Chapter 145: A Peaceful Ambush

“…….”

In the still hours before dawn, Isaac stared wide-eyed into the night sky. Like the lone moon hanging bright overhead, his lids showed no sign of closing.

Outside the lodging, he simply gazed upward, sinking deeper into thought until his mind felt as bottomless as a silent lake.

“Can’t sleep, can you?”

The Grandmaster stepped out of the quarters.

Isaac turned his head after a brief pause.

“……No.”

“Hardly surprising.”

With practiced nonchalance the Grandmaster sat beside him. A cigarette found its way to her lips out of habit, though she left it unlit.

Isaac watched for a moment, then quietly extended a hand.

“May I have one too?”

“You never used to smoke.”

“I did before the regression. Quit halfway through, though.”

While writing his treatise as Silent Sword, he would smoke now and then—but eventually he’d given it up, unwilling to ruin his body further. A leg was already gone; he had no wish to destroy his lungs as well. It was Isaac’s own stubborn way of refusing to abandon his dream of becoming a swordsman.

“Don’t start again. You finally became the swordsman you longed to be.”

“And yet you still smoke, Master?”

“Come see me when you’ve lived as long as I have.”

Despite the words, the Grandmaster slid a cigarette toward him. The feel of it after so long was both alien and familiar, a strange blend. Isaac only held it, stroking it lightly; he went no further.

“I offered—you’d better smoke it.”

The Grandmaster lit up, bitter smoke curling into the air and, for a moment, steadying Isaac’s restless heart.

“Speak.”

“Master?”

The sudden prompt left Isaac unsure, but the Grandmaster folded her arms, eyes on the moon.

“If there’s something you want to say, say it.”

“…….”

“I’m only standing here, nothing more. Let it out. Pretend I hear nothing by chance.”

To untangle a knot of feelings sometimes required a contradiction: the urge to organize one’s thoughts aloud battling the fear that those feelings must remain unspoken.

Isaac drew a long breath.

A sigh harsher than the acrid smoke in his hand slipped free.

“When I lost my leg…”

“…….”

“…I was terrified. It felt as though my whole world had collapsed.”

Was it the fear of living the rest of his life limping?

No.

More frightening than a lifetime of stumbling was the thought that—

“What if my wife… truly let go of me?”

“…….”

“I had lost every shred of worth as Helmut’s son-in-law.”

Helmut — the family into which Isaac had married.

The same sharp sting as cigarette smoke clawed at his chest, though the tobacco between his fingers remained still.

“She came every day. I could hear Riha’s footsteps pacing outside the door, as if telling me everything would be all right.”

The rose fragrance that slipped beneath the door each day, her anxious footsteps, the gentle thud of her forehead resting against the frame—Isaac knew how deeply she worried for him, yet he simply could not step outside.

“But I couldn’t show my ruined self to the woman I love most. If I did… I felt I’d crumble for good.”

Alone, in silence, he lived inside the dark. In that narrow room he poured out pain, groans, despair, and fury.

One year passed like that.

“And then I walked outside.”

“…….”

“Did I overcome it? No. Was I running away? Not that either. I left simply because it was no longer a place I could stay.”

For a full year—alone in the dark—Isaac had done only one thing.

“It was… saying goodbye.”

“…….”

“I suppose it took that long because I loved her so much.”

There had simply been too much love to sort through.

“On the dawn I left, the scent of roses still lingered in my nose.”

A limp in his leg.

The rhythmic tap-tap of his cane.

And every so often, a wisp of rose fragrance drifted past.

“That was our last moment.”

He drew a breath, choosing his next words. Only after the Grandmaster’s cigarette exhaled twice more did he continue.

“It was all wrong.”

It never should have happened that way.

“Whether we meant to hold on or to let go, we managed neither.”

The two of them had lived in that awkward in-between.

“Afterward, I lived on as the Silent Sword, not as Isaac Logan… simply living that way.”

The old Isaac—who had once seen the world bathed in romance and youth—was gone.

Now, at last, it felt time to look back on himself.

More than ten years had passed. Only now did some things begin to make sense.

“It was cowardice. Spending a year alone, preparing to sever everything—calling it cowardice is fair.”

Tender sympathy glimmered in the Grandmaster’s eyes.

As if to say she understood—that Isaac carried wounds enough to justify it.

Isaac answered the unspoken comfort with a bitter smile.

“Master, you always make me prepare.”

The Grandmaster and Nameless had told him: at times you must set aside the fortress of reason and swing your sword on instinct.

“But it wasn’t merely the sword you spoke of.”

Even if it had come together by chance, Isaac smiled gently.

“You were telling me to move forward.”

“…….”

“The next time I meet her, it won’t be as the Silent Sword—it will be as Isaac Logan.”

Setting aside sense and logic, cold judgment and calculation—

“I simply want to face her as myself and pour out everything I’ve kept inside.”

It might turn into blame, ugliness, even anguish—

—but it was necessary.

“Bitter, isn’t it?”

As though he had finished a cigarette never lit, Isaac handed the unburned stick back to the Grandmaster.

The Grandmaster accepted it, a faint nostalgic smile curling her lips, and nodded.

“A lovers’ quarrel, then.”

“Haha, you could call it that.”

“Then you’ll need preparation. Your former wife is fierce, after all.”

“Indeed.”

“At the very least, let’s be sure you don’t die.”

“Quite right.”

“Need any help?”

“I’m here to ask for exactly that.”

Moonlight washed over the two of them. The Grandmaster knew the path ahead of her disciple would be rough—strewn with stubborn thorns.

Tap.

She gave Isaac a single firm pat on the back.

“I’ll lend it.”

* * *

The capital, Evergarde.

“…….”

Princess Clarice hadn’t slept a wink in days.

Every morning she sat bleary-eyed behind a mountain of paperwork.

“So much for the bloom of youth.

I should’ve at least learned to fold paper flowers by now.”

She grumbled, yet her eyes raced across each line, sorting the contents in her head with practiced speed.

The situation in the North was especially dire.

Since the Malidan Barrier vanished, beasts kept pouring across the border. The only stroke of luck was that Eisenwolf had thrown up timber palisades and carved out a temporary defense line.

Baron Logan had also distinguished himself, helping Caldias and several northern troops break through and return home—one of the few bright spots in an otherwise grim war report.

Even so, the problems were knotty.

“Transcendents are still showing up…?”

Clarice sighed while skimming the daily notices about fresh Transcendent incursions. Moving the Malidan Barrier by ritual had come with a price: bands of Transcendents were being dragged here against their will, slipping back and forth across worlds.

From the enemy’s view, their forces were slowly being whittled away—but for Evergarde the headache was just as bad.

“The troops’ stress is through the roof.”

Heyrad added, and Clarice nodded.

“Naturally. They’re fighting Transcendents, after all.”

It was like facing a one-man army that could appear out of thin air. One stroke of bad luck and you lost key officers, supply wagons—too many variables.

“Once again we owe Caldias.”

Since the wall disappeared, Uldiran himself had “become the wall,” holding the line. Even in the chaos, his presence was a pillar of strength.

“Which was only possible because Baron Logan risked his life to venture into their realm.”

Clarice kicked her legs restlessly under the chair while praising Isaac; Heyrad let out a weary sigh.

“Too much favoritism is never good.”

“Favoritism? It’s perfectly proper to admire a noble who delivers results.”

Clarice shrugged, utterly shameless—and impatient for Baron Logan to return.

“How long has he been holed up in the Mage-Tower? Feels like ages.”

“About a month. Counting travel time, he hasn’t spent that long inside, but still—quite a while.”

“Any word on the curse-script yet?”

“Mage Regant is deciphering it night and day.”

“I know it’s selfish, but the sooner the better. We need something—anything—to fix the North.”

She wanted that ritual decoded and the northern front stabilized, yesterday.

“Ugh, forget it. Break time!”

Her head throbbed; she’d worked several days straight. What Princess Clarice needed now was ten minutes and a cup of coffee.

Heyrad seemed to have anticipated it and rolled in coffee and sweets on a tray.

Coffee cup in hand, Clarice rose from her seat.

Heyrad frowned at the lack of decorum, but this was her own office; she could do as she pleased.

“Phew.”

She sipped and stepped to the window. Spread below was the panorama of Evergarde.

Whenever things grew hard, she’d look out like this and renew her resolve.

‘The more I suffer now, the longer I can protect this view.’

Rehearsing the motive kept her from slackening.

“……Hm?”

Something odd caught her eye.

Ordinarily it wouldn’t have been strange, yet in this moment it could only be puzzling—because that woman down there…

“Wasn’t she captured?”

It was Rihanna Helmut. Sword as broad as a door strapped to her back, she marched straight toward the palace.

Citizens recognized her, bowing or gazing in open admiration.

Of course, only a handful in Evergarde knew Rihanna had been taken prisoner. If word got out that, with Arandel dead, the next head of House Helmut had fallen captive, Helmut would plummet in an instant.

No need to trouble civilians with more fears.

So Rihanna strode unchallenged all the way to the palace gate.

It was a tactic no one had imagined—walking this casually into the lion’s den.

“S-stop her! Heyrad, right now—!”

The moment Clarice shouted, crimson aura flared into the sky.

“Run from me.”

At the center of that scarlet surge, the woman advanced, pleading softly as she came.

– – The End of The Chapter ––

 

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