“Heroes?” The word hung in the air like frost clinging to a blade.

“Yeah. We’re heroes—torches in a storm, still burning.”

Maki let his hands hang like dead branches; his eyes hid under the hood, two coals drowned by cloth-shadow.

I flicked a glance at Stini, then squared up like a storyteller by a night fire.

“Stini Saya, with this sword, cut down Nagash’s disciples—Fi Miller, Braun Dann, Cassio Melansa, Eve Freida, Opa Freida—and stormed the Hall of Truth like a thunderhead.”

Stini raised the Holy Sword, light sliding along the steel like dawn over ice.

Right after, Raven lifted the ritual blade and a severed head, a grim moon over a black river.

“Then Raven Segrito, to gather news inside the Truth Seekers Assembly, went in as a shadow, and with her own hand took Lichibela Cavat’s head.”

“If not for Her Highness Princess Gloria Colonna, we’d never have broken their outer ring, that iron reef around their sea-wall.”

“Nivifar and Naiche held off the Arcane Engineers, a pair of spears against a flood, buying us time to strike the heart of the Truth Seekers Assembly. If they even stopped a Heretic Inquisitor, it was duty and nothing else, obeying the vice-captain—me—like soldiers in the rain.”

The girls behind us raised their scarred arms, bark scored by storm and fire.

“So, we are heroes, triumphant heroes returning, banners wet with dew and ash. If we’ve given offense, it was zeal against heresy, a fire that scorches; forgive the burn.”

Maki said nothing and walked toward us, each step a drumbeat that thudded in time with my heart.

Princess Golia slid into a fighting stance, like a drawn bow under moonlight.

A peak-of-the-world hostility pressed in, a mountain of air crushing the ribs with every step he took.

On that final step, my heart hammered like it would burst, a caged bird battering its bars.

“Then, Andor Mephy, what did you do?” His voice was a blade laid flat on ice.

“I did nothing. It was all Stini and Raven,” I said, calm water over deep rocks.

I made him a clownish bow, a jester’s feather under a storm crown.

“You sure you want to do this?” His words tapped like iron on glass.

“Sure about what? I witnessed the Hero’s feat, and I speak of it, like a town crier at dawn. Any problem?”

He lifted me by the collar with one hand, as if I and the Greatsword together were lighter than dust in a sunbeam.

“You’re choking me. That’s not how you treat heroes,” I rasped, a reed bending under wind.

“The Truth Seekers Assembly is wiped out. The Heretic Inquisition took losses, but they’re wounds that heal, deaths that revive—scratches on granite. Did you really think this was an ordinary punitive war? Did you really think the Truth Seekers Assembly lost? Andor, know what you’re doing. You can still take the words back, like a step from a cliff.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll say it, like a bell rung twice. I did nothing. I went in with Stini, and I walked out with Raven.”

I slapped his hand away and stepped back, putting a breath of night between us.

“Are you arresting me now?” I mocked, holding out my wrists like branches for a crow.

In suffocating silence, he patted my shoulder, like dusting snow from a friend, took the head from Raven, and turned to the ring of Heretic Inquisitors.

“I thought you could… never mind. Since you’ve found your resolve, go your way,” he sighed, a wind dying in reeds.

Then Maki drew in breath and shouted, voice like a horn over fog:

“Now, the vile are struck down, and all heresies chastised. We have won!”

The Heretic Inquisitors looked as if victory had drifted to them like stray smoke; their cheers were thin rain on stone.

“Full withdrawal!”

“Do we need to pull wounded Arcane Engineers from the ruins, or dig further?” A Heretic Inquisitor who seemed a commander stepped up, his tone a lantern in gray mist.

“No,” Maki said, giving Raven a meaningful glance, drawing his hood lower like night falling, and turning away. “There’s only the dead and rubble there. Anything worth digging, anything worth saving, is already gone, like a river after flood.”

The Heretic Inquisitors withdrew in quiet order, dark sprites slipping through the Shadow like eels in black water. I looked away and back, and the army around the castle vanished like mist at sunrise.

I finally let out a breath, a knot loosening like thawed ice. That gate was passed.

“Good. Now you don’t have to die,” I said, tossing the line like a pebble into a pond.

“But from the way you said it… it sounds like you’re the one dying,” Raven said, worry pooling in her voice like dusk.

I still hadn’t told her about the weight I’d carry in the next act, the role I’d play like a pillar under a cracked roof.

“Don’t joke. I’m fine. We keep living, happy as before, like the same road under new sun.”

I tugged at my cheeks and made a smile, a paper lantern face that to Raven must have looked like a ghost pretending to laugh.