The army of the Heavenly Spirit Empire rolled in like a thunderhead; airships blotted a clear sky into bruised iron.

The flotilla didn’t care that the city needed to heal; they squatted on the main avenues like beached iron whales.

Then knights and soldiers spilled down in torrents, a flood breaking its banks and swallowing the streets.

People watched, panic like a cold hand at the throat. The soldiers bawled, “Out of the way, all of you! Imperial forces coming through!”

No one blocked them. Not the citizens, not the kingdom’s troops, not the vassal levies; they parted like reeds before a barge.

So the Imperials strode at will through the veins of Mubay City, iron boots drumming like rain on stone.

They came in force: ten knightly orders, thirty infantry phalanxes, and two mage brigades marching with their obelisks like stone spires.

Had they come five days earlier, relief would’ve fallen like rain on a drought-cracked field.

But they hadn’t. What settled now was only unease, a nettle under the skin, a wordless, nameless fret.

The column flowed through the streets and halted before a half-ruined castle, its walls like broken teeth.

The Iron Duke came out to receive them. “Captain Balk, isn’t it? Bringing so many—what brings you here?”

At the front, the Celestial officer called Captain Balk wore a cold sneer. He stared at the battle-scarred castle and the gouged approach, then drawled, “Duke Murphy, isn’t it? Last time I came was fifty years ago. Why’s it all rag and ruin now? Not welcoming us?”

“Perish the thought,” the Iron Duke forced a laugh, thin as paper. “Five days back, uninvited guests arrived. Mubay City threw them a grand ‘banquet.’ We meant to end it cleanly, but their mood ran a little too hot. One slip—and here we are.”

“We had no other choice,” he added, smile stiff as frost.

“Hmph.” The officer’s laugh was a shard of ice.

He looked again at the half-collapsed keep and the city half in rubble. “What a mess.”

“Captain Balk speaks truth,” the duke murmured, head dipping like a wilted stalk.

The officer’s tone turned pointed, like a needle under silk. “I hear a hero showed up. That’s why the city still stands. True?”

“Y-yes…” The duke bowed lower, face tightening like wet clay.

“Know why I brought so many with me?”

“I do not, sir.”

“The Empire’s First Crown Prince is aboard,” the officer said, hitching a thumb back at one airship among the flock.

“What?!”

“Don’t fret. Doran is still a vassal of the Empire. His Highness Isaac came because Princess Shadia bestowed the Eternal War Armor on that hero. The Empire forged that hero, so this victory belongs to the Empire. His Highness Isaac will personally reward your loyalty. Feel honored.”

At his words, the Imperial ranks split with crisp ceremony, opening a path like a river through rock.

In the garden, a corridor formed from walls of men. Down it rolled a carriage so lavish it gleamed like a jewel in sunlight.

It came fast, then braked smooth, and settled crosswise before the crowd with a feline hush.

No time to react. A side door flew open the next heartbeat.

Swish!

From the open door unfurled a golden silk carpet, pouring out like a spill of sunlight.

Long and blazing, it became a gilded road, a path hammered from sun and coin.

The honor guard moved like clockwork, snapping to the sides of the path and calling out in ringing voices—

“His Highness Isaac!”

The duke went white, despair scribbled across his face like ink. Finished. He looked it.

His companions blanched too; some broke cold sweat, some shook as if winter had slipped under their skin.

They knew the man. Not only the Empire’s First Crown Prince by rank, but by reputation—

Isaac’s arrogance was legend, especially toward humans.

“What a shithole,” said the richly dressed man as he stepped down—Isaac himself, his temper sour as old vinegar.

“Ugh. That flight was too long. My shoulders ache.” He treated the solemn scene like his own back yard and rolled his shoulders loose.

Seeing the principal disembark, the officer before the duke turned, dropped to one knee before Isaac, and bowed his head.

“Your Highness has come a long way,” he said, voice humble as dust.

Isaac gave him a glance, then grumbled, “All because my royal sister made me come to this dump.”

He glanced at the broken castle. “A place the Dark Spirits took a dump on. Filthy.”

Laughter rippled through the Imperial ranks like crows taking wing.

The Iron Duke and the rest could only swallow the bile and bow deeper.

With the dignitary present, they had no choice but to step forward in welcome.

“Murphy, the Iron Duke, at your service, Your Highness,” the duke said, bowing low.

“You’re that Iron Duke?” The Crown Prince weighed him like a coin on a fingertip.

“Y-yes,” the duke said through clenched teeth.

“Bring me that Blazing Fire Knight,” Isaac said, as if asking for tea.

“At once…”

Soon, Lance came out from the castle.

When the Imperials saw the Blazing Fire Knight with their own eyes and heard he’d driven off the Dark Spirit alone, countless gazes speared him like arrows.

If Lance had been a Celestial Spirit, those gazes would’ve been reverent.

He wasn’t. He was human, a knight born of Doran.

So the looks were hostile, and they glared as the young knight walked, step by step, to the Crown Prince.

Isaac raised his chin and gazed down as from a terrace.

“You’re the Blazing Fire Knight?” he asked.

“I am,” Lance said.

They locked eyes. Silence congealed like frost.

“Kneel,” Isaac said.

Lance obeyed, dropping to one knee in a knight’s salute, posture straight as a spear.

Clearly, that wasn’t what Isaac meant.

“I said kneel!” he snapped, voice rising like a whip crack.

“I’m kneeling already, aren’t I?” Lance held his single-knee stance and looked up, calm as a still lake.

Isaac jabbed a finger, voice climbing another rung. “Both knees on the ground. Hands forward. Forehead to the floor!”

In Nordland, that two-knee posture meant submission. Most used it only to beg for life; it was widely seen as a brand of shame.

Lance didn’t move.

He kept one knee down and looked up at Isaac with something like pity in his eyes, soft as a veil.

The refusal and that gaze of quiet scorn burned Isaac raw. In all Nordland, no one had ever faced him like that.

He exploded, grabbed Lance’s head, and tried to force him down.

“When I say kneel, you kneel—hear me, you beast!” he grunted, veins standing like cords.

But he wasn’t a Battle Aura-trained knight. Strength meant little. No matter how he strained, Lance’s head didn’t sink a hair.

People stared, stunned, at the absurd tug-of-war.

“Why should I kneel?” Lance asked, and simply stood.

“Great question!” Isaac backed up a few steps, face red as fire. He lifted his voice under the Empire’s shadow and declaimed like a bell:

“Five hundred years ago, we could’ve driven all of you to the continent’s edge. Instead, we gave you how much land that was ours?”

He pointed at the ground. “We let you tread this fertile earth!”

He spread his hands to the sky. “We let you bask in holy sunlight!”

He opened his arms wide. “We let you breathe clean, sweet air! All of it, a gift from the Empire!”

His face softened with mock pity. “We gave you humans everything needed to live, yet we did not make you slaves. For that—”

“Shouldn’t you weep with gratitude, kneel, and sing of the Empire’s mercy and greatness?” His words fell, and the scene froze like a pond under ice.

That speech was the Empire’s creed. No one in the duke’s party could refute it, however their shame burned.

Isaac savored the silence, then turned to Lance. “So. Will you kneel?”

To make Doran’s hero kneel to the Empire, and at this exact moment.

Every gaze fell on Lance, heavy as stones.

Seconds crawled. A minute dragged. It felt like a century.

“Fat chance,” Lance said at last.

Then he raised his hand at the Crown Prince and gave him a hard, unblinking middle finger.

A week later, two bombshells thundered across Nordland—

The Imperial Crown Prince had been publicly insulted. And Doran’s savior, the hero, was banished to the front lines for insulting the Empire.