On the thirtieth, after three days on dusty roads—stop-and-go chatter like birds hopping along a fence—they finally reached the Royal Capital. As they stepped beneath walls near twenty meters high, shards of memory whipped through Medith’s mind like torn banners in a gale.

“Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!” Voices cracked like whips in a fog.

“Damn it! It’s a trap!” The word snapped like a sprung snare in tall grass.

“Medith Waheit is nothing much.” The scorn floated like cold mist over a battlefield.

“Medith?” Sais saw stormlight behind her eyes before she moved, then patted her cheek, gentle as a leaf against glass. Lately Medith had gone distant, clutching her head with a low, pained groan as if ice splinters were working inward.

“You alright?” Haidra asked, concern warm as a hand by a hearth. Medith blinked, then waved it off, a breath clearing frost from a pane. “I’m fine, I’m fine...” Her voice steadied like a lampwick trimmed.

“This… is the price of coming from another world?” the women thought at once, the idea rising like smoke from the same brazier. Medith didn’t belong to this sky; she was a scholar and a blade, a talent for every season.

Her path was set against the gods, a hawk flying into the wind; a few odd currents weren’t strange.

“A trap...” Medith chased the image, a fish flashing silver then gone. A sword rose and a head spun skyward; she couldn’t fix the faces. All she knew was, as the head arced like a black moon, someone said, “Trap.”

Better keep one eye open, she thought, a fox slipping through reeds. She swept the scene. Kailon walked in the van, a standard flaring like fire on a cliff. It drew salutes from rows of soldiers, their gesture unlike the Elvenfolk: right fists clenched, a light tap to the center of the brow, like knocking on a temple bell.

They strode up to a palace vast as a mountain range, marble and shadow layered like snow and stone.

“Haidra, please halt.” A man in black-gold plate barred them with a long spear, the steel like a winter branch. Medith’s brows rose; few dared to block Haidra’s road.

Haidra had expected it. She slipped from the saddle with water’s calm, stepped close, then turned her back to him. She lifted her golden hair like sunrise over a ridge. He studied the nape of her neck for a few heartbeats, gaze steady as a surveyor’s line, then bowed his voice. “My apologies, Officer Haidra.”

“Mm.” Haidra smoothed her hair, a curtain falling. The guard gestured, and men moved to the great gate. “Open the doors—welcome our guests!” His shout rolled like a drum across stone.

Soldiers swarmed like ants over a hive, but the gate didn’t lift at once. Mechanisms whispered behind oak and iron, gears chewing like hidden mills. In that pause, Medith voiced her knot. “What was he doing? Why stop someone like Haidra?”

“Hah! Long hair, short sight, fat sow.” Tianensai’s lip curled like a knife. “They’re checking the Mark. Faces can lie; that can’t.”

Medith didn’t bite. Her eyes softened like rain on dust. “What’s this Mark? Something from Regido?”

She asked with open palms, and Tianensai shifted, pride pricked like a thorn. “Yeah. For Royal Officers, Regido’s just the basics. The ‘Brain’ is the only exception.”

“‘Royal Officer’ means Haidra?” Milia tilted her head, curiosity bright as a torch. “Like a royal guard?”

“Just a different label,” Mure said, gazing at the slow-breathing gate with temple-like reverence. “By the way, our captain also works Regido.”

“Regido… what is it, really?” Sais fell quiet, the question a deep well at noon. If it stayed hidden, one day they might die and never see the blade.

Ding—long.

Ding—long.

Ding—long.

Six clear, sonorous strikes rang out at once, bell-iron pouring like light through water. The entire capital heard the sound, and soon other districts answered like hills tossing back an echo. Then the peals rolled across the whole country, a bronze tide washing coast to coast.

The bells went on and on, almost ten minutes, like rain that refuses to stop until every leaf is wet.

“The guests are here! They arrived safe!” Voices burst from alleys like sparrows from a tree.

“Yeah! We drink our fill tomorrow!” Laughter spilled like spilled wine.

“Hahaha! Blessed by the guests—we’re off work tomorrow!” Cheers lifted like laundry in a wind.

Medith didn’t know it yet, but the Eastern Nation was roaring from river to ridge because of them.

“Is that a welcome bell?” she asked, hearing a familiar cadence, like the Elvenfolk’s own greeting chime. The numbers felt different—theirs was three; here, six.

“Right,” Kailon said, lowering his banner like a sail at harbor, handing it to a soldier. “When heroes return, we strike the [State Bell] six times. The whole nation celebrates a day. The treasury foots the bill.”

“But… we aren’t heroes,” Phiby murmured, cheeks warm as embers. Towering soldiers ringed them, black-gold armor sealing them like night in plates. Eyes watched her from within, hard as arrow slits. Her fingers trembled like grass in a draft.

Medith smiled and patted the hand clutching her hem, a moth gripping a sleeve. Around them, guards carried greatswords like slabs of dusk, long spears like winter reeds, and silver crossbows polished bright as frost. What startled her most sat braced on a wooden war-cart, a bow of iron two meters long like a crouching beast. On the ground lay a bundle of bolts, near seventy-five centimeters each, stacked like bundled saplings.

“Oh, gods—what is that?” Sais flinched; each bolt was thick as a wrist. The heads were helical, threaded like a screw, and the shafts bore their nation’s rose crest, petals cut into steel.

“That? We call it the [Bonecrusher Arrow],” Haidra said, pride rising like a standard in wind. “It hits harder than you think. Max range, two thousand meters. Inside one thousand, no loss in bite.

“After it lands, the damage might spook you. I’ll show you when I can.” She loved their faces when the war-cart rolled out; it was the taste of strong country, iron and honey.

“Two thousand meters… no attenuation within one thousand…” Milia stammered, words tripping like stones in a stream. Even Medith’s full-draw shot only brushed that ceiling. She wasn’t a professional archer, but few would dare take her arrow head-on.

Even so, her effective range was about five hundred meters. Past that line, power fell like rain running off a roof.

“That’s all it takes to shock you?” Haidra laughed, a little drunk on her own thunder. “That’s the lowest-grade war gear. If we wheel out the advanced toys, you’ll faint.” Kailon shot her a look sharp as a thrown knife. She caught it, and let the rest settle like dust.

Medith missed their byplay. Melancholy swam in her gaze like clouds over a wide sea. There’s always a higher peak, a wider sky; this continent was deeper and stranger than she’d guessed. She had thought the Elvenfolk survived by their barrier alone. Now it seemed the giants simply hadn’t been hungry.

She set her jaw, a blade sliding home. At tonight’s banquet, she would pry loose weapon schematics and military kit, and carry them home like fire in a covered lantern.