"Hey, what are you—" Lance blurted, then his words froze, like breath turning to frost.

Dread broke first, a cold wave under the ribs. Then the thought surfaced: Did it fail?

No. He hacked that thought apart like a blade through mist. It didn’t fail.

Only Abel had been seized. No black crystal as proof. No Earth Knight accomplices showing their faces, like wolves that never left the treeline.

If the former held too many loose threads—used early, destroyed on capture, ground to dust in the dark—

Then the latter, the Earth Knights, not showing up meant the assassination still lurked like a knife in water.

Even so, the Spell Corps hadn’t been crippled as planned. The “General” stood before him, whole as a mountain at dawn, guarded like iron cliffs.

At that range, even if Lance carved out a sliver of chance, he didn’t believe those two hidden Earth Knights could fell that peak.

Resignation sighed through him like a tired tide. The plan hadn’t failed. It just hadn’t won.

Regret hung in the air like autumn haze.

After Abel was dragged in, the “General” stared at Lance in silence. Lance didn’t move, a shadow rooted to stone.

Travelers watching from far off held their breath, small as weeds in a gale that hadn’t come yet.

After another minute of stillness, the “General” took a sword from a close guard. He looked once at Lance, then, without a word, drove it through Abel’s chest.

“No, it’s not over—” Abel’s face knotted with pain, fighting death like a man pushing back a flood with bare hands.

But a cut body still dies. The blade went through his heart; struggle was driftwood in a storm.

So, with breath thinning like a candle in wind, he entrusted his last words to Lance. “Blazing Fire Knight, you must—”

Lance watched in silence. He felt nothing for the Republic. Nothing for the Committee. The river of his face didn’t ripple.

So he kept his distance. He never stepped forward, never heard what Abel wanted to say at the end.

Disappointment froze on Abel’s features like winter rain. His eyes stayed open, full of regret that would never melt.

“What a cold-blooded brat.” Sir Mervyn, the “General,” chuckled, then slid the blood-wet blade away like a snake into grass. “Your reaction surprised me, but I still foresaw everything you’d try.”

He smiled and ticked off the sins, like prayer beads passing through fingers. “You slipped into my turf to sniff out intel. You teamed up with some rat crouching in a dark corner.”

“You’ve got courage, sure, but shallowness and pride turned it into stupidity.”

He laughed at every struggle Lance had made, like waves dying on a cliff. In a veteran general’s eyes, it was nothing.

This was government ground. As a knight, the “General’s” strength dwarfed the Blazing Fire Knight, like a hawk over a candle flame. So Lance listened.

He listened to the man’s grand ambitions, heard the threats and the lures, like drums and flutes in the same wind.

“I do admire you. You’ve got potential. You should submit to me. Serve me. You shouldn’t be just a loyal hound of the Celestial Spirit.”

“So you plan to betray the Heavenly Spirit Empire?”

“I won’t betray the Empire. I’m a soldier of the Republic, and a Sky Knight. I’ll act in my own way.”

He spoke of forging a stronger warlord regime in the Republic’s rear, like driving pillars into bedrock. With Lance’s help, that regime would earn the Kingdom’s recognition—clever, loud, and bloodless.

“How about it? Even if your heart’s not in it, glory comes faster under me than under kingdom or empire.”

His pitch gleamed like polished steel, and Lance seemed moved.

“If I do as you say, I’ll win fame and merit?” Lance asked, voice small as drifting ash.

“Exactly!” The “General’s” tone rose, like fire finding dry wood.

“And if I refuse?” Lance’s voice suddenly rang, sharp as a bell in a storm.

Annoyance curdled the “General’s” face. “A pity then. I’ll deliver a medal for your ‘heroic sacrifice’ to your father, with my own hands.”

He stepped forward, and his close guards shifted, blades catching light like icy fish. Hundreds of soldiers leveled rifles; steel whispered free.

The “General” held a hand, and they froze, statues at dusk. He stepped again, raised his cane, and pointed at Lance’s flank.

A tidal surge of Battle Aura slammed out.

Up close, the surge was a blade gale, cleaving a granite wall like fruit. Farther out, it was earthshock, a shatter-line racing for hundreds of meters across the wasteland, leaving a field of cracks like dry riverbeds.

Lance watched without a word as the “General” unveiled true power, the power of a Sky Rank Knight, vast as night over sea.

“At my level, a knight kills without lifting a hand or a sword. So, young man—”

“In the face of absolute power, be smart. Don’t waste yourself on useless resistance,” the “General” called, voice like thunder on bare rock.

He wasn’t wrong. Next to him, Lance’s strength was a moth to a bonfire.

Lance bowed his head, and satisfaction bloomed on the “General’s” face like a red seal.

But Lance hadn’t yielded. He only lowered his head to gather breath, then snapped it up, palm covering his face, one eye peering out at the sky.

As if he’d heard the world’s funniest joke, he burst out laughing.

“Heh… heh-hahaha… hahahahaha!”

“What’s so funny?” the “General” asked, frowning, confusion like a shadow across steel.

The laughter died. Lance’s face smoothed to still water. He threw a question that shouldn’t have fit the moment.

“Tell me. You’re just the Republic’s government army. How do you have authority over the Spell Corps of the United Legion?”

“To guard against the Shadowspirit Legion, of course.”

“Then why bomb Newcaster, when there was no Shadowspirit Legion there?”

“So what if there wasn’t?”

“So you bombed Newcaster anyway. You’re a soldier of the Republic, yet you cast nearly a hundred thousand of your own people into exile and torment?”

“That was after the government army took control. And you, boy, you’ve crossed a line. If those questions come as terms of your surrender, I’ll accept them gladly. Otherwise—you’ll taste a Sky Knight’s wrath and turn to dust on foreign soil.”

The wilds beyond the pass lay bare and quiet, a held breath under a gray sky. Not even wind.

So everyone heard the threat clearly. The anger braided into his words made every heart seize like a startled bird.

Maybe it was the play drifting toward an ending no one wanted. The waiting Travelers begged Lance under their breath, like prayers thrown into a dry well. Obey. Don’t spark the storm we can’t survive.

A minute. Two. Time crawled like a lizard over stone.

Then, on a plain where no wind should blow, the air stirred, unnatural as a smile on a mask.

“In the face of absolute power, turn to dust—let me return that line to you,” Lance said, voice cool as rain on ember.