After a while, Ludger made his decision. Not dramatically. Not with some grand speech or visible change in expression that would let the entire group know something had shifted.
He simply watched the trainees rotate through another set of drills, corrected two mistakes in positioning, let the instructors settle back into their rhythm, and then decided the time had come.
Enough waiting. Enough thinking. If he was going to move, then he would do it cleanly.
So he called for Viola, Luna, and Elira. The three of them approached at different speeds, which somehow suited them perfectly.
Ludger looked at them and said, “We’re heading to the third section.”
Viola’s face brightened at once. Elira’s smile deepened slightly. Luna said nothing, but her attention sharpened into something colder and more precise. Ludger turned to the instructors after that.
“You stay in the second section,” he said. “Keep the trainees there. No one pushes deeper.”
That pulled the men fully back into their jobs.
Renn straightened. Marie nodded immediately. Bramm looked like he wanted to ask a question, then thought better of it. Jorin and Tali gave the same answer the others did.
“Yes, Vice Guildmaster.”
Ludger gave final instructions in practical, clipped detail. Rotation pace. Defensive spacing. Withdrawal point if pressure rose too quickly. What to do if any of the trainees got injured beyond a manageable level. The kind of orders that sounded ordinary enough in a training expedition, especially when delivered in his usual tone.
No one questioned it. Half an hour later, the larger group began to advance again.
The second section swallowed them into its broad, frost-veined corridors and ruined side avenues. Footsteps echoed. Voices dipped and rose. Metal and leather shifted softly with movement. The trainees kept pace under the instructors’ guidance, and together they moved deeper while intentionally passing several dead ends and side passages that branched away from the main route.
One of those dead ends was where the four of them stopped. They waited just long enough. Until the sound of the larger group’s footsteps had faded properly. Until the distant rhythm of movement no longer suggested anyone lingering close enough to glance back by chance.
Only then did Ludger motion once. Elira stepped forward.
The dead end in front of them was nothing special, just another frost-bitten corridor ending in a rough stone wall layered with pale veins of ice and ancient cracks. But Elira raised one hand, and cold mana gathered around her fingers in fine, precise streams. Frost bloomed outward from her palm in delicate lines, then spread across the stone with eerie smoothness, reshaping texture, depth, and shadow.
The false wall was formed gradually and vanished the same way.
Same cracked surface. Same ice bloom. Same old stress lines in the stone. When she was done, the place looked like it had never been anything else. Just another useless dead end in a labyrinth full of them.
Elira took a small step back, examined her work, and said, “Nice trick, don’t you think?”
Ludger looked at the fake wall once, judged it acceptable, and then looked at her.
“Don’t make me regret changing my mind about this.”
That made Elira shrug lightly. She did not tease him. Did not push. Just accepted the warning with that irritating ease of hers, as if being included at all had already counted as enough victory for one day.
Then, without another word, they followed Ludger back the way they had come. Not deeper. Backward. Toward the entrance. The route felt different now that the purpose had changed.
The labyrinth no longer looked like a training ground or a resource site. It had become what it really was for the next part of the plan: cover. Noise. A place full of witnesses who would later swear Ludger and part of the guild had indeed gone in and were likely still somewhere below.
By the time the entrance finally came into view, the real shape of what Ludger had decided was beginning to settle over the group. Viola seemed to feel it most clearly in the way she grew quieter. Not calmer exactly, but more focused. The usual brightness in her expression narrowed into something sharper. Luna had already gone fully inward, conserving words, reading the shape of the operation. Elira, meanwhile, looked like she had stepped into the beginning of a story she had wanted to see for days and had only now realized the first real pages were being turned.
Ludger said nothing. He simply led them upward and out of the labyrinth, toward the next stage of the plan he had finally chosen to put into motion.
A couple of hours later, they were deep inside the underground tunnels, the runic carriage rolling steadily through the dark on its enchanted framework while the road to the capital disappeared into long stretches of stone and shadow ahead of them.
The passage around them was broad enough for the carriage, but not by much. The walls were rough in some places, smoothed in others. The air was cooler there, dry and still, carrying the smell of stone, earth, iron. The wheels did not rumble much thanks to the runes beneath them, but the motion remained constant, a low mechanical hum running through the floorboards of the carriage as it moved deeper through a route very few people were ever supposed to see.
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Luna was the same as ever.
She sat quietly, steady, composed, watching the tunnel ahead with that unreadable calm that made it difficult to tell whether she was relaxed or already thinking three steps past the current problem. Only someone who knew her well would have noticed the sharper alertness in her gaze, the way she tracked side passages, shifts in stone, the pattern of runic markers along the walls. She was not impressed in the childish sense.
She was measuring. Viola, on the other hand, was in a noticeably good mood. Not loud enough to be unbearable. Just pleased.
There was a brightness in her expression that had been missing earlier, a sense of private satisfaction she was not trying especially hard to hide. Ludger did not need to ask why. In her mind, this was proof that he had finally accepted her skills and usefulness enough to bring her along into something that actually mattered. That alone had clearly put her in a better state than the entire morning in the labyrinth.
Then there was Elira. For a change, she was not smiling.
She was frowning instead, her gaze moving slowly over the walls of the tunnel as the carriage advanced. Unlike Luna, who watched with quiet caution, or Viola, who mostly enjoyed the fact that she had made it this far, Elira looked almost intellectually troubled. Her eyes kept tracing the rune lines, the structural shape of the path, the obvious planning behind its construction, and the simple fact that such a route existed at all.
Eventually, she said, “I’m wondering why I’m allowed to see a structure that is obviously one of your guild’s secrets.”
The question hung in the carriage for a second.
Ludger, seated across from them, did not look particularly bothered by it.
“I’m trying to increase my circle of trust,” he said.
Elira stared at him. Then one of her eyebrows rose slightly.
“That looks a lot like trusting me a bit too fast.”
Viola glanced between them. Luna remained silent. The carriage kept moving, its enchantments humming softly beneath their feet.
Ludger answered in the same even tone as always.
“I’m also giving you the chance to mess up, open your big mouth, and spread this information.”
That made Elira blink. Ludger continued without changing expression.
“Then I’ll have a real reason to crush you and your guild and take your labyrinth for myself.”
The words landed with complete calm. No edge in his voice. No visible threat in posture. Just that same dry certainty he used for everything else, which somehow made it much worse.
Elira stared at him for a heartbeat longer.
Then she let out a breath and said, “Yikes.”
A second later, the corner of her mouth twitched despite herself.
“Even when you take risks,” she said, “you’re still pretty devious.”
Viola snorted. Luna’s eyes lowered for half a second, the smallest sign that she had found the exchange exactly as unsurprising as it was absurd.
Ludger did not answer. Because there was no point. Elira was not wrong.
Trust, for him, rarely looked like blind openness. It looked more like controlled exposure. A measured test. A decision to allow someone closer to a structure while fully accounting for what would happen if they proved themselves unworthy of that position. It was less generosity than architecture.
And yes, that was devious. But it was also practical.
Elira leaned back slightly in her seat after that, looking around the tunnel again with a very different expression now. Less simple curiosity. More awareness of what this moment actually meant. Being brought here was not just inclusion. It was evaluation. A silent statement that she had been allowed across a line very few outsiders would ever even know existed.
That clearly interested her even more. Of course it did.
The runic carriage continued deeper through the underground route, swallowed by stone and secrecy alike, carrying four people toward the capital while the false expedition still lived comfortably behind them in the labyrinth.
For a while, only the low hum of the runic carriage filled the tunnel. Then Ludger decided there was no point in keeping the last layer hidden from them any longer.
Not now. Not when they were already inside the tunnels, already committed to the route, and already too deep into the operation for half-truths to remain useful.
So he explained the mission. Not theatrically. Not like a leader trying to inspire anyone.
Just plainly, in the same clipped, methodical way he handled everything else that mattered. They were heading toward the capital. Not to fight openly. Not to make contact with allies. Not to scout vague rumors and return later.
To reach the prison holding Gustav and his family before the scheduled execution.
To question them. To pull out whatever knowledge remained before that knowledge was erased along with their lives. Then to leave before the capital understood what had actually happened.
The carriage seemed quieter after that. Viola was the first one whose expression changed. The brightness in her face faded, not completely, but enough.
At last, she fully understood why Ludger had been more secretive this time. Why he had drawn such a hard line. Why he had looked at her the way he had in the yard and in his room, not as an annoying older sister or a troublesome ally, but as someone he had been trying to keep away from a blade already halfway out of its sheath.
This was not another dangerous job on the frontier. Not another labyrinth problem. Not another hidden route through some unstable territory. Not another fight that became outrageous only after it had already started.
This was the Empire. The capital. A prison filled with traitors under heavier guard because those traitors were about to die. And Ludger had planned to step into that alone.
Viola’s mouth tightened slightly.
For once, she did not argue. Did not complain. The situation was serious enough that she adjusted herself around it instead of trying to drag it toward her preferred shape.
That alone said more than any dramatic vow would have. Elira, meanwhile, looked openly baffled for the first time since joining them. Not frightened exactly. But shaken in a very real way. Because she had followed an interesting boy into an interesting problem, only to realize somewhere in the middle of the underground tunnels that she had somehow ended up involved in a job aimed directly against the Empire itself.
Not the regent from a distance. Not some border official. Not a local noble abusing power in a convenient pocket of land.
The Empire.
Its capital. Its prison. Its execution machinery. That was a much uglier scale.