Arslan blinked. “You’re leaving me here alone?”
Ludger glanced at him. “You created half the problem.”
“That is a cruel way to say it.”
“It’s accurate.”
Elira looked between them with obvious fascination now, while Maris folded her arms and regarded Ludger with a more thoughtful expression than before.
Not softer. Just more attentive.
Because for all the dry words and sharp edges, he had introduced himself properly, apologized without groveling, handed her full permission to torment Arslan, and then stepped away from the room before things could turn theatrical.
Arslan, meanwhile, looked like a man abandoned to his fate. Which, from Ludger’s perspective, was probably appropriate. Ludger left the guild and headed toward the labyrinth. He already knew the direction.
The moment they had arrived in town, he had spread Seismic Sense through the area out of habit, mapping the stone below, the older foundations, the denser movement of the land, and the hollow points where things didn’t quite fit naturally. The labyrinth’s location had stood out easily enough after that. A place like that always did. Too much strain at one point. Too much weight under the ground. Too much wrongness pretending to be structure.
So he didn’t need a guide. Just a few minutes of walking and his own senses. As he moved through the town, Ludger let out a quiet sigh.
It was genuinely exhausting to be blamed for, or watched for, the possibility of becoming something he simply wasn’t. A womanizer. The idea itself felt ridiculous. Not insulting exactly. Just deeply inconvenient.
As if people kept looking at him and seeing Arslan’s face strongly enough that they started assuming the rest would follow naturally. Same blood, same bad habits, same weakness. Apparently that was how some minds worked.
It was stupid. And irritating. And, judging by Maris’ reaction, not something he would be allowed to ignore entirely even if he wanted to. Ludger exhaled through his nose and kept walking.
To be fair, he felt a little bad for Arslan. A little. The man had clearly grown into someone more reliable over the years, only to find his past waiting for him with sharp teeth and a memory long enough to make every old mistake expensive again. That kind of thing was unfortunate.
Still, unfortunate didn’t mean it had become Ludger’s problem. His father could deal with the drama of his own past. Ludger had better things to do. A labyrinth to inspect. A guild to evaluate. A possible alliance to measure beyond words and old emotions.
Compared to all that, old romance, suspicion, and threats over daughters ranked very low on the list of things worth wasting energy on. So he left the guild behind him and kept moving toward the place that actually mattered. The labyrinth, at least, would probably be simpler.
Ludger found two guards standing at the entrance of the labyrinth.
Only then did he recall that he had forgotten to get proper information from Maris and Elira before leaving the guild. The type of monsters, the usual routes, the danger zones, the resource points, how often breaches happened, those would have been useful to hear directly from the people managing the place.
Still, it didn’t change much. He had come to see the labyrinth for himself anyway.
And some things were easier to understand with his own eyes than through a spoken explanation.
The entrance stood on the side of a hill, but instead of looking like a cave mouth or a fortified tunnel, it resembled a mausoleum that had no business being there. Pale stone walls rose from the earth in a squat, heavy structure built half into the slope, with a narrow flight of worn stairs leading up to a dark rectangular doorway. The front was framed by thick pillars carved with old patterns that time and weather had dulled into vague spirals and cracked lines. Moss clung to the lower edges, while the upper stone had darkened under years of rain and cold. It looked less like something built to welcome delvers and more like a place meant to hold the dead down.
Which, considering what labyrinths tended to become if left unchecked, was probably fitting. The two guards at the entrance noticed him at once. Their posture sharpened immediately, hands moving closer to their weapons without fully drawing them. Not panicked. Just cautious, the way experienced people got when they saw an armed stranger walking straight toward a dangerous site alone.
“Halt,” one of them called out. “Identify yourself.”
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Ludger stopped without complaint. He looked at both of them, then answered in the same even tone as always.
“I’m Ludger, vice guildmaster of the Lionsguard.”
That got a flicker of recognition out of at least one of them, though neither dropped their guard yet.
Ludger continued before they could question further.
“I came to inspect the labyrinth,” he said, “so I can properly assess a possible alliance between our guilds.”
That made them exchange a quick glance. The explanation was reasonable.
Still, the fact that he was there alone, calm as if this were an ordinary visit, and carrying the name of a guild whose reputation had already spread far beyond its own territory made the whole scene feel slightly unreal. Ludger, however, didn’t seem bothered by any of that.
He just stood before the mausoleum-like entrance, the hill at his back and the dark mouth of the labyrinth waiting ahead, looking exactly like someone who had already decided he would go in.
The guards didn’t lower their guard after hearing that. If anything, the explanation seemed to make them more uneasy.
One of them frowned and said, “Going in alone is dangerous.”
The other added, “And going in this late is worse. At night, the beasts get more violent.”
Ludger glanced past them toward the dark entrance again. That was useful information. Simple, but useful. Still, it didn’t change much.
“I’ll handle it,” he said.
The answer came easily, without arrogance in his tone, which somehow made it sound even more certain.
The two guards looked at each other.
That look carried the kind of shared misery men in thankless positions developed over time. Because now they had a problem. On one hand, stopping him too hard might create trouble if he really was who he claimed to be, and they had already recognized the name. On the other hand, letting a vice guildmaster from a rising major guild walk alone into a dangerous labyrinth at night sounded exactly like the kind of decision that could come back later and ruin their jobs.
One of them rubbed at his jaw.
The other shifted slightly and said, “This really isn’t a good idea.”
Ludger didn’t argue. Didn’t insist either.
He just stood there with that same calm expression, which made it painfully clear that if they refused, he would probably just keep standing there until they either gave in or became annoying enough that the conversation turned unpleasant.
Before they could work through the situation any further, movement caught their attention from farther down the road.
All three of them turned. Someone was running toward the hill. Fast. Light steps, but hurried enough to kick dust behind them. Ludger recognized who it was almost immediately and let out a quiet sigh through his nose.
Elira.
Of course.
She was waving one arm slightly as she ran, trying to get their attention while also holding onto the side of her glasses with the other hand so they wouldn’t slip off her face. The whole thing gave off the exact sort of energy he had already started to associate with her, earnest, eager, and completely willing to throw herself into a situation before checking whether the situation actually wanted that.
Ludger watched her approach and thought, not for the first time, that she was one of those people who did not know how to read the room. Or perhaps she read it just fine and simply didn’t care. Which was, in some ways, worse.
The guards looked between Ludger and the girl running toward them, visibly confused now. Ludger, meanwhile, already had a bad feeling about what was coming next. Elira finally reached them, a little out of breath but standing straight almost immediately, as if refusing to look anything less than composed in front of Ludger.
“I’ll escort the visitor,” she said, adjusting her glasses quickly. “So you two can relax.”
The two guards looked relieved and alarmed at the same time. Ludger furrowed his brows and looked at her properly.
“Can you fight?”
Elira lifted her chin slightly. “I’m the number two of this guild.”
Then, with more confidence than hesitation, she added, “And soon I’ll surpass my mother.”
Ludger didn’t look convinced. Not openly, at least. He just studied her for a moment.
Neither she nor Maris carried weapons. No sword at the hip, no spear, no dagger placed where habit would make it easy to draw. That usually meant one of two things. Either they were weak enough to rely on others for direct violence… or they were the kind of mages who didn’t need steel to begin with.
Given the way Maris had moved, the pressure she carried, and the state of the guild around her, it was obviously the second. That also explained something else.
Mother and daughter lacked that certain aura of pure brutality some fighters carried around like a second skin. The dense, instinctive impression that they could break a body apart with their bare hands if they got annoyed enough. Maris felt dangerous, yes, but not in the same way Arslan did. Not in the same way Maurien did. It was different. More controlled. More layered. The kind of threat that came from power shaped through intent rather than pure pressure.
Mages, then. Likely powerful ones. And for what he wanted now, that was probably useful. Because if Elira came along, then he could ask questions while seeing the labyrinth with his own eyes. That saved time.
Ludger gave a small nod. “All right, then. Let’s go.”
Elira brightened immediately, as if she had just been handed something she had wanted from the moment she started running up the hill.
The guards, meanwhile, looked much less burdened now that the responsibility had shifted out of their hands. One of them stepped aside first. The other followed a second later.
And just like that, Ludger and Elira turned toward the mausoleum-like entrance and headed into the labyrinth together.