Chapter 716
Viola didn’t stop shaking for a long time.
She kept them pinned there on the bridge like her arms were the only thing holding the world together. Every time her grip loosened by a fraction, it tightened again, as if some part of her still didn’t believe they wouldn’t vanish the moment she blinked.
Her tears slowed eventually. Not because she got control. Because her body ran out of fuel. The anger, the fear, the week of sleepless searching, everything she’d been holding up with pure stubbornness finally hit the point where it couldn’t stay standing.
Her breathing hitched once, then eased. Her head slipped forward, resting against Ludger’s shoulder. Her arms stayed locked around both of them, but the pressure softened, less like a restraint now, more like someone clinging in their sleep.
Viola’s eyelids fluttered. Then closed. And just like that… she fell asleep. Right there, still hugging them, exhaustion finally taking her the second she felt safe enough to let it.
Luna went still, surprised, then carefully shifted her stance to keep Viola from sliding. Kaela moved in immediately, hands gentle for once, voice low.
“She’s out,” Kaela murmured, like saying it too loud might wake her.
Ludger didn’t joke. He just exhaled, shoulders sinking, the adrenaline finally leaking out of him in a tired wave.
Kaela and Luna exchanged a look, one part relief, one part we’re really doing this, and then they moved.
Slowly, carefully, they peeled Viola off them without fully breaking the hug, lifting her in a way that kept her arms wrapped around… something. Kaela took most of the weight on her shoulders. Luna supported her legs and hips, expression focused like she was carrying something fragile and dangerous at the same time.
They carried Viola off the bridge and into the port town, away from the gawking dockhands and the suddenly noisy whispers, toward a quiet room where she could sleep without the horizon calling her back.
No one tried to stop them. No one dared. When Viola was gone, the air around Ludger shifted.
The people who’d been surviving on tension for a week looked at him like they wanted answers, what happened, where they’d been, how they were alive, why he was water-skiing across the ocean like a lunatic…
Then they saw his face. Salt crusted on his skin. Hair a mess. Eyes too steady for someone who’d actually rested. The kind of exhaustion that didn’t show as weakness, but as a weight held behind the ribs. Ludger rubbed at his jaw once, then spoke simply.
“I need sleep.”
No one argued. Rathen nodded like it was an order. Shera and Valk stepped aside. Renvar opened his mouth, then closed it. Maurien’s eyes flicked over Ludger once, approving in that quiet way that meant good, don’t be stupid.
Kaela returned a few minutes later, wiping her hands on her trousers, and didn’t say a word, just pointed him toward a room. Ludger didn’t fight it.
He walked through the port town like a ghost that had finally decided to be solid again, ignoring the stares, the whispers, the disbelief hanging in the air. And when he reached the room, he shut the door behind him and let the world wait.
Because for the first time in a week, there was nothing immediately trying to kill him. And even Ludger needed a good night of sleep.
Ludger slept like he was back in his own room in Lionfang. No half-waking to check for footsteps. No instinctive mana pulse. No dreams that tried to drag him back under the sea.
Just sleep. Heavy, clean, and uninterrupted, like his body had finally decided it was allowed to shut down. When he woke, it was with that rare feeling of enough.
He lay there for a few seconds staring at the ceiling, listening. The inn, or whatever building they’d commandeered, had the muffled rhythm of morning: footsteps in the hallway, low voices, the clink of plates, someone laughing too quietly like they were afraid to jinx it.
The group was moving. Breakfast.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
Ludger sat up, rolled his shoulders, and felt every bruise complain in a dull chorus. He flexed his fingers, tested his mana out of habit, and found it steady, no strange backlash, no lingering pressure in his head.
Good. He washed quickly, pulled on clothes that didn’t smell like seawater, and stepped out. The hallway was busier than it had any right to be after a week of near-collapse. People moved with purpose again. Renvar passed carrying a stack of bowls. Kaela was already talking about ration lists. Maurien was arguing with someone about whether fish counted as “real breakfast.” Luna was there too, looking tired but less hollow, like she’d finally stopped staring at horizons and started living in the present again.
Then a door opened across the hall. Viola stepped out. She looked… better. Not fully rested, no one fixed a week of that kind of stress in one sleep, but the heavy shadows under her eyes had softened. Her hair was slightly messy, like she’d actually slept instead of just passing out mid-panic. She held her chin a little higher too, posture returning to the “Torvares heir” version of herself.
Her gaze found Ludger immediately. She walked toward him, slowed, then hesitated for the briefest moment, as if her body remembered the bridge and wanted to grab him again, but her pride grabbed her first. Viola stopped in front of him and cleared her throat.
“It was about time you two returned,” she said, voice crisp and annoyingly composed. “I heard you had returned while I was sleeping.”
Her eyes flicked away for half a heartbeat, then returned with forced seriousness.
“We can finally return home.”
Ludger frowned. For a second, he genuinely wondered if she’d hit her head when she fell asleep upright, because the tone was so aggressively normal that it bordered on delusion.
Then he caught it. The faintest blush sitting high on her cheeks. The way her eyes refused to linger too long. The micro-tension in her jaw like she was bracing for a joke she didn’t want to hear.
Ah.
She wanted to pretend she hadn’t cried herself into exhaustion while hugging them like her life depended on it. She wanted to pretend she hadn’t broken in front of everyone.
Because if she didn’t acknowledge it, it didn’t count. And if it didn’t count, Ludger couldn’t tease her for it. Ludger looked at her for a long, silent second. Then, very deliberately, he let the frown fade into his usual deadpan.
“As you command,” he said blandly. “We’ll proceed with the schedule.”
Viola’s shoulders loosened by a fraction, relief flashing across her face before she buried it again behind that “noble composure.”
“Good,” she said, a little too quickly. “Eat. Then we’ll talk logistics.”
Ludger nodded like that was the only thing that had happened. He decided to play along. For now. Because she’d earned that dignity the hard way. And because breakfast sounded like the best idea anyone had had in a week.
Breakfast tasted too normal for what had happened.
Hot bread. Salted fish. Something fried that probably shouldn’t have been fried at that hour. Steam rising from bowls like the world hadn’t nearly swallowed half the ship’s leadership a week ago.
People ate like they were trying to convince themselves it was real. At first there was the usual noise, Renvar complaining, Valk chewing like a machine. Then it thinned.
Conversation died one sentence at a time until the only sounds left were cutlery, swallowing, and the faint creak of the building settling in the morning warmth.
One by one, eyes drifted toward Ludger. Toward Luna. Waiting. No one demanded. No one pushed. They simply sat there, quiet and tense, like a jury that already knew the verdict mattered. Ludger sighed and set his cup down.
Troublesome, he thought, already tired of talking.
Before he could start, Maurien lifted one hand. The old wind mage didn’t ask permission. He never did. Mana flickered. A clean circle of wards formed over the table, sank into the air, and the space around them changed, sound dulling, the world outside suddenly distant.
A muffling ward.
Privacy.
“Go on,” Maurien said, calm as ever, eyes on Ludger. “No interruptions.”
Ludger looked around the table. Rathen sat forward slightly, jaw tight. Kaela’s eyes were sharp, still carrying that week of worry. Shera looked like she’d been holding her breath since the bridge. Valk had gone l still. Renvar’s usual grin was absent, replaced by a serious stare that didn’t fit his face.
Viola sat with her back straight, trying very hard to look like this was a routine briefing and not a near-breakdown. Luna sat quiet, posture controlled, gaze lowered like she was letting Ludger take point. They deserved an answer.
They’d worked themselves raw searching for them. Working on the ship, sending boats out, scanning the horizon, refusing to stop even when hope started getting stupid.
Ludger didn’t like owing people. But he owed them this.
“Alright,” he said. “We went overboard during the fight and then… ”
Ludger gave them the summary of what had happened. As one would expect, they got silent for a while until Viola broke the silence.
“...You’re telling me,” she said, voice low, “that the monster that nearly killed us… became your ally… because you had to fight giant humanoid man-eaters… on the other side of a labyrinth… so they wouldn’t learn that our world exists.”
Ludger shrugged once, tired. “ And for some other reasons, but yeah. That’s the short version.”
Renvar stared at him for a long beat.
Then he leaned back slowly and said, dead serious, “I’m starting to understand why Viola looked like she was going to murder the ocean.”
Viola didn’t respond. Her hands were clenched under the table. But the tiny tremor in her shoulders said she was still trying to accept that Ludger had walked through all of that… and come back with new skills and a casual attitude like the ocean was an amusement park.
Maurien, for his part, just watched Ludger with that same predator calm.
“Continue,” he said.
Because if this was what Ludger told them as th
e beginning…
Then whatever came next was going to be worse.