The road lay buried under snow, and the convoy moved like pack beasts in a white squall—slow, heavy, breath steaming.

Half a day slid by. Inside the carriage, a small table held parchment spread like winter fields, every inch furrowed with tight script.

“That’s my whole plan,” Lance said, his gaze like a drawn bow as it brushed each face. “Any questions?”

“We do what the boss says, right boys?” Jeremy half-got it, half-didn’t. He glanced at the dice game in the corner, and his retainers barked back like hounds in frost, “We’ll follow Brother Lance to the end!”

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you!” Jeremy growled, a thunderclap in a barrel.

The retainers snapped up their dice, fell into line like pines in a gale, spines straight, voices ringing like iron. “Whether it’s up the mountain of blades—down into the sea of fire—we obey Lance without question!”

The wagon rocked like a boat on slush, yet their parade stance didn’t waver an inch; eyes hard as flint, resolve like iced steel that admits no doubt.

The marquis and the rest flinched as if a cold blade kissed their throats.

The guard knight slid his trembling hand off his hilt, and asked, sullen as wet ash, “Are they all soldiers from the Golden Eagle Legion?”

Lance spread his hands to either side, shook his head with a helpless smile. “How could they be?”

“The Iron Duke and his vassals are famed for fairness,” the marquis mused, nodding like a man reading tracks in snow. “Then at least they’re retired legionaries?”

Jeremy pounced. “Nah—they’re like me,” he sang out, voice all campfire smoke. “We were mercs hustling in Golden Bay City. At first we followed the boss for coin.” He thumped Lance’s shoulder, a drumbeat on winter bark. “But later, same as me, couldn’t leave him if we tried!”

“Mercenary? What kind of word is that?” Yuna shot him a side-eye, cool as a frost-edged blade. “Sounds gross.”

“None of your business!” Jeremy shooed her away with a windmill hand, then smacked Lance’s shoulder again. “Point is, the boss stands by his people. Worth dying to follow!”

“Oh!!” the retainers roared, thunder in a barrel; the window slats trembled like reeds in a gust.

“All right, enough.” Lance flicked his hand, a stray snowflake of disdain. “Go play your cards.”

“On it!” The retainers deflated like pricked bladders, and in a few heartbeats they’d slumped to the floor, dealing cards with sheepish grins.

“Quite a strapping set of retainers,” the marquis sighed, like breath fogging glass.

Back to the point. “Anyone else have issues with the plan?”

“No,” Yuna said, lifting her skirt hem and stepping back with a bow, quiet as falling snow. “Everything I am belongs to my master.”

The marquis and the others felt their cheeks burn, shame like wind on raw skin.

“And you?” Lance’s serious eyes swept them like a winter tide.

“I…” The guard knight had words wedged in his throat. With Lance’s nod, he pushed them out. “I think it’s… risky.”

“I concur,” the private mage chimed in, voice thin as candle smoke. “Too much of it depends on—coincidence.”

He’d hit the nail and the frost-slick wood beneath.

“Clever ploys aren’t the highest path,” Lance said, calm as black ice. “They look like chance. With grit and quick wits, we make them happen.”

The mage lagged behind the thought; he grimaced, uncorked a mana potion, and drank like a man swallowing a spark. “Fine—fine.”

“I support Lance’s plan.” He cast a Warmth spell that spread like lamplight, then sat aside like a cooling ember.

That made three of five with a say nod in agreement.

“By majority rule,” Lance said, palms braced on the table like anchors in sleet. He looked to the marquis and the guard knight. “You should treat it as adopted. But—”

“This isn’t a ballot. It needs all our sweat. I want your doubts laid bare,” he said, words crisp as frost.

“My learning is shallow,” the guard knight muttered, shrinking like a shadow at dusk. “I just think it’s risky. Hard to pull off.”

“For example?”

The guard knight grabbed a thread like a drowning man catches driftwood. “How do you even plan to enter the Royal Magic Academy?”

“And how will you learn a Tier-4 attack spell in half a month?” he pushed on, breath fogging the air.

Lance answered the first. “I have a recommendation letter.”

“What?!” Not the knight, but the marquis jolted, eyes bright as startled birds. “Each year, ten thousand are eligible for the Royal Magic Academy! Only two hundred get in. How did you get that?”

“Who knows. The headmaster sent the letter out of the blue.” Lance told the story as if reciting tracks across ice. “Knight-Recommended Student. That’s what they’ll call me if I enroll.”

The marquis weighed it, nodding slow as falling flakes. “Mm… that tracks.”

Jealousy flickered in the guard knight’s gaze like green fire, then went out, replaced by respect clean as winter light.

He thumped his fist to his chest, stepped back a pace. “I support Lance’s plan.”

Now, of the five besides Lance, only the marquis hadn’t spoken. One reed still standing in the wind.

A few minutes of hush piled up like snow on eaves. Lance asked again, “Marquis, where does your doubt lie?”

“I…” He’d asked the nuts and bolts while drafting. Standing at the brink, his heart was empty as a winter field. “I just… can’t be sure it will work.”

Lance clenched his fist; the table shivered like a pond rippled by a stone. “So you crossed leagues to the fields by Golden Bay City to hire me. After all that churn, you still don’t know whether you should… do this?”

The heat in his tone made the marquis blanch, like frost cracking underfoot. He shook his head fast. “No! I meant no offense!”

“After all… the Fenglang family’s five-century creed is to seek answers in iron and blood.”

“Now it’s not iron and blood, but feather and gilt—reviving the family with money. That leaves me lost.”

Silence pressed for minutes, heavy as low clouds. Lance looked out the window at the white that swallowed sky and earth.

To the marquis’s doubt, Lance only said, “Confusion… one doesn’t need that much melodrama to live.”

“If…” He spoke as he turned back, voice like a blade sheathed. “If your confusion isn’t without an answer—”

He gathered the parchment, the rustle like dry leaves. “Find it after you become a guest of honor at the kingdom’s high table.”

The marquis staggered back a few steps.

He dropped into a chair like a man slipping on ice, eyes drifting to the white beyond the glass, his gaze lost on the snowfield with no horizon, sinking into thought without end.

…

The carriage’s halt jolted the sleeping awake, like a drum under snow.

After seven days and seven nights of grinding march, the convoy finally, truly, stopped. The end of the road had arrived.

“Maple City,” the caravan master called, his shivering voice brittle as ice.

They filed out, and the master and his apprentices climbed down from the driver’s bench, forming a neat row like fence posts in frost.

“Thank you for choosing Light Skiff Caravan,” he declaimed, smile lacquered on. “Our creed is to cross mountains and waters, and by any road get guests and goods where they dream to go!”

The marquis flicked him a bundle of silver arcane coins, the stack glued with sugar syrup like frost on berries.

An apprentice darted in, caught them, and turned with a grin bright as a brazier. “Boss, seven silver arcane coins!”

“You little—” The master lunged, slammed the apprentice into the snow, then faced them with springtime warmth. “Our creed is to serve with every care under heaven. Some apprentices haven’t learned that yet. Please forgive.”

“No need.” The marquis gave him nothing but cold air.

“Let’s go.”

“Yeah!” they answered Lance, a snowball chorus.

The flats before Maple City were small; where they parked was already near the gate, like a footprint at the threshold.

“Boss, look!” Jeremy scampered up a tree like a monkey in frost. “Maple City!”

Winter branches don’t bear fools. “Aaah—!”

He dropped with a yelp into the snow, and a bellyful of powder followed, burying him like a cheap grave.

“What the hell!” His hand punched up through white. He clawed himself free, spit sleet, and cursed. “Pleh, pleh—what rotten luck!”

At his snow-plastered look, everyone burst out laughing, laughter rolling like loose snow down a roof.

When the mirth melted, Lance climbed a low knoll and looked out at Maple City.

So this is Maple City, Fulin sighed within his heart, a whisper like wind in pines.

Compared to Golden Bay City, Maple City wore less Victorian grandeur—fewer proud blocks, fewer ornate crowns. Instead the view bristled with Gothic height.

Spires, peaks, steep roofs, and pointed crosses crowded the skyline, ranks of thorns rising and falling, a forest of needles that felt sharp enough to prick the eye.

“Master,” Yuna murmured, drawing up beside him like a shadow in snow.

“Yuna, is this your hometown?”

She gazed at the familiar-yet-strange distance, eyes like ponds under ice. “Yes. I spent my childhood here.”

“Was it a happy time?”

She tilted her head, voice still businesslike, a silk cord held tight. “Since it was childhood, it was, of course, happy.”

Fulin noticed the glint in Yuna’s eyes, crystals that wouldn’t fall, a thaw that refused to run.

“Childhood is the cradle of every human,” Lance said, tone warm as coals. “The years when first dreams bud.”

“When you were still a young lady, did you imagine what life you wanted?”

“No.” Yuna’s voice turned a shade dimmer, evening light behind frost. “I never thought about it.”

“I see…”

Lance looked toward the great crimson that rose from the end of the white—like a red sun heaving up through snow.

“Let’s go.”

“Understood, Master.” Yuna jogged to his side, footsteps like prints in fresh powder.

Horses weren’t allowed inside Maple City; they walked through the gate on foot, breath trailing like smoke.

At once the retainers hauling the luggage cart started sneezing as if the cold had leapt into their noses.

“A-choo!” Jeremy was worst, his nose ready to fall off like a ripe berry.

“Ugh…” He sagged after the sneeze, limbs gone soft as wet paper; the cart barely budged.

Flowers blazed color on every street, and in glass windows tulips posed like dancers. With Warmth spells and heat flasks nursing them, they bloomed in the winter wind like fires in snow.

“Lance,” the marquis said, sudden clarity like sun on ice. “I’d wager your men have hay fever.”

“Mm. Looks like it.”

“You know what hay fever is?!” The marquis blinked, surprise bright as a struck spark.

“My home’s at Tulip Manor.”

“Oh! That explains it.” He tapped his thinning crown, then winced. “That’s trouble. Hay fever isn’t easy to treat.”

“No need to cure it. Just block it.”

Lance pulled out a few activated-charcoal masks. “I lined them with tea leaves and charcoal from clean-burned dry wood. Air goes through. Pollen doesn’t.”

“Give me that!” Jeremy grabbed a mask like a drowning man grabbing driftwood. He strapped it on and sucked a deep breath, relief washing him like warm light. “Hah—much better.”

Their sudden recovery left the marquis and the others staring, eyes like round coins in frost.

“Let’s move.”

“O-okay.”

A squad of military police marched up, boots crunching like ice. “Halt. By royal decree, register to enter!”

They complied. When it was Lance’s turn, the captain—one eye wide, the other pinched like a sliver of moon—gave him a crooked look.

“Blazing Fire Knight?” he said, the words hanging in the cold like a spark.