“It wasn’t that hard.” Yet as Fulin said it, her slight, tender frame trembled like a leaf in the dawn breeze.

“Okay, okay,” Charlotte soothed, her voice warm as morning tea.

A few minutes slipped by. Outside the carriage window, the land brightened as the sun climbed like a gold coin through cloud.

Fulin gently eased Charlotte off her, stepped forward like a feather settling, and turned.

“So, what’s your answer?” She snapped back into that pint‑sized spitfire, hands on hips, eyes blazing like tiny suns, wearing borrowed swagger.

“Oh—right!” Charlotte acted as if she’d forgotten, tilted her head and tapped it, playful as a sparrow. “Eh‑heh, look at my memory!”

Fulin took in the girl’s dazed sweetness, and sighed, a reed‑soft breath through quiet water.

“If you choose to travel with me,” she warned, her words heavy as stone, “it’s not just an oath. It’s thorns and storms without number. You’ll give up being a citizen of the Gaia Empire. You’ll stand against the other Dark Blood Clan. You’ll turn from your kin and abandon all you’ve built.”

She gentled her tone, a hearthfire in rain. “But if you go back to your small life, you’ll likely be happier. It’s a pity to forget this, but you can return to your quiet days. I can see you’re not made for adventure. If I were you, I’d go home.”

Charlotte lowered her head, her heart a tangled kite string. Her fists clenched; nails bit her soft skin, leaving pale marks, and her breath snagged on the choice.

More minutes trickled away. Then she lifted her head, sunrise kindling in her eyes.

Her once‑blank innocence held a shard of resolve. “I, Charlotte, will travel with you. I swear loyalty to you!”

Fulin, brows knit like a fine stitch, heard a resolve that didn’t fit Charlotte’s usual ways. “Why?”

“Because you’re strong!” Charlotte answered, plain as bread, eyes bright as a mountain dawn. “So Charlotte will follow you!”

“Just because of that?”

“Mm…” Her gaze skittered like a sparrow under eaves, then she lifted her chin, stubborn as a sprout through frost. “Is that reason not enough?”

Fulin sighed again, soft as ash. “It’s not that it won’t do, it’s just—”

“Just what?”

Fulin watched her innocent face, took her hand with pity, and spoke slowly, like laying a path of stones. “I hope you’re ready for the suffering to come.”

At the same time, as their carriage rolled toward the Holy City, wheels humming like bees, far away on the Republic’s frontier line, at the foot of the Leighton Highlands, the Combined Legion’s 811th Division held its camp.

At the camp’s center, inside a luxurious coach—a gilded shell among mud and canvas—the crown heir of the Heavenly Spirit Empire, Isaac, rose with the morning.

After meticulous washing and breakfast, steam curling from porcelain like pale ghosts, he sat at his desk, paper edges sharp as blades, and listened to his knights’ report.

“Five members of Strategy Bureau’s Seventh Squad, and the Tianwei they were driving, lost contact late last night,” the knight said, voice flat as stone.

For Isaac, the news was both expected and not, a coin landing on its edge.

He felt no pity, his words cold as iron. “Idiots. Marching to their deaths. In a rear city that vital, did you think the enemy relaxed?”

“Your Highness is right,” the knight agreed, face a mask of granite.

Isaac’s curiosity flickered like caged lightning. “But they took the Tianwei. Its output eclipses its generation, and it carries special spell engines to wipe out enemies en masse. How did they lose?”

“I don’t know, sir. But the power logs suggest the Tianwei likely fought another Divine Warrior before it vanished,” the knight replied, numbers jagged like mountain teeth.

“You mean the Blazing Fire Knight’s Eternal War Armor?”

At the guess, the reporting knight stayed silent, frost‑still.

Isaac let out a cold, amused laugh, a knife across silk. “Hmph. The boy’s this brazen, and my royal sister still won’t call the Blazing Fire Knight a traitor. Has she got some plan?”

“Our resistance comes mainly from the Elder Council of the Silver Moon Forest, and from the financiers who back the royal house,” the knight said, threads of politics gleaming like silver web. “Lady Shadia may be keeping those ties, so she won’t take a stance.”

Isaac’s face soured, words bitter as gall. “What a beloved human knight. He could’ve been a dog, bow his head, take orders. Yet he defies me…”

His scowl curled into a sneer, shadow rolling like storm. “Then the Doran you guard won’t have long.”

As his laugh faded, roaring rolled in from outside, thunder rattling metal. He frowned again.

“Have the other Divine Warriors arrived?”

“Your Highness, arriving today are two Divine Warriors from the Wayne and Baron families. The royal units will reach us in the coming days.”

Relief and tension braided in Isaac’s chest, steps measuring thin ice. “Alright. We’ll tread carefully.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the knight answered, his words a stamped seal.

Even as the sun climbed toward noon, the gloom over the Doran Kingdom refused to lift, ash veiling gold.

In the capital, Maple City, the current king, Gio Robel—handsome, hard‑edged, flawlessly pretty like carved jade—wore sorrow to match the sky’s pall.

He stood on the palace balcony, stone cool under his palms. One of his beauties, in gauzy silk, all grace and night‑jasmine scent, slid a flower‑soft hand around him from behind.

“Your Highness, what weighs on you?” Her voice was a flute through mist.

She was his childhood friend, Alina, daughter of a powerful lord, soon to be named queen consort with his ascent—two vines long entwined.

Hearing her care, Gio stared at the gray heavens, fog thick as wool, and finally breathed one name. “Blazing Fire Knight.”

Alina’s face pinched, a petal caught on a thorn. She drew him tighter, perfumed lips near his ear, whispering, “Stop thinking about him, okay?”

“And Doran has plenty of knights,” she coaxed, solution light as a paper umbrella. “You’re the king now. Appoint another guard, and it’s fine.”

But Gio kept his eyes on the clouds, knots tightening there. “Alina, you just don’t understand…”

“I don’t understand?” She held back her heat, perfect queen schooling her tone to silk over steel. “My dear Gio, what do I not understand?”

Her gentle words struck dry tinder; anger leapt.

He dropped his gentleman’s mask, shoved her away, and barked, words like whips. “Alina! You don’t get how vital the Blazing Fire Knight is to this kingdom—to me!”

Days of watching his bitter face, months of being ignored, burst the dam inside her. Grief and anger flooded like a river in spate.

Tears beaded like rain on leaves. “Am I important to you?!”

Gio stared, breath caught like a fishbone. “Alina, you—”

“Do you know how worried I am? You keep that bitter look for me—have you thought about how I feel?!”

“Alina, I’m sorry,” he said, apology cold as ash.

“Then tell me—who’s more important, the Blazing Fire Knight or me?!” Her words threw a storm onto the scales.

He stared, stunned, minutes ticking like dripping water, then dropped the blade between them. “The Blazing Fire Knight.”

“I knew it—” Alina covered her face and left, sobs breaking like scattered beads.

Gio only glanced at her retreating shadow, then kept gazing at the sky alone, a lone pine in rain.

After a while, his fist tightened, regret sparking like flint, the truth bitter as loss‑after‑love. “The one who should be by my side is you, Blazing Fire Knight. Wait. I will…”