After meeting the new city lord, Medith learned the truth that slid out like oil on water: after the Aeryu Incident, Paris took the throne and tightened fortifications like iron rings around a beating heart. As the keystone and shopfront, the trade hub of Sia City drew the brightest lantern of attention.

Troops rose to ten thousand like a forest of spears, while walls and institutions were mended like healed scars; the people stepped out of war’s shadow as dawn pressed back the night. Under Paris’s rule, everything seemed to walk toward a brighter morning.

A warm surge filled Medith’s chest like spring thaw; those two hundred thousand lives saved were worth the blood and dust. Even the quick flicker of passing smiles, fireflies in daylight, was enough for her.

From the high wall, she looked down at a silk-painting of peace and bustle, thoughts rippling like wind over water. “Powell… is this… the scene you wanted to guard? What a pity…”

Pain pricked, a thorn under the nail, and she shook her head as secrets surfaced like driftwood. She didn’t know if Powell bore guilt, but he should never have been driven to this end, a lamb led to someone else’s frost.

Fear rose in her like a cold tide; Paris had even planned his escape for failure, a backdoor drawn on his chessboard.

“Medith?!”

“My God! The hero of Sia City—”

“Medith—Medith—Medith—” The cries burst like sparks, rolling from lip to lip.

People noticed her and halted, faces tilted up like sunflowers, calls rising like birds at dawn. Even strangers looked skyward, respect lifting like incense smoke.

In their eyes, that kind of stature belonged only to a crown-bearer; on the wall, Medith raised her arm and let her voice ring like a bronze bell. “Honored residents of Eunomiya, have your days treated you well?”

“Thanks to you—”

She leapt from the wall like a swallow and walked the town’s heart; the crowd parted like a tide, applause drummed down like warm rain. The scene bloomed as if a king had arrived, festival-bright and jubilant.

Far off, nobles in robes gold as coin watched with iced eyes, then loosed carrier pigeons, moon-white letters into the sky…

…

She came to the familiar Hope Plaza, one of the pivots of Sia City’s battle, where the basement fissure had been filled and the scar vanished like a seam smoothed by time. A tide of people surged around; guards stood by the statue like straight pines, saluting, or staring at the ground as if reading ashes.

It felt like stepping back into that brutal field; seeing Medith, many guards pressed forward like a river, eyes thirsty as a dry well. Medith met the glow of admiration that rose around her and shook her head with a helpless, wry smile.

…

“This is roughly how it was that day… To be honest, I never thought I’d ever see such peace again. Seeing it now… I can only say, it was all worth it.” Relief warmed her smile like sun on frost.

The guards listened and fell into a long silence, heavy as stone. After a while, they lifted off their helmets like pale moons and saluted with grave respect. “We offer you our highest honor; your great kindness, Eunomiya will never forget. Sia City will never forget.”

“The countless dead compatriots will not forget!

At your service—salute!”

Guards of every rank raised their fists and struck their brows, hammers on a bell; Medith’s smile opened like a blossom, joy plain on her face.

“Do you… believe Lord Draela was the one behind it?” Her question slid through warm air like a cold blade.

The crowd blinked, faces shifting like clouds, every kind of look passing; most chose silence, a curtain falling. Medith nodded; the pebble had found the bottom of the well.

Before the towering statue, her gaze narrowed, sharp and strange as winter light. The old figure of Ostos had been replaced by Paris, robed in a white dragon crest like frost on silk. A crown set with four stones of different color burned above him, sumptuous and inscrutable.

He still held a tome in one hand and a sword in the other, scales of law and steel laid out as before, but—

This time the sword lifted skyward like a spear piercing the blue, while the tome dipped down like a bowed leaf. High and low were clear at a glance, their order stamped like a seal on stone.