That night, the flames speared into the sky.
In the flower-viewing court, the Flame of Chaos reduced their whole world to ash.
A cutting winter wind rose on cue; petals, ashen or still burning, lifted in swarms. They drifted over the city, a galaxy of sparks in the night, then thinned and dimmed, vanishing like a bloom that lasts a breath.
Beauty born in fire became their final twilight blossom.
“Lance!?” Lance’s party reached Maple Manor. Before they hit the town hall, a girl came sprinting.
It was Jasmine. Yuna had gone to the academy to report, and among the apprentices who came rushing, Jasmine was first to arrive at the manor.
She’d heard Lance had left. She’d heard he meant to risk himself for others. Her knees went out; she nearly fainted as she wept on the floor.
Now she saw him safe, sorrow flipped to joy. Tears fogged her round spectacles. She threw herself into his arms, almost knocking the exhausted Lance off his feet.
“I’m fine,” he murmured into the hug, warmth first, then a gentle pat on her back.
“Are you really fine?” Jasmine’s emotions were all childlike edges. Her big wet eyes searched his face, not quite believing.
“I’m the famed Blazing Fire Knight. How could anything happen to me?” Lance took a step back, struck a hero pose, and started peacocking on the spot.
Others filed out of the hall. They saw Lance’s group unharmed in the yard and let out a collective breath. Tight hearts finally settled.
The Feng Wolf Marquis’s family was there too. They saw him sprawled on the big cat’s back and rushed forward. “Marquis, sir, are you all right?!”
“Mm… who called me?” On the big cat’s back, the Feng Wolf Marquis woke like a dead boar jolting alive. He stretched hard, then toppled off. “Ow!”
“You never fail to—” His family could only laugh and cry.
Living apart, the marquis’s family was seeing Lance for the first time. They looked at the knight youth of rumor with a mix of shock and gratitude.
They thanked Lance in turns for his deed, and their words scalded with condemnation for the Golden Flower Marquis.
Among them stood the marquis’s granddaughter, a tiny blond, blue-eyed doll, the classic Doran look. She mimed adulthood and gave Lance a solemn bow. “You’re the Blazing Fire Knight? In the name of the Feng Wolf family’s 900th generation, this debt will be repaid!”
She almost bit her tongue, pushing that much ceremony out in one breath.
Her father, the marquis’s eldest son, stroked her hair. “Blazing Fire Knight, Jin Baili idolizes you. If fate allows, please look after her.”
Her eyes went perfectly round. She flushed in front of Lance, spun, and thumped her father with tiny fists. “Daddy, dummy!”
Joy and safety pooled warm. A few bright minutes of reunion passed in a blink.
Then Lance’s chief retainer—former mercenary Jeremy—returned with royal personnel, just as ordered.
Safe boss, royal aid—Jeremy lit up like a monkey at a mango stand. “Boss~ Boss! The king agreed to shelter us!”
“What, His Majesty?!” Of everyone, the Feng Wolf Marquis flinched hardest. He couldn’t believe Jeremy’s words.
“Not His Majesty himself. Me.” The correction cut in before the Marquis finished.
The voice was unfamiliar—no one present knew him.
He stepped in behind Jeremy, ringed by guards in a formal escort.
It was Prince Gio, who had once crossed paths with Lance.
At Alice’s birthday banquet, this royal had shared a table with other nobles and watched Lance’s bold display.
“Your Highness, an honor.” Lance knelt on one knee by the book.
Prince Gio was about Lance’s age. Austere features; he studied the knight youth for a few seconds, then reached out and pulled him up.
Their hands locked as he lifted. “An honor, Blazing Fire Knight.”
Prince Gio wasn’t helping for the Iron Duke’s sake. Someone else had moved him.
Another figure stood behind the prince—the Spy Mage who’d helped Lance in Golden Bay City.
“Yo. You really made it out alive?” He still wore that forward-leaning ninja getup; a red scarf split the night, bold and striking at his throat.
Lance stepped in, shook his hand, and groused. “That’s your hello? ‘Made it out alive’? Sounds awful.”
“No offense,” the Spy Mage said, then praise warmed his tone. “It’s damn impressive you survived, Blazing Fire Knight.”
The prince clapped the Spy Mage’s shoulder and nodded to Lance. “I heard about you from a friend.”
He called the Spy Mage friend. He went on. “A genius knight—brilliant, ill-fated—shouldn’t be a sacrifice to noble power games.”
He faced Lance and pressed a fist to his chest. “In the name of the Doran Royal House, I, Gio Robel, will guarantee your personal safety.”
With that shield in place, the Noble Tribunal couldn’t move on Lance. Maple City’s gendarmes, bought and steered, had no right to arrest him.
But Maple City hadn’t come under Golden Flower and Silver Silkworm sway in a day. The prince’s vow barely faded before a mass of gendarmes arrayed outside Maple Manor.
Not just the whole gendarmerie. Private arms from the Silver Silkworm Marquis and other vassals rolled in too.
The Silver Silkworm Marquis was built on deep roots. They fielded a Charge Knight force far stronger than Golden Flower’s—near a duke’s scale. A hundred Charge Knights hit the front gate and flared their Battle Aura in unison.
A hundred auras burned—intense, blistering. A swaying surge of color rose; through that palette-like mist, even the world warped at the edges.
They had reassessed Lance after he carved through the Golden Flower Marquis’s manor. Only Earth Knight-level deployment could contain him, they decided.
But once you climb to Earth Knight scale, even a hundred Charge Knights aren’t safe. So they stacked on three mage teams—sixty casters in all.
They didn’t believe Lance had any way out. They meant to erase him on the spot.
Walls closed in. Hearts cringed. Jasmine hugged Lance’s arm, tight and trembling.
The retainers clenched their teeth, flashed steel, tried to bluff with bravado. It was useless. The mage teams were already casting.
No warning. They synchronized their spellwork and let it rip.
Twenty mages hurled a single giant firebomb at Jeremy and the showboating crew. A sun lifted into night—now that sun fell, ready to crush them flat.
“Idiots, fall back!” Lance shouted at Jeremy, and he ordered the big cat forward.
The big cat was a large, four-footed feline phantom beast. Phantom beasts command the baleful field—a kind of natural force. As a top-tier B-class monster, its spellcraft matched a mid-tier battle mage. It could swat aside this pure intimidation fire spell.
The falling sun bore down. The big cat flared its baleful field. A fierce, uncanny pressure wrapped it. At the last instant, it let out a long, ringing cry.
Boom—space shivered like a vision over water. The crushing sun buckled and bounded back the way it came.
“Damn it!” The mage team tasted their own fruit. Those twenty had linked casting; now they had to throw up a shared ward. Twenty pools of mana ran thin—less than a round in, one whole mage team was out of the fight.
“Not bad.” The Spy Mage clicked his tongue, admiring. “Blazing Fire Knight, I see why you keep walking out of nine deaths.”
Tactics and teamwork, not charging in headfirst every time.
When Fulin couldn’t show, that was Lance’s doctrine.
Still, to lull the enemy, Lance had to gamble. Same now—he meant to walk forward and see if they dared strike with a prince watching.
The Spy Mage stopped him, a firm hand on his shoulder. “Let me handle this one, Blazing Fire Knight.”
Lance started to refuse, then nodded. “Got it. It’s yours.”
“On me.” The Spy Mage sprang onto the archway.
Like a star taking the stage, he lit himself with a Light spell. Radiance poured; his silhouette burned sharp and bright.
Facing a force suddenly wary, he announced himself. “My name is Veyn. High-tier battle mage with the Royal Special Intelligence—King’s Sword.”
To secure the crown, the Doran house runs many intelligence arms, open and covert. Alongside the Kingdom Constitution, they shore up royal authority—even with the throne high and distant.
If any noble declares themselves enemy of the crown, other nobles gain the lawful right to strike that house—even across duchies.
Veyn’s arrival knocked the swagger out of the gendarmes. They traded looks, heat cooling.
At last a spokesman strode out—the gendarmerie battalion chief. Medals lined his chest; arcane silver glinted under the drifting star-fire.
The chief declared, voice iron. “We’re the Maple City police gendarmes, pursuing the major arson-murder suspect Lance Morrison. Mage, step aside. Do not obstruct official duty. Even if you’re royal, we will enforce the law.”
