On the other hand, Viola was having the exact opposite experience.
She was getting attention from every direction.
The red dress, the confidence, the way she held herself as if she naturally belonged at the center of any room she entered, it all worked exactly the way one would expect. One conversation turned into two. Two turned into three. Before long, there were several young men around her at once, each one trying in his own way to stand out without making it obvious that he was trying.
One praised her grandfather’s standing. Another complimented the capital. A third asked about her interests in the careful tone of someone hoping the answer might conveniently match his own.
Viola smiled through it all with increasingly visible satisfaction. The attention fed her confidence almost instantly. Ludger watched it happen, stepped slightly closer under the cover of the larger crowd, and leaned just enough to murmur near her ear,
“I’m telling Lucius.”
Viola’s smile froze. Only for a second. But it froze. Then she recovered so quickly most people around them probably missed it entirely.
“Who cares about him?” she said.
Her tone was light. Too light. Ludger said nothing. He didn’t need to. The damage had already been done.
One of the young men talking to her looked faintly confused, clearly unsure whether he had just become part of a conversation he did not understand. Another suddenly seemed less certain of his footing.
Viola, realizing this, turned her smile back on them with practiced ease.
And Ludger, standing just beside her with the calm of someone who had thrown a knife into her composure and stepped away before anyone noticed, found the evening a little more bearable than before.
Ludger soon forgot about the weird tension surrounding him. Or rather, something more interesting cut through it.
His eyes moved across the crowded hall again, past noble clusters, jeweled smiles, and polished laughter, and then he noticed other figures drawing attention the same way he had been.
But unlike him, these people were not being noticed because of youth, unusual silence, or the way a dark suit fit over a dangerous frame.
No. They were being noticed because they were impossible not to notice. People with all kinds of bodies. All kinds of presence.
Different builds, different postures, different ways of carrying themselves, and yet all of them shared the same unmistakable quality, strength shaped into human form. Some were lean and long-limbed, the kind whose movements looked too efficient to belong to ordinary fighters. Others were broad, dense, and built like they had been carved out of something more durable than flesh. A few looked almost normal until one watched the way space subtly shifted around them, how conversations straightened, how eyes drifted their way even when no one meant to stare.
The warriors from abroad. Invited here specially for this occasion. Ludger’s gaze sharpened at once. So they really were here. That alone made the night more bearable.
They looked friendly enough on the surface. Some stood in small conversational circles while nobles and curious guests introduced themselves. A few even laughed openly, and not in the fake noble way either. One of them accepted a drink with a broad grin. Another seemed to be answering questions from some minor lord’s son who looked equal parts fascinated and terrified. They did not look tense. Did not look hidden. If anything, they looked relaxed, strong enough not to feel threatened by the room around them.
That made them stand out even more. Because while most people in the hall were performing, adjusting, and measuring themselves constantly, these foreign warriors moved like people who had brought their own world with them and saw no reason to kneel to this one’s customs more than necessary.
Ludger studied them one by one, comparing posture to aura, body to pressure, surface to instinct.
Then his attention settled. Among them, he recognized the dragon-armored warrior. He was not wearing the armor tonight. No dragon-shaped chestplate. No heavy plates layered like a beast’s scales. No visible steel announcing what he was.
And yet none of that mattered. The man was still an absolute unit. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Built with the kind of muscular frame that fine clothes simply could not hide no matter how much tailoring tried to civilize it. The formal outfit on him looked less like elegant clothing and more like something society had thrown over a war engine in the hope that it might briefly pretend to be polite. Even standing still, he carried the weight of someone who would be difficult to ignore in a battlefield, a tavern, or a royal hall.
Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly.
The stranger’s hair was tied back simply, his jaw sharp, his expression calm enough to border on detached. There was no obvious hostility in him. No swagger either. He looked like a man entirely comfortable with his own strength and therefore unbothered by needing to display it.
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Then, as if feeling the pressure of being observed, the warrior turned his head. Their eyes met. And the noise of the hall seemed to pull back a little.
Not truly. But enough. For a second, neither moved. Neither looked away. Ludger felt it then more clearly than before. That strange layered aura.
Not hidden exactly. Not suppressed in the normal sense. More like multiple depths sitting one behind another, each one refusing to show itself fully unless the observer could bear the weight of peeling further inward. It still reminded him of an onion. Layers. Density. Something old under something restrained under something violent under something else again.
The warrior, on the other hand, was clearly measuring him too. Ludger could see it in the stillness of his face. In the quiet shift of attention. The man was not merely looking. He was assessing. Build. posture. eyes. balance. presence. Whatever he could read at a distance, he was reading now, just as Ludger was doing to him.
Just two predators in a golden hall full of prey and painted masks, silently deciding how seriously to take one another. And for the first time that evening, Ludger felt something close to genuine interest.
Because the man did not look away immediately. Because he did not flinch. Because whatever lay inside that layered presence, it was very real.
Luna leaned closer just enough that no one else would notice and whispered near Ludger’s ear, “Is that the dragon armor man?”
Ludger gave the faintest nod.
“Yes.”
By then, he had already noticed something else. The man was walking toward them. Not in a hurried way. Not aggressively either. Just directly. Calmly.
The sort of approach that made space happen on its own. People shifted without realizing why, conversations loosened around him, and the movement of the crowd bent slightly to let him pass. That alone said enough. Real strength often did that—not through force, but through the quiet pressure of existence.
As he came closer, Ludger studied him properly.
His hair was black, though the sides of his head had already gone grey. Not the grey of weakness. Not the grey of someone fading. It only made him look sharper, like age had bitten into the outer edges of him and found nothing soft underneath.
Maybe late forties. Somewhere around there. But if so, he was still at the peak of his strength. Ludger could tell that much immediately.
This was not a man dragging power behind him from better years. His body had no trace of decline in the parts that mattered. The broad shoulders, the thick neck, the measured way he carried his weight, the quiet ease in every step, everything about him suggested a fighter who had not merely preserved himself, but refined what he was over decades until age had become part of the weapon instead of its erosion.
He was wearing formal clothes tonight, but the result only sharpened the contrast. Fine fabric sat over a frame it could not soften. The sleeves hid muscle, but only barely. The cut of the coat looked expensive, yet on him it still felt secondary, like some polite layer draped over something built for war long before noble halls and careful music entered the picture.
Then there were his eyes. That was the part that made Ludger narrow his own slightly. There was something in them he could not quite grasp.
Not emotion. Not exactly. Just a quality that felt hard to pin down, as if the man’s gaze was seeing more than it should while revealing less than it ought to. The color did not help either. From this distance, in the gold light of the hall, his eyes looked almost silver.
Almost.
Which was odd enough to stick in Ludger’s mind immediately. Maybe that was common somewhere abroad. Or maybe not.
At this point, with foreign warriors gathering in the capital and layered auras walking around dressed for celebration, Ludger was no longer interested in assuming anything was normal just because he lacked the right context.
Still, the silver eyes made the man stand out even more. Not in a flashy way. In a wrong way. A memorable way. The kind of feature a person kept tucked in the back of their mind whether they wanted to or not.
Luna had gone still beside him. Not tense enough for others to notice.
Just ready.
And Ludger, arms still loose at his sides, watched the man approach through the glittering crowd while the noise of the party seemed to blur around the edges.
Because one thing was already clear. Whatever this man had come for, he had not changed direction by accident. The man stopped in front of them with the easy confidence of someone who had never once doubted his right to take space.
Up close, his presence felt even stranger.
The layered aura Ludger had sensed from afar did not become clearer with distance. If anything, it became worse. Closer, it felt denser, like standing near something that had been folded over itself too many times. Strength sat at the outer edge of him plainly enough, but beneath that there were other things, restraint, age, violence, patience, and something almost amused, all stacked in a way that refused to settle into one shape.
Then the man smiled. It was not warm. But it was polished enough to pass. He offered his hand first.
“Drarc,” he said. His voice was deep, smooth, and controlled in the way of someone used to being listened to. “It is an honor to finally meet the infamous rebellious duelist.”
Ludger looked at the offered hand for half a second before taking it. The grip was firm. Not a challenge. Not soft either. Just deliberate.
“You’re welcome,” Ludger said.
For a beat, the silence held.
Then Drarc laughed.
It was a genuine laugh too, brief and rough at the edges, like he had not expected that answer and appreciated it far more than he should have.
Ludger smiled in return. But his smile did not reach his eyes. Because only people in the underworld called him that.
Rebellious duelist.
Not nobles. Not normal fighters. Not even guild people.
That particular title had a stink to it, a whispering, black-market, blood-on-the-floor kind of familiarity. The sort of name that spread through illegal circles where people watched too much, talked too much, and kept records of dangerous youths because it was profitable to know which monsters were still growing.
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