Luna’s gaze lowered slightly, not in disagreement, but in acknowledgment. Elira’s expression shifted too, a faint tightness appearing around her eyes. Viola looked like she wanted to argue, but couldn’t find a clean point to attack. Ludger continued before she could try anyway.
“Bigger things are going to happen soon,” he said. “Tonight made that obvious.”
The Regent was purging from within. Major houses were beginning to move independently. Hidden forces were operating under the capital. Imperial structures were being quietly replaced by factional ones. A castle dungeon had turned into a battlefield objective for multiple groups at once. Yes. Bigger things were coming.
“So I’ll prepare at home,” Ludger finished.
His voice remained dry, almost tired. But under that dryness sat something harder. Not retreat. Preparation.
He was not walking away because he had lost interest.
He was stepping back because the board had just become larger than one night’s operation, and running after fleeing nobles in the dark would only drag him into somebody else’s desperate game before he had time to decide how he wanted to play his own.
Viola exhaled through her nose.
“I still don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to,” Ludger said.
Luna gave a small nod. “It’s the correct move.”
Elira stayed quiet for a moment, then finally asked, “And when the bigger things arrive?”
Ludger looked toward the road that would eventually take them home.
“Then,” he said, “I’ll deal with them from my own ground.”
That ended it. Not because the questions were gone. But because, for tonight, that was as far as the answer needed to go. They started moving again not long after that.
There was no point lingering near the sealed route any longer than necessary. Even if Ludger had buried the tunnels under the capital, this was still too close to the aftermath of the operation, and the night had already proven more than once that unknown people kept appearing whenever things were allowed to sit still for too long.
So they shifted toward another area, one of the safer approach points that would eventually lead them back toward the remaining underground route outside the capital’s core.
For a while, no one spoke.
The adrenaline was fading now, leaving behind the heavier kind of exhaustion that came after tension rather than simple physical effort. Even the air felt different away from the castle. Colder. Emptier. Less full of fire and screaming metal.
Elira had been unusually quiet ever since they left the meeting point.
Now, finally, she spoke.
“I didn’t get the chance to do much,” she said, her voice softer than usual. “But I’m still tired.”
Viola glanced at her. Elira kept walking, hood still half-shadowing her face, one hand resting near the runic crossbows as if she had not fully convinced herself the danger was over yet.
“That seems unfair,” she added after a moment.
Viola let out a faint snort. Ludger said nothing. Elira looked ahead for another few steps before asking the question that had clearly been sitting in her head for a while.
“Is this normal for you?” she asked. “For Ludger. For your guild.” She hesitated slightly, then continued, “Getting involved in chaotic situations that feel like they could turn the Empire upside down?”
Ludger still didn’t answer immediately. Viola did it for him.
“More often than not, yes.”
Elira turned her head toward her, blinking once.
Viola shrugged, though there was a tired edge to it.
“At this point, if things don’t spiral into some kind of political disaster, hidden conspiracy, forbidden scheme, noble stupidity, or large-scale violence, it almost feels unusual.”
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“That is not reassuring,” Elira said.
“It isn’t supposed to be.”
Luna, walking calmly beside them, said nothing, which somehow made Viola’s answer feel even more confirmed. Elira was quiet for a few seconds after that, clearly replaying the night in her head.
The infiltration. The dungeon. Rufas in chains. Children imprisoned. A hidden loyalist from one of the Empire’s great houses. Black knights breaching the castle. Ludger blowing up walls, fighting monsters in armor, and vanishing into the dark like a curse someone had accidentally given a direction. Then, despite all of that, Elira let out a small breath that sounded suspiciously close to amusement.
“He sure lives an interesting life,” she said.
Her eyes slid toward Ludger.
“Despite being so dull.”
Viola almost smiled. Luna’s mouth moved by the faintest amount. Ludger, naturally, looked completely unimpressed.
“I’ll take dull over dead,” he said dryly.
Elira’s lips curved a little more at that.
“Yes,” she said. “That does sound like something you would say.”
And somehow, after everything they had seen that night, the quiet little exchange felt strangely normal. Which was probably the most ridiculous part of all. By the time the group returned north, they made it back just in time.
The timing was tight enough to be annoying, but still clean enough to work.
They slipped back into the labyrinth before the larger training group began moving out, using the depth of the underground and the confusion of rotating teams to make it look as if they had been there the entire time. By the time they rejoined the others, there was nothing obvious left to suggest that four of them had secretly crossed half the board, infiltrated the capital, walked through a castle dungeon, and returned before dawn.
To anyone watching from the outside, they had simply come back from the deeper sections of the labyrinth like everyone else.
Dirty. Tired. A bit too quiet, maybe. But otherwise ordinary. Good. That was exactly what Ludger wanted.
When they eventually left the labyrinth with the other members, the world outside had already started moving faster than usual. Rumors about the incident in the capital had spread far and wide, carrying all the speed and stupidity such rumors usually did when nobles, explosions, and public humiliation were involved.
Everyone was talking. No one knew anything. That combination was, as always, one of humanity’s most consistent talents. Some said the capital had been attacked by foreign infiltrators. Others claimed a hidden faction inside the Empire had launched a coup and failed.
There were stories about assassins, traitor nobles, rogue battle mages, ancient weapons hidden under the castle, and one particularly ridiculous version that blamed a summoned demon.
What remained consistent in nearly every version was one central point:
An unknown figure had appeared, smashed part of the capital’s defenses apart, fought the castle’s protectors, and vanished into the night before anyone could properly identify him.
No name. No faction. No clear allegiance. Just destruction.
Ludger walked through Lionfang listening to the echoes of those rumors with the same expression he would have used while inspecting damaged grain storage.
Around him, however, the people who actually knew him were having a much harder time pretending to function normally. Not because they were stupid. Because they were trying very hard not to say the obvious thing.
Those who knew Ludger well enough, and those who knew about the suit he had asked Raukor and Julia to make, were not blind. They could connect enough dots to become deeply uncomfortable. The dark infiltration gear. The timing. The particular sort of destruction. The unpleasantly familiar idea of someone small and calm deciding that the best way to create a distraction was to wage personal war on the capital for an evening. Yes. The pieces fit a little too well.
No one around him seemed brave enough, or foolish enough, to ask directly if he had finally lost his mind and attacked the capital.
Even if they wanted to. Even if the question was screaming in their heads. Because actually using those words would only create more trouble than help. Saying it aloud made it real.
Making it real meant other people could hear it, repeat it, misunderstand it, weaponize it, or simply keep remembering it until the wrong ears caught on. And once that happened, all the carefully preserved uncertainty around the unknown attacker’s identity would start thinning in the worst possible way.
So instead, everyone did the smarter thing.
They played dumb. Very, very hard. People looked at Ludger, then looked away.
Some started conversations that clearly wanted to go somewhere dangerous before abruptly swerving into safe nonsense about supplies, training schedules, monster yields, or weather.
Others wore the expression of men and women who had seen enough insanity in recent months to decide that, actually, not knowing was healthier. It was better this way. As long as people kept acting like the unknown figure was just that—unknown—then Ludger’s identity stayed buried under rumor, fear, and confusion where it belonged.
And frankly, the capital had done more than enough to help with that. Between the broken walls, the black-armored intruders, the missing prisoners, and the conflicting survivor accounts, the story had become messy enough that certainty was already struggling to breathe.
Which made it easier for Lionsguard to simply continue existing as if none of them had spent the night helping shake the Empire by the throat.
At least on the surface. Underneath that surface, though, the atmosphere had changed. People were more alert. More careful.
Even those who didn’t know the details could feel that something big had happened and that whatever came next would not stay neatly confined to the capital. The rumors were too wild, the official responses too slow, and the silences from certain important names too loud.
Ludger noticed all of it.
And while everyone around him carefully avoided asking whether he had gone insane and assaulted the center of imperial power, he decided not to help them.
That would only make things awkward. Instead, he kept walking with his usual dry, unreadable expression, as if he had spent the entire time exactly where he was supposed to be:
Deep in a labyrinth. Training guild members. Definitely not smashing castle walls apart while wearing a disguise made by Raukor and Julia. Definitely not that.