Chapter 748
Torvares remained silent for a long moment. Then he gave a slow nod.
“That appears to be the case.”
His voice was low, grim, and entirely stripped of doubt.
Not certainty. Not yet. But enough alignment between reason and pattern that denying it would have been stupidity. Torvares leaned back slightly in his chair, his face set into a hard line.
“If you are right,” he said, “then this is uglier than a handful of convenient noble deaths.” His eyes narrowed. “It means someone inside the Empire has been quietly managing power itself. Not only through politics, but through suppression. Through deciding who gets to advance, who gets to rise, and who disappears before they can reshape the board.”
Ludger said nothing. Because that was exactly what it looked like. And if that was true, then he was no longer dealing with a buried family tragedy or an isolated capital conspiracy. He was looking at a system. One built to kill progress when progress threatened the wrong people. Torvares studied him for a moment before asking the question directly.
“Are you planning to involve Arslan in this?”
Ludger’s expression did not change.
“Not for now.”
That answer made Torvares’s gaze sharpen, but Ludger continued before the old lord could press him.
“There are advantages to solving as much of this as possible before telling him.”
He spoke calmly, as if laying out military considerations rather than talking about his own father.
“If I tell him now, then this stops being an investigation and starts becoming something personal in the worst possible way. It would not stay clean. He would not be able to hear that his family may have been murdered, that their work may have been stolen or suppressed, and that the same rot could still be active now… and then remain still.”
Torvares said nothing. Ludger went on.
“He would want names immediately. Faces. A target. He would start moving before we actually understand the full shape of this.” His eyes hardened slightly. “And that would be dangerous.”
There was no accusation in his tone. Only realism.
“Right now, I have threads. Patterns. Reasonable conclusions.” Ludger tapped one finger lightly against the desk. “But not enough to strike properly. Not enough to expose the whole structure. If he acts too early, whoever is behind this could erase the remaining evidence, silence the wrong people, or simply retreat behind layers we can’t reach yet.”
That was the first merit. Control. Timing. The ability to keep the enemy unaware that the old trail had become active again.
“There is another advantage,” Ludger said. “If I solve more of this first, then when I finally tell him, I can give him truth instead of suspicion.”
Torvares’s face remained grave. Ludger continued.
“He would not just hear that something may have happened. He would hear what happened. Who benefited. Who moved where. Which family rose. Which network handled the crimes. What his parents were actually working on. Whether their deaths were tied to the same force killing others now.” His voice stayed flat, but the weight beneath it deepened. “That matters.”
Because there was a difference between reopening an old wound with certainty and tearing it open with maybe. One gave pain meaning. The other just spread pain further.
“If I tell him too soon,” Ludger said, “I risk handing him grief without direction.”
That was the clearest demerit of immediate honesty. But there were demerits to delay too, and Ludger knew them perfectly well.
“The problem,” he said after a pause, “is that solving this without informing him also has costs.”
Torvares watched him carefully. Ludger’s gaze lowered for a moment before rising again.
“He has the right to know.” The words came out simple and hard. “It is his past. His family. His dead. Keeping him outside of it, even temporarily, means making that choice for him.”
Torvares gave the slightest nod. Ludger continued.
“And if he learns later that I knew this much and said nothing, he may not like it. Even if I did it to protect him. Even if I was right.”
That part mattered too. Arslan was not a fragile man. But strong men often hated being protected without their consent, especially by their own sons.
“There is also the risk that I fail before telling him,” Ludger said. “Or that the trail shifts in a way that forces this into the open before I’m ready. In that case, he would hear fragments from the wrong source, at the wrong time, with no structure around it.” His mouth flattened slightly. “That would be worse. Unlikely, but worse.”
Torvares exhaled slowly. So Ludger laid out the balance as it truly was.
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“If I tell him now, I risk turning this into a direct confrontation before I understand the enemy. If I delay, I gain time, secrecy, and better odds of finding the truth… but I also carry the burden of deciding how long his ignorance is justified.”
The room stayed quiet after that. Torvares was the first to break it.
“Arslan has the right to hear this sooner rather than later.”
Ludger’s eyes narrowed faintly, but he did not reject the point.
“I know.”
“Then why delay?” Torvares asked.
Ludger’s answer came immediately.
“Because I can’t tell him without risking him joining a fight.”
That made Torvares’s brows draw together.
“What kind of fight would he have now?” he asked. “And who exactly is the enemy?”
Ludger’s expression turned colder.
“An underworld guild.”
Torvares went still. Ludger continued in detail, voice low and precise.
“They are the most likely structure for this. Not a noble family alone. Not just one apothecary line. Not even a secret circle within the Senate.” He shook his head once. “This requires specialists. Quiet ones. People used to moving poison, forbidden goods, illegal contracts, false records, missing bodies, purchased silence, and work that officially does not exist.”
His gaze hardened further.
“They would need access to curse practitioners, or people who can deploy cursed methods without attracting attention. They would need smugglers. Information brokers. cleaners. Buyers inside respectable circles. A way to feed forbidden services upward while keeping the filth buried below.”
Torvares’s face darkened with each sentence.
“No ordinary criminal band could manage that for years without being crushed,” Ludger said. “And no public institution would leave such a trail without someone noticing. But an underworld guild?” He tapped the desk once. “That fits.”
Because only something like that could combine secrecy, technical knowledge, deniability, and reach.
“They would have the means to commit crimes and curse people without being noticed,” Ludger said. “Or at least without being noticed until it was too late.”
Torvares remained silent. Ludger finished the thought.
“And if I tell Dad now, before I can identify which guild, which handlers, and which respectable people sit above them… then I am not informing him.”
His eyes turned sharp as blades.
“I am troubling him.”
Ludger was silent for a moment, then asked,
“Do you know someone who knows a great deal about people from the underworld?”
Torvares leaned back slightly in his chair, his expression turning thoughtful.
“Luna should know,” he said after a moment.
Then his gaze sharpened.
“But if you intend to keep Viola out of this mess as well, it would be better not to involve her.”
Ludger did not argue with that. Torvares noticed, and his brows drew together a little more.
“Still,” he said, “why are you asking about people instead of guilds?”
Ludger’s answer came without hesitation.
“Because I’m looking for a fire mage.”
That made Torvares go still. Ludger continued, calm and precise.
“The most skilled one I can find.”
Torvares’s eyes narrowed. Ludger’s own gaze remained cold.
“He would be my target,” he said. “And the key that connects the dots of this mystery.”
For a moment, Torvares said nothing at all. He just squinted at Ludger, the old lord’s mind clearly running through the implications as fast as Ludger’s had before. The idea settled badly. That much was obvious from the hardening of his face alone.
A mage arsonist. Not random flame. Not an accident. A deliberate hand. Someone skilled enough to turn destruction into something clean enough for official reports to bury. Someone capable of making an entire household lose any real chance to escape.
The thought clearly did not sit well with him. But the more it settled, the less absurd it looked. And the more it explained.
If Arslan’s family had truly been eliminated, then fire was not just a convenient tool. It was the perfect one. Violent enough to kill. Chaotic enough to destroy evidence. Common enough that frightened officials could accept “accident” if the scene was shaped correctly. And if the flames were controlled by a mage skilled enough, then exits could be cut off before anyone realized what was happening. Torvares’s expression darkened.
“That would explain a great deal,” he said quietly.
Ludger said nothing. Torvares looked away for a moment, toward the far wall, but it was clear he was seeing an older scene instead. A house burning. A family trapped. No clear witness left alive who could describe the difference between disaster and murder.
“It would explain why Arslan’s family never had a real chance to escape,” he said at last.
The room went silent after that. Because once that possibility was spoken aloud, it became much harder to pretend the past had simply been cruel. Cruelty was common. Precision was not. And if a fire mage had truly been involved, then somewhere out there was a man whose flames had done more than destroy a home.
They had buried a truth for nearly twenty years. Torvares was silent for several long seconds.
Then he said, “I do have a name.”
Ludger’s eyes sharpened immediately. Torvares leaned back in his chair, his expression turning darker as he reached into older memories.
“Years ago,” he began, “there was a fire mage who became infamous during a dispute between two guilds over a labyrinth.”
His voice stayed measured, but there was a hard edge beneath it now.
“At first, it was the usual sort of conflict. Posturing. threats. a few clashes near routes and supply lines. Both guilds wanted control over the profits, the materials, and the prestige that came with clearing deeper layers first.” He paused. “Then that mage got involved.”
Ludger remained perfectly still. Torvares continued.
“He did not simply defeat his opponents. He incinerated them.”
The word sat in the room like heat.
“Not one or two in the middle of battle. Entire groups. Men burned so completely that identification became nearly impossible. Bodies fused into armor. Stone blackened around them. The sort of thing that stops being a guild dispute and starts becoming a warning.”
Ludger said nothing. Torvares’s eyes narrowed faintly as he went on.
“In the end, the rival guild accepted defeat. They backed down. Publicly. They gave up their claim and withdrew.”
That should have been the end of it.
“But the mage did not like that,” Torvares said, voice colder now. “Apparently, surrender insulted him. Or perhaps he simply wanted to erase them entirely.”
Ludger’s gaze did not waver.
“So he went to their guildhall.”
The room felt quieter with every sentence.
“And there,” Torvares said, “he finished what he had started.”