Chapter 1006

Arslan could feel the edge of disaster approaching.

Not here yet.

Close.

Too close.

He blocked another thrust and let it slide off his blade. Then he stepped inside the spear’s reach. Orleandul’s expression sharpened. Arslan brought his forehead forward and smashed it into the commander’s face.

Orleandul staggered back one step. Blood appeared under his nose. Arslan’s forehead burned where he had vut. He smiled through it.

“Expected more,” he said.

Orleandul’s calm cracked properly. The spear rose. Mana surged along its length. Behind him, imperial mages shouted as another barrier segment formed. To the sides, golems raised their cannons for another volley.

Arslan’s smile vanished. He had bought time. Now he needed a way back before time bought his death in return. The fire in his sword guttered, then returned in a thinner, sharper line.

Not a wave this time. A blade. Crude imitation or not, he had learned something from the first attempt. Viola would approve. Ludger would still complain. Arslan stepped forward before Orleandul could fully release his next attack.

“Round two, then,” he said.

And the battlefield burned around them.

Orleandul grinned. It was a small expression. Too controlled to be called madness. Too pleased to be harmless. Then he relaxed his stance.

The spear lowered by a fraction. His shoulders eased. The pale light crawling along the weapon dimmed until it became little more than a glow beneath the rain. Around him, men died, screamed, and bled into the mud, but Orleandul stood as if the battlefield had become a private garden and Arslan had been invited for tea.

Arslan did not like that. He liked it less than the spear. A man who smiled in battle was simple enough. Maybe brave. Maybe stupid. Maybe too fond of violence. A man who relaxed while surrounded by death was planning something. Or he believed he had already won. Both options were irritating.

Arslan kept his sword raised. The thin line of flame along the blade hissed in the rain, turning each drop into steam before it reached the edge. His body hurt in too many places to count, but pain had fallen into the background now. It had become part of the weather.

“What are you plotting?” Arslan asked.

Orleandul tilted his head, still smiling.

“Plotting?”

“Yes. That thing cowards and courtiers do when they lack the spine to attack directly.”

A few paces behind Orleandul, his elite guards shifted. The commander raised one hand lazily. They stopped. Interesting. Arslan noted it while keeping his attention on the spear.

Orleandul’s smile widened by a hair. “You speak with remarkable confidence for a man surrounded.”

“I’ve been surrounded before.”

“And did that work out well?”

“For the people surrounding me? Usually no.”

The answer should have provoked him. Instead, Orleandul chuckled. That was worse. Across the field, the retreat continued in ugly pieces. Lionsguard squads moved back through gaps torn in the barrier segments. Northerners withdrew slower, bleeding the enemy for every step. Runic golems advanced from both flanks, weapons flashing through the rain as they fired into shield walls. The thunder of cannons and the wet impacts of mana bullets filled the air.

There was no room for conversation. There was barely room for breathing. People were dying close enough that blood misted through the rain. Some droplets striking Arslan’s face were not water. The mud beneath their boots had become a red-black paste made from soil, ash, and opened bodies.

And still Orleandul wanted to talk. Arslan raised an eyebrow.

“This is not a place for words.”

Orleandul looked confused for a moment. Genuinely confused. As if Arslan had missed something obvious. Then the commander’s expression shifted into something resembling pity.

“Do you truly not know?”

Arslan’s grip tightened. He hated that question. It was the kind men used when they already held a knife behind their back and wanted the victim to lean closer.

“Buying time with riddles will not help you,” Arslan said.

“I am not the one buying time.”

“You are standing still while your men die.”

“And you are standing still while yours agonize.” Orleandul’s eyes flicked toward the battlefield behind Arslan. “We are both making purchases. The only difference is that I know what I am paying for.”

Arslan did not answer. The sword remained steady in his hand. The flame did too. Orleandul shook his head slowly.

“What a pity.”

Arslan stared at him.

“That your own son thought so little of you,” Orleandul continued, “that he chose to hide the truth.”

There it was. A hook. Simple. Sharp. Baited with Ludger. Arslan felt the words catch somewhere beneath his ribs. He did not let them show on his face. His expression remained flat. His stance remained ready. His mana did not flare, though it wanted to.

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Ludger had many secrets. Too many. Not because he was deceitful by nature, though the boy could lie with a face so deadpan it bordered on supernatural. Ludger kept secrets because he believed information was a weapon and most people were prone to stabbing themselves if handed sharp things too early.

Arslan knew that. Accepted it, mostly. Hated it, sometimes. But Orleandul had chosen the line carefully.

Your own son.

Not vice guildmaster. Not Ludger. Not the boy monster.

Son.

The hook twisted. Arslan let his mouth curve faintly, as if bored.

“If you plan to insult my parenting, you will need to be more original. My wife has already covered the subject thoroughly.”

Orleandul laughed softly.

“It explains why you are still alive.”

“Perhaps.”

Another cannon blast struck somewhere behind Arslan. Men shouted. A shield wall buckled, then reformed. Darnell’s voice carried through the chaos, hoarse and furious, dragging order out of blood.

Arslan needed to move. He needed to stop talking. He needed to kill this man or leave him and return to command.

Instead, he stayed. Because Orleandul knew something. Or believed he did. And the battlefield had already taught Arslan that ignoring bait was wise only after identifying what kind of hook carried it.

“Speak,” Arslan said. “Quickly.”

Orleandul’s smile returned.

“A while ago,” he said, “an underworld guild was destroyed by an unknown individual.”

Arslan’s eyes narrowed slightly. The words meant nothing for half a heartbeat. Then they did. Underworld guild. Destroyed. Unknown individual.

The memory surfaced from old reports, half-buried beneath newer disasters. A criminal network near the capital. One that had vanished violently. No public confession. No clear perpetrator. Bodies found in places bodies were not meant to be. Survivors either dead, gone, or too terrified to speak coherently.

At the time, Arslan had assumed imperial infighting. Or perhaps one criminal faction eating another. The capital had enough rot for that. Orleandul watched his face carefully.

“For some time,” the commander continued, “we did not know who had done it. The work was thorough. Quiet in its own way. Not elegant, but extremely effective.”

Arslan said nothing. Rain hissed against his sword.

“Then came recent events,” Orleandul said. “Gustav dead. Certain records accessed. The castle attacked. The Regent’s hidden arrangements exposed at inconvenient speed.” He tilted his head. “And, of course, Ludger moving through the capital like a knife that had learned to walk.”

Arslan’s jaw tightened.

Ludger had killed Gustav. That was no longer much of a mystery. The boy had never claimed it. He had not needed to. There were certain absences that spoke louder than confessions. Arslan had guessed. Not with certainty. Never enough to demand an answer. But enough that the shape of it had sat in the back of his mind, waiting.

Ludger had investigated the Empire’s darkness. That much everyone close to him knew. He had been hunting something beneath the surface for longer than most realized. If an underworld guild connected to that darkness had been destroyed…

Yes.

Arslan could believe Ludger had done it.

He could also believe Ludger had done it without telling anyone because the boy was allergic to making his father’s life easier. Arslan kept his expression mild.

“My son kills many unpleasant things,” he said. “You will need to narrow the accusation.”

Orleandul’s eyes brightened. Not with anger. With satisfaction.

“Ah. So you suspected.”

“I suspect everyone of everything. It saves time.”

“Does it?”

“Usually.”

Orleandul’s spear shifted in his hand, but he still did not attack.

“That guild,” he said, “had connections to Ludger.”

Arslan waited.

“Connections,” Orleandul repeated, “through you.”

The battlefield tilted by half a degree. Not enough for anyone else to see. Enough that Arslan felt his footing change inside his own skull.

“Through me,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I do not consort with underworld guilds.”

“No. Not willingly.”

The flame on Arslan’s sword flickered. Orleandul saw it. Of course he did. The man’s smile became almost gentle. That was the first moment Arslan truly wanted to cut his head off.

Not kill him in battle. Not defeat him. Remove his head from his shoulders and make sure the expression went with it. Orleandul stepped lightly to the side, keeping the distance between them. “You truly do not know.”

Arslan advanced one step. Orleandul retreated one. Still relaxed. Still talking. Still buying whatever he thought he was buying.

“Say it,” Arslan said.

“Are you certain?”

Arslan’s sword rose a fraction. Orleandul’s elite guards tensed. The commander ignored them.

“All of those individuals,” he said, “were involved with your family.”

The words entered Arslan quietly. Too quietly. No dramatic crack. Just a sentence falling into him and landing somewhere deep. His family.

For one absurd moment, he thought of Elaine. Of Ludger. Of the twins. Of his current family, the living one, the one still behind Lionfang’s walls or lost near the capital.

Then something older stirred. A different house. A different table. A younger Arslan laughing beside people whose faces time had softened around the edges because memory was merciful when the world was not.

His father.

His mother.

His sister.

The family before it became a smaller, quieter thing carried in one man’s spine. The fire along his sword dimmed. Orleandul laughed. Not loudly. Not like a madman. Like a man watching a lock turn.

“Did you truly think they all died because of some accident?”

The world stopped. Not the battlefield. The battlefield continued. Men screamed. Golems fired. Rain fell. Metal struck metal. Kharnek roared somewhere to the side, the sound colliding with Armandis’s heavy blade. Darnell shouted orders. Shields broke. Mages cast. The dead became mud.

But for Arslan, the world stopped.

Then it tilted. Not physically. Worse. Something inside his head shifted out of place. A support beam snapping under a house that had been standing for years only because no one touched the right wall.

His family’s deaths had always been a wound with scar tissue over it. Old pain. Accepted pain. The kind a man learned to walk with because life did not stop simply because graves were fresh.

Accident.

Misfortune.

Just loss.

Arslan had buried questions because there had been nothing useful to do with them. He had become stronger. Moved forward. Built something. Loved again. Had a son a daughter and then another pair. A family. A life that did not erase the old one, but made standing beneath its weight possible.

Now Orleandul had reached into that old grave and pulled something up by the hair. Arslan heard his own heartbeat.

Slow.

Heavy.

Wrong.

The flame on his sword vanished. For one heartbeat, Orleandul’s smile sharpened. He thought he had weakened him. That was understandable. Many men mistook silence for collapse. Arslan stared at him. His face showed nothing. Inside, something screamed.

Grief was too human for the thing waking inside him. This was colder. A clean break in the mind where the world rearranged itself and placed a target at the center.

His mana stopped burning outward. It pulled inward. The steam around him faded. Rain touched his armor again. His breathing slowed. The sword in his hand felt heavier.

Orleandul watched carefully now. Some instinct in him seemed to realize the reaction was not following the expected path.