Lance slid out a map, pinned their place like a needle on cloth, and said, “We head for the nearest city.”

Violette’s nerves fluttered like moths in a lantern’s heat, and the dozens of Celestial Spirits behind her fluttered the same way.

They had survived the Shadowspirit Legion’s strike, their airship crippled, their feet pushed onto a foreign shore, skins uncut but hearts bruised like fruit.

“Is it enough just to reach a city?” Violette lifted her gaze, a tremor like ripples on a pond.

“Yes.” Lance tried to fan embers out of their ash, voice steady as stone under rain.

“This is the mudflat belt on the Republic’s southeast coast, a gray skin along the sea,” he said, guide-smooth. “The closest city is ‘Newkaster,’ a port hailed as the Republic’s Window.”

“Once we reach it, we’ll take a ship back to the Kingdom, and you’ll board an airship home to the Empire,” Lance summed up, threading routes like lines on a loom.

The words hit like a shot of strong tonic; fatigue sloughed off like wet cloaks. “Blazing Fire Knight, lead us,” they answered, eyes catching light like steel.

Seeing spirits lift like kites in a new wind, Lance set them to prep for the march. “No problem. Get ready,” he said, voice a taut bowstring.

To leave the sucking shoreline, they had to slip through a windbreak of dense coastal forest, a dark brushstroke along the Republic’s southeast.

Lance pointed toward the primeval green, a living wall. “Ready?” he asked. “Move out.”

They stepped into the forest like stepping into a green mouth, and the trees swallowed them whole.

There were forty-one Celestial Spirits, thirty of the Celestial Race, and two Elves; the rest were Titanborn and Dragonborn, a braid of bloodlines moving like a river.

All of them lined up as Lance ordered, threading forward through undergrowth muddier than the flats and thicker than mangroves, thorns snagging like fishhooks.

The Seventh Legion, twenty strong with Krick included, was small but sharp, a trio of escort squads at front, right flank, and rear like knives.

They watched the green with hunter eyes and kept the Celestial Spirits’ column guarded, a living shield in a forest that breathed like a beast.

Even so, the march crawled like a wounded thing, every step a boot sinking into dough.

The air was too wet to breathe, a warm sponge on the lungs; mosquitoes whined like saws; the ground was a patient trap.

Vines and grasses with iron stamina coiled around ankles, barbs scored skin like cat scratches, and the blood called more insects like bells call crows.

“Ugh! This is killing me!” a voice cracked like dry wood.

“It’s been three whole hours—how much longer?!” another cried, a frayed string ready to snap.

Many Celestial Spirits griped, silk-soft lives now dragged through thorns, and this road felt like hell’s own millstone.

Luck, thin as paper but there, slid in their favor; this strip was the shallowest of the coastal woods, a narrow stitch in the green.

After three hours, the choking twilight of leaves loosened; trunks thinned, and light poured down like water from a broken jar.

The Celestial Spirits kicked at the stunted plants, petty revenge popping like brittle twigs under heel.

The soldiers wiped their short swords clean, green pulp smeared like paint from hacking a path through living walls.

They pushed on, shadows stretching long, and before the sun dropped they reached an inland plain, a road laid across it like a gray ribbon.

Everyone but Lance and Krick was wrung like wet cloth, strength leaking drop by drop into the dirt.

“Let’s make camp here,” Lance said, voice calm as a banked fire.

“Understood, Sir Knight,” came the answer, crisp as a snapped twig.

Under a bleeding sunset, small tents sprouted from the plain like mushrooms after rain.

Soldiers slung kettles over quick-built frames; water, berries, spice, and heaps of potato-like tubers tumbled in with soft thuds.

Stew breathed out coils of steam like white banners, and a hungry smell hooked stomachs as neatly as a fisherman’s line.

Relief loosened Krick’s chest like a knot coming free. “Sir Knight, we actually lived,” he said, staring at a chipped yet peaceful moon.

“You did well,” Lance said, praise plain as daylight. “If the Seventh hadn’t guided the Celestial Spirits ashore while I bought time, we wouldn’t be this intact.”

“Well said, Blazing Fire Knight. The Empire will pin a medal on you yet!” the Celestial Spirits chimed, already weighing merit like merchants weigh coin.

Night pooled fast, ink spreading across a page, and the camp-fire halos pulsed like heartbeats.

Lance sat alone on the rough watchtower, a lone silhouette against a field of cold stars.

Not quite alone—a petite alien girl who always clung to him hovered behind, a shadow trailing a flame.

Yet Violette wasn’t playing cute; her voice was cool and steady, a blade of frost drawing maps on glass as she spoke of his future.

“Blazing Fire Knight, you crushed an entire Shadowspirit Legion by yourself,” she said, words dropping like stones into deep water. “Power like that lies beyond most Imperial knights.”

“The Empire will soon see you as a threat,” she went on, tone flat as a judge’s gavel. “They’ll throw you into war, or hang a made-up crime on you, and find a tidy way to erase you.”

“So what?” Lance asked, voice dull as a rock in rain, no ripple on the surface.

She watched his back for a few breaths, pain rising like smoke. “Blazing Fire Knight, you deserve a brighter future,” she said, heart tight as a fist.

“What do you mean?” he asked, same calm as last night, the same silence he’d worn aboard the Emerald Firmament.

“You should work with me,” Violette said, the words quick and sure, a bridge thrown across a gulf.

She eased against his back, sinuous as a water serpent, and breathed honey at his ear. “If you agree—if you’ll be my knight—I can raise my standing fast.”

“With that influence, I can meddle with the Tribunal’s bills, a hand on the lever that moves the stone.”

“I’ll block the savage laws that coarsen the Empire, and pass the ones that let the human vassal states breathe again.”

“Then the Heavenly Spirit Empire will shoulder a great power’s duty once more, and you will be the hero of all humankind in Nordland.”

“Well? Blazing Fire Knight?” Her question hung like a lantern on a dark road.

“I’m not interested in being a hero,” Lance said, the refusal cool as river water.

“Th-then—” She stumbled, then pushed on, stubborn as a sprout through stone.

“Publicly I’m a noble Celestial Spirit princess,” she whispered, voice sweet and dangerous as wine. “In private, I can be your woman.”

“You can use me, ruin me, order me to please you in any way you like—how about that?” Her promise curled like incense, seeking a crack.

“I’m not interested in you either,” Lance said, the words falling like ash.

“Then what do you even want?” Violette broke, a girl again, whining like a fretful wind, tiny fists drumming his back like soft rain.

Lance turned, lifted her in his arms, and her heart kicked like a trapped bird; heat rushed to her cheeks, and schemes webbed through her mind like fast-growing vines.

But in the next breath, those vines withered to dust, plans crumbling like dry leaves.

“Kids go to bed. Now,” Lance said, the decree simple as thunder, and tossed her into the tent flap’s darkness.

She lay there staring, thoughts drifting like lonely clouds, and sighed into the long, empty night.