Viola was the first to speak again.
“So they’re waiting for interference?”
Her tone carried more thought than outrage now. The darkness from before had not left, but it had sharpened into something more useful. Because if the executions were public, in front of the castle, at noon, after several days of preparation, then the message was not only aimed at traitors and observers.
It might also be bait. Luna nodded once.
“It looks that way.”
She did not overstate it. She did not need to. The very shape of the thing suggested readiness for interruption.
Anyone with ties to the family. Anyone who still believed they could bargain. Anyone who panicked at the thought of secrets dying. Anyone reckless enough to attempt a rescue.
All of them would be drawn toward the same point.
And if the Empire had half a brain, and in this matter it clearly did, then it would expect exactly that.
Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose. The silence returned for another beat, but this time it was more active. Each of them was thinking through the same narrowing corridor of possibilities.
Three days. That was all. Three days before the executions. Three days to prepare enough chaos that the prison itself became vulnerable for a few minutes. Three days to decide how much risk they were truly willing to carry into the castle’s shadow.
Viola looked at Ludger.
“So we’ve only got that long.”
“Yes.”
The answer came immediately.
Three days was not enough time for comfort. Only enough time to act.
Elira, who had been quiet since Luna’s report began, folded her arms more tightly and said, “That means anything clumsy gets us killed.”
Ludger glanced at her.
“Yes.”
Again, no softening. No point pretending otherwise.
If the prisoners were inside the castle dungeon, then this had become less an infiltration of a prison and more an incision into the Empire’s central nerve. Every error would echo. Every movement would matter. A single wrong decision could turn the operation from covert extraction of knowledge into a disaster written in bodies and collapsing stone.
Luna remained still, but her attention was on Ludger now. Not waiting for reassurance. Waiting for recalculation. Ludger looked at each of them once. He leaned back slightly against the rough wall of the hidden chamber and let the structure of the problem settle deeper into place.
For a moment, he considered asking for help from more of his allies in the capital.
The thought came naturally enough.
He was not completely blind there. Not entirely without ties. There were people he could reach, people with some usefulness, some access, some possible value if the problem became wide enough.
And then he discarded the idea almost as quickly as it formed. Because it would be dangerous in all the wrong ways.
Varik, for one, would almost certainly be part of the security for the event.
Ludger did not even need confirmation to know that. A public execution in front of the castle, tied to treason, spectacle, and warning, was exactly the kind of thing that would pull in reliable military force. Men like Varik did not get left aside while nervous officials arranged blades and crowds. If Ludger tried to move through any channel that touched him directly or indirectly, he risked dragging an ally straight into conflict with official duty.
That was unacceptable.
And Rufas? That was even simpler. Rufas was an imperial guard. So it went without saying where he would be. Doing his job. Standing where the Empire expected him to stand. Possibly very close to the exact place Ludger needed to get around.
No. That route was worse than useless.
The moment he started leaning on allies who were themselves part of the visible structure around the execution, the mission would rot from the inside. Too many threads. Too many chances for divided loyalties. Too many ways for one wrong movement to destroy not only the operation, but the people connected to it.
Ludger did not have many options. That was the truth stripped of pride.
The castle would be full of defenses. Magical ones. Physical ones. Likely layered. Likely redundant. And above all, it would be full of expectation.
Expectation was a defense of its own.
People above would already be waiting for interference of some sort. Maybe not from him specifically, but from someone. From anyone foolish, desperate, loyal, or frightened enough to act. That meant the obvious openings were probably not openings at all.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Ludger stayed silent for a little while longer, then finally looked at the three of them and said, “We move tonight.”
The words landed hard in the underground chamber. Viola straightened at once. Luna’s eyes sharpened. Elira stopped fidgeting with the edge of her sleeve and looked at him properly. Ludger continued in the same calm, even tone.
“The last night before the execution is the worst possible time to infiltrate.”
He let that settle.
“Tomorrow, and especially the morning after, their guard will only tighten further. More patrols.” His gaze moved between them. “By the final night, everyone important will already be thinking about interference. That’s when mistakes become less likely on their side, not more.”
That was the truth of it. States preparing public violence did not grow careless near the end. They grew sharp. Paranoid in the most functional way possible. And paranoia, when properly fed, made structures harder to slip through.
“So we don’t wait for their caution to peak,” Ludger said. “We move before that.”
The chamber was quiet enough that the faint hum of the distant tunnel enchantments could still be heard underneath his voice. Ludger then began laying out the plan in detail.
“I’m going to damage the castle structure.”
That made Elira’s expression shift first. Not in confusion. In disbelief at how directly he said it. Ludger kept going.
“Not enough to collapse the whole thing. Enough to weaken parts of the defensive network and force the defenders to react to the building itself instead of just to intruders.”
He drew a few rough lines in the dirt with one finger as he spoke, sketching a simple shape of walls, outer approaches, and internal pressure points.
“The castle’s magical defenses are almost certainly layered into its structure. If the stone is stable, those systems work cleanly. If the stone starts shifting under deliberate damage, then some of those systems will lose efficiency, break alignment, or force their operators to redirect mana and manpower to compensate.”
Luna nodded once. She understood immediately. Viola listened in complete silence, which already said enough about how serious she knew this was. Ludger tapped two points on the rough sketch.
“I create the disruption from outside and below. That gives you the opening.”
He looked at Viola and Luna.
“You two infiltrate.”
Viola’s jaw tightened slightly, but she said nothing. Ludger continued, voice flat and precise.
“You get into the dungeon, identify the prisoners, and get the information by whatever means are necessary.”
No softness. No pretended heroics. Just that.
“Fast,” he added. “No unnecessary conversation. No wasting time on sympathy, anger, or argument. You are there for answers. If one prisoner won’t talk, move to the next. If one needs pressure, use it. If one tries to stall, do not let them.”
Viola’s eyes flickered, but she held his gaze. Luna remained completely still. They both knew what he meant. Not cruelty for its own sake. No room for hesitation. Ludger then turned to Elira.
“You stay at range.”
That seemed to surprise her more than the rest.
“For this phase, you are not entering the castle.”
Elira frowned faintly, but listened.
“You’ll take a support position outside the main flow of movement. High enough if possible. Hidden if not.” He looked at her directly. “Your job is to watch the approaches and make sure no one else gets into the castle fast enough to stop them.”
He did not need to explain her value there. Precision ice. Long-range pressure. Mobility. Control. If the defenders tried to reinforce from the wrong direction, Elira could slow them, redirect them, or punish them without exposing herself the same way a direct infiltrator would. She was not being left out.
She was being placed where her strengths mattered most. Ludger’s voice did not waver as he finished the shape of it.
“You watch routes, cut off fast responders, and keep the path dirty enough that Viola and Luna aren’t suddenly boxed in by whatever the castle spits back at us.”
Elira held his gaze for a second longer, then gave a slow nod. She understood. Then Ludger said the last part.
“I’ll be the bait.”
Silence. Not small silence. A real one. The kind that settled hard over all three of them at once. Because yes, they had already guessed it. Of course they had.
They knew him well enough by now, or had seen enough, to understand where the plan was always going to bend. Structural damage, visible disruption, redirected defenses, chaos at the castle itself… none of that happened quietly, and none of it happened without someone deliberately making themselves the center of the Empire’s attention.
That had always been him. Still, hearing him declare it outright left them speechless. Because guessing a thing and hearing it spoken plainly were not the same. Ludger, naturally, continued as if he had just assigned himself to carry crates.
“If the castle starts breaking in the right places, they’ll respond to the obvious threat first. Me.” He glanced at the sketch in the dirt. “That buys you time. It also gives the defenders a cleaner story to latch onto. A visible attacker. Structural sabotage. A direct point of crisis. They’ll focus on that because it’s easier than imagining multiple layers.”
He looked back up.
“I need them looking at me.”
Viola was the first to find her voice again.
“That’s not bait,” she said. “That’s volunteering to become the whole battlefield.”
Ludger gave a small shrug.
Luna’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“You’re assuming they commit enough force to you that the interior loosens.”
“I’m not assuming,” Ludger said. “I’m going to make them.”
That answer was so coldly certain that it shut down the obvious next objection before it formed. Elira let out a quiet breath through her nose.
“You really do talk like throwing yourself at the Empire’s center is a normal logistical choice.”
“It is,” Ludger said, “if it works.”
That made Viola stare at him even harder. And yet, none of them could immediately refute the logic of it. Because he was right. If anyone among them could draw the castle’s eye hard enough to distort its defenses, it was him. If anyone could survive being the shape of the crisis rather than simply moving inside it, it was also him.
After a few more seconds, Luna finally spoke.
“And if they overcommit to you?”
“Good.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then I make them regret not doing it.”
Viola closed her eyes briefly, rubbed once at her forehead, and muttered, “I hate how natural this sounds coming from you.”
Elira was still looking at him, no longer amused now, only focused.
“And if something goes wrong on our side?” she asked.
Ludger answered immediately.
“Then you adapt.”
That got a sharper look from Viola.