“Heh, sure, I could take the job…” Unlike the decisive skipper from before, this one reeked of foggy intent and hooked malice.

Lance lifted his head, cold as frost on iron. “How much?”

“You’ve got sense, kid…” His weasel eyes skimmed Lance’s gear like knives, then he named it. “Three thousand gold coins, or I don’t sail.”

At that gouge, Lance’s anger flared like dry tinder. He drew the Sirius Sword in one clean hiss, the winter-cold edge touching the man’s brow.

“Greed’s a bad habit. It’ll trail you like a shadow and bring you ruin,” Lance said, voice like ice cracking.

The blade cowed him, the knight’s presence pinned him like a hawk’s stare, yet he still wouldn’t bend. In the dim tavern, he shuffled back a few steps, then bared a hyena’s grin. “No need to get like this. If it’s too pricey, don’t take it. Find another boat. Maybe one’ll sail you out. Whether you make it back alive—who knows, heh.”

“Are you threatening me?” Lance’s temper burned like coals in wind.

“Wouldn’t dare. But we know your big ship got blasted down by cannon,” he said, tongue like a snake’s. “You’re in a rush. You’re a knight, a loyal lapdog to those Celestial Spirits. So I’m naming a price fit for your noble status. Not too much, right?”

“Enough, Sandy.” A voice cut through the smoke like a bell.

Sandy glared toward the sound, eyes like thorns. “Mare, shut it. Don’t you dare ruin my deal.”

The skipper named Mare stepped out of the lamplight’s fringe, grabbed Sandy’s collar like a fisherman jerking a net. “This isn’t ruining your deal. Your little scheme will get all of us killed.”

“How can you say that to me?!”

“Hmph. First you trick them aboard, then hand them to pirates, or toss them over for the fish—”

“D-don’t talk nonsense!”

“They’re Celestial Spirits, and there’s a knight.” Mare’s roar crashed like surf on rock. “Did you never think of the consequence? We’ll all die!”

Mare left the trembling Sandy plastered to the wall like wet paper. He faced Lance, arms folded like a closed gate. “Here’s how it is, Sir Knight. We won’t ferry Celestial Spirits.”

“Name something fair,” Lance said, lowering his fire like banked embers. “Your boat can reach the Kingdom coast, right?”

“It can, but the Kingdom’s inquisitors won’t spare us,” Mare said, eyes hard as flint.

“What do you mean?” Lance held his blade steady, offering no trouble if they sailed honest.

“The Celestial Spirits preach one thing and do another,” Mare said, giving Lance a look like a cold wind. “Who can promise my sailors won’t be grabbed ashore by inquisitors, sentenced to exile, driven to the front, and die like straw in the churn?”

Lance faltered, silence heavy as lead. He knew it was true: the Kingdom’s inquisitors ground countless citizens—who could’ve built wealth and prosperity—into the huge meat grinder in the Republic’s north, feeding an iron maw that never felt full.

“Listen up, Sir Knight. Everyone here’s a coward who won’t see the front,” Mare said, blunt as a hammer. “They aren’t like you. They won’t die for the Celestial Spirits. They don’t call sacrifice an honor. Please leave.”

Lance was forced out of the tavern, like a lone ember flicked into rain.

The sea was almost the only road that cut across the border between Republic and Kingdom, a blue blade between two lands.

If they couldn’t use a fishing boat, they had to wait until the rubble choking the strait was cleared, like a throat freed of stones.

Then they could ride a scheduled cargo ship and sail back to the Kingdom like driftwood finding the current.

That had been Lance’s plan in Newkaster, a neat line drawn on a map like a calm horizon.

But fallen rock had plugged the strait’s mouth; big ships couldn’t pass, like whales barred by a reef. Newkaster got dragged into a brawl between the Committee and the Government Army; the city heaved like a pot at boil. To avoid getting swept into the scald, Lance was ready to pay through the nose to leave on a fishing boat.

Now that path was gone, like a bridge burned behind him. He stood on the cliff by the strait, wind like knives and sea like slate, staring at the rubble below. He let out a breath that smoked like winter.

“So we just wait…”

As Lance feared, the longer they lingered, the darker the tide.

Not long after he left to negotiate, word spread that a group of Celestial Spirits had entered the city; then, a thief’s corpse turned up at the inn door where they stayed, a spark in tinder.

The inn was ringed by an angry crowd, a tide with teeth.

“This isn’t the Heavenly Spirit Empire!”

“Hand over the killer!”

Banners snapped like storm flags. More people poured in, a flood growing fat with rain, and they crashed against the inn like waves on a seawall.

They didn’t break through. A deep crimson ring of a barrier stood firm, a circle of iron-red light that turned each impact into spray and nothing.

Shelika had cast it. She stood on the inn’s second-floor roof like a lone lantern, holding a spell that looked like a miracle, though it wasn’t.

The crowd’s ramming knew no weariness, a ram that never slept. Two hours bled by; sweat rolled down Shelika’s cheeks like pearls, fatigue traced shadows on her face, her trembling body a reed in the wind, close to snapping.

They spotted the caster, a deer on a ridge. Ladders went up like crude spines; men climbed with weapons, wolf-hungry eyes fixed on the girl who held the light.

“Am I to be shamed by humans like this…” She couldn’t drop the spell, couldn’t split her will. She closed her eyes like folding wings and waited for pain like rain.

What came instead was heat, unbearable and scorching, a noon sun melting frost.

“Manifest, Princess of Maple Leaves!” Lance, catching the change like a hawk, returned in time. Facing the surging crowd, he loosed a sea of fire.

Wind howled and heat rolled in. The crimson wall gave way to gale and blaze, and the crowd scattered like leaves in a blast—if only for a while.

“What did you do?!” Back inside the inn, Lance didn’t waste breath. He seized the Celestial Spirits who looked the most trouble-prone, slammed them against the wall like shields, and demanded answers.

“We—we did nothing!” A Celestial Spirit of the Celestial Race, the pampered son of an Imperial bank owner, forced out a stubborn defense, face pale as paper.

“Truly! I swear on my family!” Another Celestial Spirit of the Celestial Race, a senator’s foppish son, begged, voice thin as twine.

“I’m not buying it.” Lance’s words struck like sparks. He slapped them both, two crisp cracks, and they dropped like sacks.

“Tell me the truth!” He hauled them up again, eyes like live coals.

Failure and accident had piled like storm clouds; rage boomed inside him like thunder boxed in. Even if they’d done nothing, he burned to vent it on their faces.

He drew back a fist—“Master, they really did nothing.”

Yuna stepped in, her voice a soft rain over embers, speaking for them.

They hid behind her like chicks under wings, and that made his hand freeze and burn all at once.

“Yuna, you too? You going to defy me?” Lance bellowed, the sound a crack of fire. He grabbed her clothes and her throat, no mercy for flowers, and lifted her whole body like a doll on a hook.

“M-Master, I only…” Yuna choked, breath snagging like thread, pain graying her face.

“Sir Knight?!” Seeing it, Krick and the others rushed to caution him, their hands like water on stone.

With almost everyone set against him, Lance’s anger surged higher, a dam breaking. Long years of restraint ruptured like a swollen seam.

He faced them, teeth clenched, then roared, a blaze ripping through dry brush. “I am the Blazing Fire Knight! I’m the one who shielded you! I’ve turned dead ends into paths! I brought you victory and hope! Are my demands too much? I can’t even scold you now, even if it’s just misdirected rage? Must I play the perfect knight every waking hour?”

It sounded like complaint, plea, and accusation braided like smoke.

“Blazing Fire Knight, you…” Violette looked at Lance with pity, a dew-eyed glance; she knew the words to scold him, yet none would rise like a stuck swallow.

“I—no, I… just now…” Shelika tried to speak, her voice a tremor on glass.

“Shut up!” Lance snapped again, a lash of flame.

The air thickened, stiff and heavy, a room after a storm where only damp and silence cling.

But the world didn’t allow that hush to last. With a single stride of the Flame of Chaos, he had scared off the crashing crowd; soon the tide returned, gathering again like storm clouds regrouping.

This time they came less rash and more formal, faces hard as carved wood.

“I’m a citizen representative of Newkaster,” a voice boomed like a drum. “Regarding the citizen killed by you Celestial Spirits, we demand proper compensation!”

Not just citizens—Committee and Government Army arrived, harder than iron.

“We are the Newkaster branch of the Republic Victory Committee,” they declared, words like bayonets. “A brave man shed needless blood because of you. Therefore we demand this—hand over all your supplies and assist our struggle! Otherwise, we’ll keep Naster Port under blockade until you carry your rightful burden!”

“The Republic military holds the right of compulsory conscription,” another voice cut in, cold as a drawn blade. “The General has just exercised that right, conscripting the mage and the knight. Present yourselves at once, or we will level this inn with artillery like thunder flattening a tree.”