The government troops’ threat came down like real steel, not a hollow echo.

Less than a minute after the warning, the cannons on the walls swung like iron suns turning in a storm.

They shifted from pointing out to pointing in, like hawks folding back toward their own nest.

Their barrels dropped from skyward to level and even down, like horizons sinking under rain.

Dozens of cannons took aim at the inn, like wolves fixing on a lone firelight in snow.

One word from the General, and this small inn would vanish like a paper lantern in a gale.

The edge of danger cooled Lance’s blood like night frost on a fevered brow.

“Sorry, everyone, I lost it,” Lance said, his voice steady as a stone in a stream.

“Who can tell me what happened, and don’t lie,” he added, turning to the Celestial Spirits like a judge facing a wind-tossed court.

“Alright, alright…” After hearing it all, Lance let out a long sigh like ash drifting from a quiet brazier.

As Yuna said, the Celestial Spirits had done nothing, like candles untouched by the wind.

In truth, the thief died under Krick’s man’s hand, like a moth crushed while trying for the upper floor.

“A knight struck him—he tried to climb to the second floor right in front of me, how could I just watch?” the real culprit blurted, aggrieved as rain trapped under eaves.

“Blazing Fire Knight, should we hand him over?” Violette asked, her glance cold as a blade laid on ice.

“No,” Lance said, calming his turmoil like waves settling under moonlight. “He’s Krick’s man, he did no wrong, and—”

He glanced at the angry crowd outside, a sea of faces like a stormed harbor. “And handing him over won’t help,” he finished, voice flat as iron.

“Why?” Violette asked, baffled like a bird lost in fog.

“Because they’ve nailed it on the Celestial Spirits,” Lance sighed, drawing the curtains like pulling night over a burning window.

“What, based on what?!” Violette snapped, her temper flaring like a struck match.

“Reflect on yourselves—no, on the Empire,” Lance said, each word a pebble dropped into still water. “What are imperial subjects to the people here?”

Violette fell silent, her thoughts drifting like leaves on a dark pond.

The Heavenborn youth Lance had slapped raised a timid hand, like a sapling in wind. “If I may…”

“May what?” Lance said, his tone dry as dust.

His tone didn’t scare him; the pampered scion spoke with sudden steel, like dawn cutting fog. “If one life—mine—can buy everyone’s safe return, I’ll pay it.”

Lance’s eyes widened, surprise flashing like lightning on a locked lake, and the others stared too, stunned as statues.

But amazement faded; Lance shook his head, slow as a bell in still air.

“No use. Even if we satisfy the citizens, what about the army and the Committee?” His words fell like cold rain.

“Then what, keep feeding them?” someone asked, a spark under wet wood.

“Impossible,” Lance said, firm as a mountain path. “Without money and supplies, how do you travel? Without me, how do you stay safe?”

Silence pooled in the room like dusk flooding a valley, and time crawled like frost growing on glass.

They looked at one another, then at the far-off cannons like black reeds on a gray shore, and they sighed, empty as wind through ruins.

“At the end of the day, you still have to lean on me,” Lance said at last, regret soft as smoke. “On the Blazing Fire Knight.”

“No, Lance, I can go in your place, I—” Violette began, her voice a thin ribbon in a draft.

“Don’t,” he cut in, the word clean as a knife. “You’ll make it worse.”

He rose from his chair like a shadow lifting from the floor, turned his back to them, and shook out his hero’s cloak like a banner in first light.

“This time let me handle it alone,” he said, resolve hard as tempered steel. “Let the Blazing Fire Knight settle it.”

“Heroes always fight alone,” he added, a touch of sorrow like rain on a lantern, meant to soothe.

Ten minutes after the army chose to brandish their cannons, Lance stepped out of the inn like a lone flame into wind.

He walked alone before the chanting crowd, a single figure against a tide like a cliff facing surf.

The protest leaders hated the taste of that outcome, their faces twisted like ropes.

“Where’s the killer, where’s the compensation?” the citizens’ representative shouted, his voice a crow over a field. “Are you covering for those Celestial Spirits?”

The gendarmerie captain leaned in, eyes like nails. “Good knight, but where’s your mage?”

The Committee’s Education Minister pounced, words sharp as sleet. “Where are the supplies? Do we send fighters to strip the inn clean?”

As Lance had foreseen, if the citizen reps were ignorant lambs, the army and the Committee were hyenas circling a wounded ox.

In Newkast, their struggle had dragged on like winter without end, and Lance’s group looked like a ripe chance, bright as fallen fruit.

Sincere requests are hard as uphill snow, but framing is easy as mud, perfect for chains and leashes.

So Lance looked at the army and Committee reps with eyes cold as the upper sky, like frost at ten thousand feet seeing ants below.

He didn’t know why he felt that height, his heart lifting like a hawk on a thermal.

It was a feeling Fulin knew when she gazed down from the clouds, a view like a god’s mirror.

It was like holding the world in your palm, the way a hand cups sand by the sea.

And when the world is sand, you don’t count it or care for it, like a river ignoring grains.

You open your hand, and the grit scatters like blossom, falling to earth in patterns like lace.

From a height without limit, you watch the low without end, alone with the beauty like a moonlit shore.

Yet that beauty is often formless, like fire that keeps changing its shape in a glass.

Take the fire away, and a drift of mist remains, blank as morning breath.

In that mist, you see no grit, and no world you held a heartbeat ago, like a dream after waking.

“What a pity,” Lance breathed, a sigh floating like a feather.

He smoothed the Sirius Sword, its shape clearing like ice beneath a thumb, and he banished the flames along its edge like snuffing a wick.

He wiped the rust hue away like dusk fading from a blade, and slid it back into the sheath, slow as a falling leaf.

The battle had ended in a single heartbeat, like lightning that shows the whole sky.

The fervent crowd and the wall-top cannons alike, like straw and kindling in a kiln.

The Flame of Chaos swallowed them in a blink, they struggled like fish on dry stone, then burst into fireworks in Lance’s eyes.

After the fierce clash, only the citizens’ representative and his people remained on the street, like survivors after a storm.

“I accept your demand for compensation,” Lance said, his tone even as a calm sea. “I’ll pay twenty gold law-coins, but you must admit the culprits weren’t us, but them.”

He pointed at two mangled bodies on the ground, shapes broken like driftwood after surf.

In the tidal-flat city of Newkast, the ones in true need are the citizens, not the warlords and terrorists tearing this place like dogs over a bone.

So Lance chose without hesitation, his decision clean as a cut through rope.

“Understood, understood, understood!” the representative agreed, his voice bobbing like a cork on water.

“And, Mr. Hermans,” Lance called before the man—guildmaster Hermans—left, his words steady as a pier. “If you can send more hands to clear the harbor’s rubble, I’ll be doubly grateful.”

He tilted the offer like a coin catching light, a hint as clear as sun on water.

“Gladly, gladly!!” the ad hoc representative cried, his joy rising like a kite on wind—until a thunderous boom rolled from the harbor, cutting it off like a scythe through grass.