The reaction spread in sequence through the underground network. Mana lines pulsed through the prepared points, and then the tunnels began to die. Walls broke inward. Ceilings sagged and collapsed. Packed earth burst loose into thick masses of sand and dirt that poured through the routes like heavy floods. One section after another filled from both ends, compression pockets triggering secondary cave-ins that crushed open passage into solid dead weight.
Not a messy collapse.
A deliberate burial.
From where they stood, the girls could feel the dull chain of tremors rolling under their feet as the hidden route was erased piece by piece beneath the capital.
Viola watched with narrowed eyes.
Elira stared with open fascination despite herself.
Luna just tracked the timing in silence.
Ludger kept his hand on the ground and monitored the whole process with Seismic Sense, following the collapse fronts as they spread through the buried arteries. He checked for hollow pockets. Uncollapsed branches. Partial failures. Anything that might leave a discoverable line back toward Torvares.
Nothing meaningful remained. A few final pulses moved through the network.
Then stillness settled underground.
The tunnels were gone. Only after confirming that did Ludger straighten and turn back toward the three of them.
His face was calm. Too calm, probably.
Dust still clung to his cloak. The remnants of the night’s violence still hung around him like a second layer of presence. But his voice, when he finally spoke, was dry and level again.
“Explain.”
Viola drew a breath.
This time, Ludger didn’t stop her.
Her words came out faster than usual at first, like she had been holding them back the entire way out and now that Ludger had finally given permission, she wanted everything on the table immediately.
“We got into the dungeon cleanly,” she said. “Luna dealt with the guards outside. Elira froze the ones inside before they could wake up. After that, we checked the cells.”
Ludger said nothing.
So she continued.
“The prisoners were in terrible shape. Chained to the walls, not just locked in cells. The chains were draining mana too. Adults, children… all of them.” Her jaw tightened. “There were signs of torture everywhere.”
Elira’s face lost a bit of color again at the memory, but she stayed quiet.
Viola kept going. “We found Rufas there too.”
That made Ludger’s eyes narrow slightly.
“He was chained with the others,” Viola said. “Drugged. Tortured. Half-conscious. Luna woke him up enough to get a few words out of him.”
Luna took over there, her voice calm as ever.
“He kept saying he didn’t betray the Empire,” she said. “At first he was barely coherent, but after I pushed him, he admitted why he had been imprisoned.”
Ludger’s gaze shifted to her.
“He questioned the Regent,” Luna said. “Not for treason. Not for a plot. He simply told him that annihilating Gustav’s entire family was excessive. He said the children should at least be spared.”
For a brief moment, no one spoke. Then Ludger exhaled once through his nose.
“I see.”
Viola nodded grimly. “That was enough to get him chained in the same place as the family he tried to partially protect.”
Luna continued. “We also found Gustav. Alone in another cell, worse than the others by far. Viola assumed it was him even before he was identified because he looked like the main target of the torture.”
Viola crossed her arms. “He looked half-dead.”
“I began healing him,” she said. “Just enough to pull him back so we could interrogate him.”
Ludger’s eyes stayed on her. “And then?”
“The dungeon entrance started unlocking,” Viola said immediately.
That drew a sharper look from him.
“We thought it was guards at first,” Elira said, speaking up now. “Or maybe someone important coming to check the prisoners personally.”
Viola nodded. “But it wasn’t that.”
Luna took over again, clean and direct.
“There was an infiltrator inside the castle.”
Ludger’s brows lowered.
“He worked for Rufas’s family,” Luna said. “Or more specifically, for the people still loyal to them.”
Now Ludger squinted.
“So,” he said slowly, “the black knights were from the Dalmoren family.”
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Viola gave a short nod. “That’s what it looked like.”
Luna added, “We didn’t have time to talk much. The man moved fast, he didn’t waste words. But he gave enough.”
“He said they were planning to get the whole family out of the capital,” Viola said. “Not just Rufas. Gustav’s family too.”
Elira folded her arms under the cloak. “They clearly hated what happened to Rufas. The infiltrator made that obvious.”
Luna’s expression remained flat, but her eyes had cooled.
“He said Rufas being chained and tortured for raising a simple objection was proof enough,” she said. “The Regent is no longer just removing enemies. He’s using his power to break any family that doesn’t obey him blindly.”
Ludger listened without interrupting.
That silence of his always made people wonder whether he was angry, disappointed, or simply already three steps ahead. In this case, it was probably all three.
Finally, he nodded once.
“That explains the lack of formal imperial guards.”
The girls looked at him.
Ludger’s eyes shifted toward the distant silhouette of the capital.
“Most of the imperial guard should lean closer to Rufas than to Armandis,” he said. “Or at least close enough that the Regent would no longer trust them around something this sensitive.”
Luna immediately understood. “So he assumed they were compromised too.”
“Exactly,” Ludger said.
His tone stayed even, but the conclusion made the whole situation uglier in a very clean way.
“The Regent didn’t want regular imperial units controlling the castle perimeter during the purge,” he continued. “So he replaced them with forces loyal to him more directly. Armandis guards. Private assets. Special responses like that giant armor.” His mouth flattened faintly. “And likely orders to keep the usual command structure out of the way.”
Viola frowned. “So the castle already looked half-occupied by Armandis because it basically was.”
“Yes.”
Elira glanced toward him. “Then our timing was just terrible.”
Ludger shook his head.
“No,” he said. “The timing was dangerous, not terrible. If anything, it exposed more than we were supposed to see.”
That shut them up for a moment. Because he was right.
If the mission had gone smoothly, they would have learned about Gustav, maybe pulled out a few names, and left. Instead, they had stumbled into something larger: Rufas imprisoned, the Regent purging noble resistance from inside the Empire, and the Dalmoren family launching their own covert extraction under the cover of Ludger’s attack.
Messy. But revealing.
Viola looked frustrated anyway. “We still didn’t get direct answers from Gustav.”
“No,” Ludger said. “We didn’t.”
There was no irritation in his voice now, only that cold practical tone he used when sorting ruins into useful categories.
“But Gustav is alive. Rufas is alive. And now we know who removed them.”
He looked at each of them in turn.
“That is worse than a clean success tonight,” he said, “but better than losing them forever.”
Luna gave a small nod. Elira let out a slow breath. Viola still looked annoyed, but her shoulders eased slightly.
Because as irritating as it was, Ludger was right again.
The answers had slipped out of their hands. But they had not vanished. And that meant the game had simply changed shape.
Viola folded her arms tighter across her chest, her expression still dark from everything they had seen underground.
“Rufas being thrown into a cell should have caused rumors all over the Empire,” she said. “He isn’t some minor noble no one would notice missing. Someone like him disappearing, then suddenly showing up chained beside condemned prisoners…” She shook her head. “That should have spread fast.”
Ludger’s eyes stayed on her.
“But it didn’t,” Viola continued. “Or at least not enough to matter. Which means the Regent suppressed it. He controlled the flow of information before it could spread properly.”
Her voice had a sharper edge now, the kind that only showed up when her anger had settled into something more focused.
“He knows what that kind of image would do. Rufas Dalmoren tortured in a dungeon for disagreeing with him? That kind of thing damages authority. It makes people question whether he’s still ruling the Empire or just strangling it. So he buried it before the story could breathe.”
Luna nodded once.
“That would be consistent with everything else,” she said. “Selective leaks. Public executions. Controlled narratives. Fear reinforced with staged legitimacy.”
Viola looked toward the distant silhouette of the capital, jaw tight.
“If he was willing to do that to Rufas, then it’s safe to assume he’s prepared to move even against the biggest and oldest houses if they don’t bend the knee.” Her eyes hardened. “And if he’s willing to go that far, then there’s no telling where he stops.”
For a moment, only the distant sounds of the capital carried through the night.
Then Ludger gave a small nod. He agreed. That much was obvious.
But he didn’t answer right away. He just stood there in silence, gaze unreadable, thoughts moving somewhere behind his eyes with that cold mechanical rhythm he always had when he was fitting ugly pieces together.
Luna spoke before the quiet stretched too long.
“The Dalmoren family were willing to extract Gustav’s family as well,” she said. “Not out of kindness. They want answers too. Rufas being imprisoned was enough to tell them the Regent is already targeting families inside the Imperial structure itself. Gustav’s family likely knows something they can still use.”
Elira frowned faintly. “Then they’re not really rescuing them. They’re repositioning them.”
“Yes,” Luna said. “And they’ll be hunted until the end for it.”
That part was obvious.
The moment the Dalmorens pulled both Rufas and Gustav’s family out of the castle, there was no returning to polite politics. No quiet clarification. No convenient lie that would smooth things over. The Regent would call it betrayal, treason, collusion, or whatever else suited him, and then he would justify anything done in response.
Luna turned her eyes toward Ludger.
“What are you going to do about that?”
The question hung in the air. Viola looked at him too.
Elira followed a heartbeat later, studying his face with that same intent curiosity she always seemed to have around him, though now it was tempered by the seriousness of what they had all just walked through.
Ludger answered without much hesitation.
“I’m going home.”
Viola blinked. “That’s it?”
“For now.”
His tone was flat, but not careless. He looked toward the capital once more, then away from it, as if the decision had already settled fully in his mind.
“I won’t trust either family,” he said. “Not the Dalmorens and not Gustav’s line.”
That made Viola’s brow furrow, but Luna stayed silent and let him continue.
“They may be useful,” Ludger said. “They may even be honest within the limits of their own interests. But if things get bad enough, they will sacrifice whoever they consider lesser to preserve themselves.”
His eyes were calm when he said it. Too calm.
“As someone who isn’t highborn, I would be one of the people they’d sacrifice.”
No one interrupted him. Because none of them could honestly say he was wrong. Maybe Rufas was better than most. Maybe the Dalmorens had real limits. Maybe Gustav’s family, after everything they had suffered, would be desperate enough to cling to anyone offering support.
It didn’t matter.
Noble houses survived by deciding who mattered most when pressure rose. And people like Ludger, useful, dangerous, valuable, but not one of them—were exactly the sort they would eventually offer up if the trade became necessary.