On the day Lance returned, Maple City poured into the streets like a flood breaking its banks, alleys drained dry, plazas swelling into a human sea.

He stood on the shoulder of the Eternal War Armor, voice ringing like bronze bells under clear skies. “I’m the Blazing Fire Knight. I’ve come back bearing victory and honor!”

Joy burst like confetti on a spring wind. People spilled onto the avenues, faces lifted like sunflowers following light.

They shouted the name they both revered and feared, gazes climbing the steel giant the way sailors watch a lighthouse.

“Lance! Lance!”

“Our hero! Blazing Fire Knight! Oooh!”

The cheers rose and fell like waves slapping the quay, a chorus that wouldn’t hush.

Old tales from the Republic years drifted through Doran like smoke from a thousand hearths, and every paper fought to carry the flame.

Inheriting a fallen will, standing against the storm—at Midway Port, Lance led the Golden Eagle Legion and crushed the Shadowspirit Legion’s raiders like a hammer to glass.

Daring in spirit, relentless in argument—he wrested the Beacon Wolf Knight’s estate from the imperial royals, a hawk snatching prey from a lion’s paws.

The reports came with a painting of Lance on an iron giant’s shoulder, and imagined scenes of him dueling a lone Daemon Knight, words yoked to epic pictures like banners to spears, until no one in Nordland could read them without feeling thunder strike their chest.

As the stories spread like wildfire through wheat, Lance’s fame soared past what anyone thought possible, a comet burning a new path.

With the tide still rising, Lance became, in truth, Doran’s living emblem of heroism.

“Lance! Lance!” The streets boiled like a cauldron, the crowd calling his name as if to keep a star from falling.

After another day of touring like a festival caravan, Lance guided the Eternal War Armor back to the palace, a hawk coming home to roost.

The main hall—once solemn—had become his armory, its old dignity draped like a silk robe over iron racks.

He rolled out of the armor and dropped onto a nearby sofa, landing like a stone in soft moss. “Phew… that’s a grind,” he sighed, letting the day’s weariness spill out like steam.

Apprentices from the magic academy hurried in on the whisper of robes, setting to the armor’s daily maintenance like gardeners tending an ancient oak.

A few minutes later, footsteps crossed the bright floor like tapping rain. The King of Doran, Gio Robel, arrived.

He’d taken the crown while Lance was away in the Republic, a new banner raised in a windy season.

Gio frowned at Lance, sprawled in the place where a throne should gleam. He jabbed a finger at the sofa, grievance sharp as a thorn. “Hey, that’s where I put my throne. Think you could show your king a little respect?”

Lance stretched like a lazy cat basking in sun, words easy as warm tea. “What’s it matter? You don’t really mind.”

He cracked an eye at the stack of dispatches on the side table, paper edges like knife blades. “Besides, whoever comes to the hall these days isn’t here to see the king.”

He wasn’t wrong. Since Lance returned, the palace seemed to revolve around him like a moon around a mountain. Visitors came in a steady stream, carriages like beetles glinting at dusk.

They were all heavyweights—foreign nobles with rings like frost, human knights Lance barely knew, armored and proud as stags.

They came to make friends, to lobby, to seek alliance—an entire court moving as if Lance wore Doran’s crown beneath the steel.

“But half those matters on your desk are mine to process,” Gio protested, tapping the pile like a drum.

“That’s the job, isn’t it?” Lance answered, laziness draped over his words like a blanket.

Gio’s eyes went glassy for a beat, handsome wit knocked cold by a wave he couldn’t surf.

“Fine, I’ll lie down too.” He fell back onto the rug, this half-rebel, half-weary gesture like a flag laid gently on the ground.

Those watching froze, speechless, as king and knight reclined under chandeliers like two tired hunters under a winter sky.

Time softened like linen when they lay still, the room’s edge blurring into calm.

Even at night, the main hall shone like a lantern hung over a harbor.

A gust threaded the corridor like river wind. The lights wavered, bright then dim, candles breathing like sleeping birds.

After a while, Gio sat up and found a chair, the wood creaking like old memory. He eyed Lance, whose breathing stayed shallow, a man not truly asleep.

“Brother,” he asked, voice lowered like a curtain, “a week ago you said ‘Doran will topple.’ Did you mean more than just doom-saying?”

Lance had returned exactly one week prior, a shadow crossing the sun and then moving on.

He stayed reclined, words casual as fallen leaves. “I said what I meant. Doran will topple. The country’s teetering.”

That easy tone baffled Gio, like a smile offered in a storm. “But look at us. Doran’s thriving. You’re a hero, the streets are singing.”

His reforms were landing like seeds in spring, and thanks to Lance, the royal house drew tight like a woven net. In governance and in grain, the country didn’t show cracks.

Lance’s gaze eased toward the darker water. “You forget—the Blood Clan.”

“She’s already been sent to the Empire,” Gio said, confusion lifting like mist then settling again.

“She’s gone,” Lance waved a finger, then opened his eyes and let them slide to Gio like a knife’s shine, “but she shaped Doran’s fate for decades. Her shadow still falls.”

Gio couldn’t deny it. His face grew solemn like stone in rain.

Lance continued, voice like a lamp in a tunnel. “Her plan was to let Doran kneel to the Dark Spirit. Peaceful transformation, slow as ivy.”

“Peaceful evolution?!” Gio’s anger cracked like thunder. “She thinks Doran folk are fools?”

Lance neither endorsed nor rejected it, letting the thought hang like smoke.

“Consider this,” he said. “The Empire’s ‘contribution demands’ aren’t new. Many are unhappy yet fear to speak, held by awe like deer before torchlight, and starved of a spark.” He paused, a blade held before the cut. “Now—”

Gio’s eyes sharpened, the line drawn like ink. “Brother, you mean—”

Lance sat up, the sofa spring a soft drum. “That’s how the Republic’s radical groups rose. We won’t be an exception.”

“That’s eggs against stone,” Gio said, despair scraping like grit.

“Shelika—the Blood Clan woman—wants exactly that,” Lance sighed, then spread a map on the table like a night sky. “If a mass action fails, the Dark Spirit Empire slips in like water through cracks, supporting these groups in name. Our knights won’t block a ‘just cause’—they’ll claim Doran with banners held high.”

He finished, and the hall’s firelight flickered again, a candle losing strength.

Maybe it was only the eye playing tricks, but the flames seemed dimmer, their gold washed to ash.

Gio shut his eyes and opened them, worry pooling like ink. “Lance, my brother—what’s your call? If it happens, is any of it good?”

Lance stayed loosely at ease, like a man on a riverbank watching current. “Of course not. Bleeding just to swap masters is the dumbest fate we could buy.”

Gio’s smile came with regret, a warm ember in cold ash. “If only everyone could see it as clearly as you.”

“No need to put me on a pedestal,” Lance said, batting the air as if waving off gnats.

“By the way,” Gio asked, curiosity peeking like a fox, “how do you know all this?”

Lance paused—an empty beat between notes, silence humming. “She told me before she left.”

Gio didn’t doubt it. He built his own meaning, a lantern lit. “So she cursed our powerlessness, left those words as poison.”

“An evil Blood Clan,” he spat, the phrase dropping like a stone.

“Yeah… an evil Blood Clan,” Lance murmured, his eyes going hollow for a heartbeat, a well with no sound at the bottom.

It passed in a blink. Brightness returned like a sparrow back to the branch.

He rose from the sofa. “Enough talk.”

He climbed back into the armor, steel swallowing him like a whale swallows a boat. “I’m still clumsy with this thing. I’ll practice.”

Gio knew where the War Armor would drift, his warning soft as rain. “The royal house can’t maintain that sector. The knights aren’t posted there. Be careful.”

“Mm.” The Eternal War Armor lifted, hovering like a moon, then slid through the outer gap in the dome like a swan through fog.

Gio watched the trail of arcane embers, their glow fading like fireflies, and stood alone in the hush. “Lance, you’re Doran’s strongest knight now. Shameful as it is, some burdens rest only on you.”

The Eternal War Armor wasn’t built for true flight. Once aloft, it spread extra glider wings like a falcon testing wind.

Lance guided it, gliding toward his target, a silent blade cutting a black river.

He didn’t need to touch the controls. He could look down like a hawk, the city unfolding like a woven carpet.

“The night looks good,” he breathed, the words a warm cloud in the cold.

In the time it took the wind to change, he reached the detached palace, hovering above it like a silent star.

It lay inside the royal grounds yet far from the main hall, encircled by wild gardens like rings of thorn, a place made to avoid eyes.

Its owner was gone. The palace sat empty, remote, and its former splendor felt like frost—beautiful, cold, and lonely.

Lance picked a flat patch outside, landed, and stepped out. He looked at the desolate palace, stone bones under a winter cloak. “Watch the door,” he told the armor.

The Eternal War Armor’s eyes flashed like twin coals. It nodded once, a guardian planted like a tree.

Lance climbed the wide steps, entering deeper shadow the way a swimmer slips beneath calm water.

Inside, vines had crawled from the outer earth and kept climbing, green veins claiming wall and arch.

They had the posture of conquerors, declaring themselves the true masters with quiet patience.

“This, now, is something,” Lance said, smiling with a knowing tilt, as if greeting old spirits.

He kept going, deeper and deeper, until he reached a stretch of darkness where no footsteps lingered, a hush like a cave behind a waterfall.

His shadow leaned at an angle, stretched long in weak candlelight, a dusk-colored ribbon across stone.

It lengthened until it looked like someone else’s silhouette, a stranger’s trace stitched to his own.

Lance vanished. Shelika appeared, the exchange smooth as silk sliding from a hand.

Her voice carried texture, a touch against skin, rippling outward like rings on water. “Let me… no—let me, this humble self, recall what still deserves my care, what remains worth the weight of attention.”