked endless. Like a tunnel that kept going deeper every time someone brought in more light.
Eclaire, Rowan, and Jennifer all understood that now, and it followed them as they disappeared into different parts of Lionfang.
Ludger watched them go for a moment, then kept walking on his own. The town moved around him as usual, but his thoughts had already turned inward again.
Because while the capital, the hunt, and Gustav’s confession were now behind him in practical terms, something else had been pushed closer instead of resolved.
His parents.
More specifically… how long he could continue saying nothing.
He had been acting in the dark for a while now. Digging. Hunting. Following pieces of the old trail left behind by the people who had arranged the deaths of his father’s parents and sister. Some of it had overlapped with larger threats. Some of it had become tangled with guild matters, politics, and all the other problems that kept trying to pile themselves on top of his life. But at the center of it, one truth remained unchanged.
He had been hunting them. And Arslan didn’t know the full extent of that.
Elaine probably suspected more than she let on. She usually did. But suspicion was not the same as hearing it said aloud. Not the same as being told directly that their son had been tracing the men behind an old family murder and had now learned that the order itself had come from the commander of all imperial forces.
Ludger’s expression remained flat as he walked, but the thought sat badly in him. Because that was no small thing to bring home. Not a distant enemy who could be cursed in the privacy of one’s own walls.
The commander of all the forces of the Empire.
A man positioned high enough that even saying his name in the wrong place could become a political problem. A man with rank, reach, protection, and years of buried rot under him.
How exactly was Arslan supposed to react to that? Ludger could picture a few possibilities. None of them were particularly comforting.
Arslan might get angry. Not at the dead. Not even at the revelation itself.
At Ludger.
At the fact that he had been moving through this alone. Digging into old blood without saying enough. Taking risks tied not just to family grief, but to imperial structures large enough to crush ordinary houses and guilds if they pushed carelessly.
That would be fair, honestly. Annoying, but fair.
Or Arslan might go quiet in that particular way of his, where the lack of immediate emotion was usually far more dangerous than shouting. The kind of silence that meant he was thinking too many things at once: his parents, his sister, the years between then and now, the son standing in front of him with answers too late to save anyone and dangerous enough to start a war inside a man’s chest.
That option was worse.
Elaine… Ludger was less certain about. No, that wasn’t true. He was certain enough.
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Elaine would understand the shape of it too quickly. The personal side. The risk. The fact that Ludger had been carrying something this ugly without laying it down at home. She would probably be calmer than Arslan on the surface.
Which, naturally, made her far more terrifying. Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose as he continued through Lionfang.
It might be time. That was the irritating conclusion. Not because he wanted to explain. Explaining things like this was exhausting.
But because enough pieces had now moved into the open that staying silent was becoming its own kind of stupidity. If Orleandul truly sat at the center of all this, then the matter was no longer only Ludger’s to carry. It had always been tied to Arslan by blood. Now it was tied to House Torvares, Lionsguard, and probably every future choice they made regarding the Empire as well.
Keeping it to himself any longer would not be caution. It would be selfishness disguised as control.
He disliked that thought. Mostly because it sounded true.
So as Lionfang’s familiar roads stretched ahead of him and the air carried the rough, lived-in smell of stone, dust, metal, and frontier life, Ludger found himself thinking not about the Regent or the capital or even Gustav’s final confession… but about his father.
And beneath all of that, quieter and more irritating than the rest, sat another thought:
after hearing that, Arslan might stop seeing this as Ludger’s hunt and start treating it as his own. That possibility changed things too. Ludger didn’t know yet whether that would make the burden lighter or heavier. Probably both.
When Ludger returned home, it was already midafternoon.
The light had softened a little by then, turning the stone and packed earth around the guild into warmer colors that made Lionfang look calmer than it had any right to. After everything that had happened in the capital, the sight of home felt almost strangely ordinary.
The guild itself seemed to be moving at a slower pace today. Not inactive. Just steady.
The sort of pace that settled over the place when there was work to do, but no immediate crisis trying to bite someone’s head off. A few members moved supplies across the yard. Someone was arguing in the distance over inventory. Another pair was carrying practice gear toward one of the side buildings. It all felt rough, lived-in, familiar.
And in the middle of the yard, Arslan was teaching the twins.
Ludger slowed without meaning to.
Arash and Elle stood in front of their father with wooden sticks in hand, both trying very hard to look serious. Arslan stood across from them with his arms folded for a moment, saying something in that patient but firm tone he only used when he actually wanted someone to learn properly instead of just survive the lesson through stubbornness.
The twins nodded at his words with all the solemn intensity children could gather when they truly believed they were being treated like capable people.
Then they swung. Not well. But better than before.
Their little wooden sticks cut through the air with more focus this time, less random flailing, more intention. Arash overcommitted a little on the follow-through. Elle’s grip was slightly too tense. Arslan corrected both immediately, tapping one stance into place and adjusting the angle of the other without losing the rhythm of the lesson.
Again, he told them. So they did it again. Ludger stayed where he was and watched.
He knew Arslan had said more than once that he would rather let the twins grow a little more freely before dragging them too deeply into training. And that was true. Arslan meant it. He didn’t want to shove a sword into every child’s hands the moment they could stand.
Still… Watching him now, it was obvious he was enjoying himself. Quite a lot, actually.
There was an ease in him that rarely appeared during more serious instruction. He corrected their footing, showed them how to hold the sticks properly, made Arash stop trying to swing like he was fighting the final boss of reality, and reminded Elle that concentration did not mean glaring at the target like she wanted to insult it into submission.
The twins listened with bright-eyed seriousness. Arslan laughed a few times. Actually laughed.
Not the dry short kind he gave around guild business. Not the tired kind dragged out of him by absurdity. Real laughter, light enough that it settled into the yard naturally instead of sounding like something forced out of a man who had forgotten how.
Ludger watched that and, despite himself, found the comparison rising in his mind.
Arslan looked much more relaxed teaching them than he had ever looked teaching Ludger. That was probably fair. Ludger had learned too fast. Too strangely, too.
There had never been that much room for patient repetition when teaching him. He picked things apart too quickly, skipped steps, adapted on the move, and usually looked more interested in understanding the logic behind a movement than in honoring the shape of the technique itself. And on top of that, he had never exactly been eager to learn how to wield a sword properly in the first place.
Arslan had noticed. Repeatedly. Sometimes with the look of a father wondering why his son insisted on treating one of the cleanest weapons in the world like an optional farming tool. So yes, this looked different.
Arslan corrected Arash’s elbows, stepped back, then had both twins strike again. This time the movements were cleaner. Not clean, obviously. They were still children with wooden sticks, not seasoned fighters. But cleaner. Arslan nodded in approval, and both Arash and Elle straightened like they had just been personally acknowledged by a king.
Then Arslan said something else Ludger couldn’t catch from where he stood, and the twins burst into matching grins before trying again with even more energy than before.
Arslan laughed once more. Ludger stayed still. For a while, he just watched.
The late light. The yard. The sound of wood cutting air. His father’s voice correcting, praising, instructing. The twins trying their best. The rough steadiness of home after too much blood, too many lies, and too much buried filth dressed in imperial silk.
And standing there at the edge of it, Ludger felt the earlier thought settle harder.
Yeah. He couldn’t do it. Not like this. Not now. He couldn’t walk over, speak the truth aloud, and turn Arslan’s life upside down again for the third time.
Not when the man was standing there in the yard laughing with his children. Not when there was peace, however temporary, sitting plainly in front of him. Not when saying the words would drag old graves open and place new targets over all of them at once.
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