Chapter 981

Viola nodded.

Her hand rested against her grandfather’s arm. She had used Healing Touch again only a little while ago, spending another thin thread of mana to keep the poison from taking more than it already had. It hadn’t woken him. It hadn’t cleared the blackened veins along his neck. It had only kept his breathing from becoming worse.

That had to be enough. For now.

“I don’t like this,” Viola said quietly.

Luna glanced at her.

Viola’s eyes stayed fixed ahead, narrowed against the rain. “There’s something off in the air.”

Luna nodded. She felt it too.

Not in the same way Viola did, perhaps, but enough. The land ahead was too tense. Too still in certain places. Too heavy in others. Even the rain seemed to fall wrong near the horizon, swallowed by shadow and distance before it could reveal anything useful.

Neither of them said the obvious. If they were close enough to feel this, then they were close enough to be found. Viola’s fingers tightened around her earth sword.

They continued a little farther, then stopped beneath the partial cover of a leaning rock formation and a cluster of rain-bent trees. Silva lowered himself enough for Torvares’s body to remain stable while Luna checked the rear and Viola stared forward, thinking.

Too many seconds passed. Luna didn’t like that either.

Viola drew in a slow breath, then turned to her.

“I’ll go ahead.”

Luna stared at her.

“No.”

Viola ignored the immediate refusal. “I’ll cause a distraction. Something loud enough to pull attention away from this side. You use that chance to get Silva and Grandfather closer to Lionfang without being noticed.”

“No.”

“If the enemy line is watching the approaches, we can’t all move together. Silva is too large, and Grandfather can’t defend himself. If they spot us, we’ll be forced into a fight while protecting someone who can’t move.”

“Still no.”

Viola’s jaw tightened. “Luna…”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“It’s the best option we have.”

“It’s the first option you thought of while sleep-deprived, starving, low on mana, and terrified for your grandfather,” Luna said sharply. “That does not make it the best one.”

Viola flinched slightly. Not much. Enough. Luna regretted the harshness, but not the point. The rain beat down between them, filling the silence for a moment. Viola looked away first.

“I can do it.”

“I know you can do things,” Luna said. “That isn’t the issue.”

“Then what is?”

“You’re not used to fighting alone.”

Viola’s expression hardened. Luna stepped closer, lowering her voice but not softening it.

“You’re strong. You’re smart. You’re stubborn enough to argue with mountains. But you’re used to fighting with people around you. Ludger, me, guards, Lionsguard, your grandfather’s men. You support, react, heal, reinforce, command. You don’t usually throw yourself alone into enemy lines and improvise when everything starts collapsing.”

Viola’s grip on her staff tightened.

“I’m not helpless.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You sound like you’re saying that.”

“I’m saying you’re exhausted and about to use yourself as bait.”

Viola’s eyes flashed.

“Because someone has to.”

Luna opened her mouth, then stopped. Because that was the worst part. Viola wasn’t entirely wrong. They needed a distraction. They needed a way through. They needed Lord Torvares inside Lionfang before the poison finally won.

And Ludger still hadn’t caught up. That fact sat between them like a fourth person. Neither wanted to say it aloud, but both knew what it meant. If Ludger had not reached them by now, then either he was still fighting, badly delayed, or worse.

Viola had been trying very hard not to think about the last possibility. Luna could tell. Viola looked toward the dark horizon again, rain running down her face in streams.

“If Ludger were here, he could make the opening.”

Luna said nothing.

“He isn’t.”

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Still nothing.

“So I will.”

Luna hated how calm she sounded. That was not bravery. That was a girl forcing herself into the shape of someone who had no other choice. Silva gave a low rumble, deep enough to vibrate through the wet ground. Viola placed a hand against the direwolf’s neck.

“I know,” she said softly. “You don’t like it either.”

The direwolf’s pale eyes remained fixed on her. Luna let out a slow breath through her nose.

“We need a better version of this plan.”

Viola looked back.

“Then give me one.”

Luna glanced toward Torvares. Pale. Unmoving. Dark veins creeping beneath the skin. Time was eating them alive. She cursed under her breath.

Viola also looked toward the horizon as if the cloudy sky might finally offer her an answer.

It didn’t.

The rain still fell in heavy sheets, dark and cold, turning the world into blurred lines of mud, stone, and shadow. The clouds above pressed low and heavy, swollen with storm and weight, but they gave her nothing. No sudden inspiration. No neat plan. No moment of clarity descending from the heavens to tell her what to do next.

Her jaw tightened. They were running out of time, and every path ahead felt worse than the last. Then a lightning bolt fell in the distance.

It struck somewhere in the direction she had been staring, a violent white flash tearing through the rain and lighting the land for a heartbeat before thunder rolled after it in a deep, angry growl. Viola’s eyes narrowed slightly as she watched the fading afterimage.

Was that the answer she needed? Ludger could do something like that.

He could manipulate the clouds enough to pull lightning down onto a specific area, forcing the sky itself to become a weapon. But she couldn’t do that. Not even close. She could heal, support, endure, and fight when she had to, but that kind of control over a battlefield... that was his territory.

The thought hit harder than she liked.

Viola realized, not for the first time, that she relied too much on Ludger to solve most problems.

That small, ridiculous monster of a boy had become such a constant answer to impossible situations that part of her mind kept reaching for him automatically, even now, even when he wasn’t here, even when she had to act on her own. It was irritating. Embarrassing too. And worse, it was true.

As if that thought wasn’t unpleasant enough, she suddenly felt the ground shake. Her head turned at once. Through the curtain of rain and the dimness beyond, shapes were approaching in the distance.

Not people. Not beasts. Too steady. Too heavy. A group of large figures moved through the storm with slow, crushing steps, their silhouettes broad and angular, each footfall sending another dull vibration through the soaked ground beneath Viola’s boots.

Luna narrowed her eyes beside her and studied them for a second longer before speaking.

“They look like runic golems.”

Viola’s expression hardened immediately.

But then Luna added, “Not the model from the Velis League.”

That made it worse. Viola cursed under her breath.

If they had been Velis designs, at least she would have had some frame of reference, some expectation for how they moved, where their cores might be, what weaknesses their construction probably carried. But these? These were something else. Similar enough to be recognized, different enough to mean trouble.

The shapes came closer through the rain, and the details started resolving.

Heavy bodies made of dark stone and metal plating. Thick limbs inscribed with glowing rune lines that pulsed in ugly rhythm under the stormlight. Broad shoulders. No wasted shape in them. No decorative craft. They looked built for blunt advance and violent impact, the sort of war constructs made by someone who valued function over beauty and expected them to break whatever stood in their path.

Viola exhaled once.

Then said, “I’ll fight them and buy time.”

Luna went silent beside her. Only for a moment.

Then she reached under her dress, grabbed the knives hidden there, and ripped apart the sides of the fabric in one clean, practical motion so she could move more freely. The torn cloth snapped in the rain and fell loose around her legs, no longer enough to restrict her steps if the coming fight turned fast and ugly.

She rolled one shoulder, flipped a blade once in her hand, and looked toward the approaching golems with the kind of calm that usually meant she had already accepted the risk and moved past fear into action.

Then she said, “Let’s finish this fast together.”

Viola glanced at her. Luna’s voice stayed sharp and simple.

“Splitting up will only make us easier targets.”

The rain kept falling. The ground shook again under the golems’ advance. And with no better answer left in the storm, Viola tightened her grip and prepared to meet them side by side.

“I’ll be the bait,” Viola said.

Her voice came out steady, firmer than she felt.

“Use the opening to finish them off.”

Luna looked at her for only a second before nodding. No argument.

If Viola was going to draw their attention, then Luna would do what Luna did best and turn distraction into death.

Viola tightened her grip on her earth sword and fed more mana into it. The blade darkened and thickened slightly as the structure hardened, the stone-like edge becoming denser, sharper, more stable under the pressure of her will. Fine lines of mana ran through it as she reinforced the weapon beyond what a normal conjured blade should have handled.

Still not enough. Not compared to a real sword. That thought annoyed her more than it should have.

She cursed herself for leaving her actual weapon at the manor in the capital. But really, who would have brought a sword to the birthday party of a five-year-old boy? The answer should have been no one. The fact that her life kept proving otherwise was getting ridiculous.

The runic golems came closer through the rain. Now they could finally make out their full appearance. They were nothing like the ones they had faced in the runic golem labyrinth.

Those had looked like ancient statues given motion, old constructs carrying the weight of age and ritual in every carved line. And they were not like the Velis League models either, the rounded sentinel types built with smoother plating and more obvious technical refinement.

These were bulkier.

Squarer.

Cruder in shape, but not in purpose.

Their torsos looked like massive stone-metal boxes layered with thick reinforced plates, shoulders broad and rectangular, arms heavy like battering rams, legs built in dense blocky segments that drove into the mud with relentless stability. Runes glowed across their chests, joints, and forearms in rigid lines rather than elegant circuits, as if whoever designed them had cared less about grace and more about making sure they kept moving after taking punishment.

Still, for all their size, they did not look especially advanced. Functional. But not elegant machines built by the best artificers in the world.

Then voices started carrying through the rain. Pilots. From inside. Viola’s eyes narrowed. So that was it. The golems were piloted, not autonomous. One of the voices rose over the storm, sharp with surprise.

“These are Viola and her grandfather!”

Another answered immediately.

“How did they escape the capital?”

A third voice came from another construct, more tense.

“The plan failed?”

Then another, lower and uglier, said the thing that made Viola’s grip tighten.

“Does that mean that monster of a vice guildmaster is nearby as well?”