Chapter 956

The chieftain rolled his shoulders once, slow and heavy, like a beast waking from a long, unsatisfying sleep. Then he looked at the messenger.

“Tell Arslan,” Kharnek said, voice low with dangerous satisfaction, “that the north heard him.”

His smile widened, all teeth now.

“Tell him we remember our ways.”

The messenger swallowed and nodded. Kharnek turned toward the door. Outside, the settlement was already beginning to shift. Warriors were calling for armor. Children were being dragged indoors. Smoke from the forge pits thickened as fires were fed. Somewhere in the distance, a horn began to blow.

Kharnek stepped into the cold and felt the old hunger settle properly into his bones. The Empire had come to destroy the north and Lionsguard. A foolish decision. Because now there would be no restraint.

No compromise. No border to defend. Only war.

And behind him, with the force of a commander who had long ago accepted that men were idiots best used as weapons, Sigrid’s voice thundered across the camp.

“Move, you useless bastards! If you’re still standing around in ten breaths, I’ll send you south naked so the imperials can die laughing before we kill them!”

That did it. The entire settlement roared to life. Kharnek inhaled the frozen air, his blood hot enough to make the cold meaningless. After several years, the rot of the Empire had returned. This time, he intended to carve it out with his own hands.

When Eclaire, Jeniffer, and Rowan stepped out of the frost skeletons labyrinth, the first thing they noticed was that the world outside had changed.

Not the sky. Not the snow. The people.

The northern settlement below was in motion, but not the usual kind. It was not the loose, noisy movement of warriors getting drunk too early or shouting over some pointless argument that would probably end in laughter, blood, or both.

This was different. Men and women poured between longhouses and forge pits in heavy waves, dragging armor, hauling crates, fastening fur-lined cloaks, checking axes, spears, bows, and shields with the speed of people who had done this before. Horns sounded across the snowfields, low and brutal, carrying farther than any ordinary call. Riders were already leaving the settlement in different directions, kicking up white trails as their mounts tore across the frozen earth.

And some were not heading toward Lionfang.

They were moving farther north. Calling others. Calling allies.

Rowan narrowed his eyes, the usual lazy calm in his face tightening at the edges. “That’s not a drill.”

Jeniffer didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze swept across the scene, sharp and quick, picking apart the shape of the movement the same way she would read a battlefield.

Her eyes followed one of the riders racing north, then another, then the groups of armed northerners moving with the weight and force of an avalanche rolling downhill, impossible to stop once it started.

A sick feeling spread through her stomach.

No. No, no, no. She already knew. Before anyone said it. Before any messenger arrived. Before any explanation could be offered.

She knew. Her fingers tightened around her sleeve, trembling once. Then again.

“It is because of me,” she muttered.

The words came out small. Too small for the snow, the horns, the marching feet, and the coming war. Jeniffer’s head turned immediately.

Eclaire was shaking now, only slightly, but enough to show. Her face had lost color, and her eyes were fixed on the settlement below as if every warrior gathering there was another life being dragged into danger by her existence alone.

“The Empire…” she said, voice unsteady. “They asked for me. Didn’t they?”

No one answered at once. That silence was answer enough. Eclaire lowered her head. Of course they had. The half-sister hidden away. The inconvenient bloodline. The living piece left on the board that could not be fully controlled.

She had always known, in some distant, abstract way, that her existence could become a problem. But knowing it in theory and seeing an entire people move to war because of it were not the same thing.

“They came because of me,” she said again, quieter now, like saying it softer would somehow make it less true.

Jeniffer stepped closer before the thought could sink deeper.

“No.”

Her tone was flat. Certain. Eclaire looked at her. Jeniffer crossed her arms and glanced back toward the rushing settlement, expression hard.

“This is only the first excuse the Empire found to attack Lionfang.”

She let the words settle properly before continuing.

“They would have manufactured one sooner or later.”

Eclaire’s lips parted slightly, but nothing came out.

Jeniffer’s voice remained calm, not gentle, but solid.

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“You being here made it convenient.”

That was the truth of it. No softening. No lies.

“But if it wasn’t you, it would have been something else.”

Her eyes sharpened.

Rowan gave a grim snort. “They probably already had half of them prepared.”

Jeniffer nodded once. “Of course they did.”

Below them, another horn sounded. Then another answered from farther away, deeper in the north. The response was spreading. Eclaire listened to it and felt the weight of it in her chest.

Not because Jeniffer was wrong. That was the problem. She wasn’t wrong. The Empire had been looking for a reason. And now it had found one it could wave around in front of banners and officers and frightened civilians while pretending this was law instead of conquest.

Eclaire stared at the northerners moving, massive figures in fur and iron, women barking orders, children being herded aside, warriors grinning with that savage edge only northerners seemed to wear so naturally when war came knocking.

They were preparing to fight for Lionfang.

For the place that had taken her in.

For the people who had fed her, hidden her, and, worst of all, treated her like she mattered before asking what she was worth politically.

Her throat tightened. Rowan noticed first.

“Don’t do that.”

She blinked. “Do what?”

“That thing where you start blaming yourself for an Empire being rotten to the core.”

His tone was dry, but there was steel in it.

“They’re marching because the Empire came north with chains in one hand and fire in the other. That part belongs to them.”

Eclaire looked away. Easy words. But reason did not always beat guilt. Jeniffer must have seen it still lingering in her face, because this time when she spoke, her tone lost some of its edge.

“Listen carefully.”

Eclaire did.

“They are not moving because they think you’re a burden.”

Jeniffer looked toward the northerners again, where a column of warriors was already heading out through the snow like a moving wall of iron and hide.

“They’re moving because someone threatened their people.”

That hit harder than comfort would have. Because it sounded true. Lionfang had not handed her over. Arslan had refused. The northerners had armed. Not reluctantly. Immediately. As if the answer had already existed before the question was finished.

Eclaire drew in a shaky breath.

War. Real war. Not a rumor. Not a threat. Something that had already started moving.

Rowan rolled one shoulder and glanced toward the settlement. “So. We heading there, or are we standing up here while the north decides the future without us?”

Jeniffer’s hand rested briefly on the hilt of her weapon.

“We’re going.”

Eclaire hesitated for only a second longer. Then she nodded. The guilt had not vanished. It was still there, cold and heavy. But beneath it, something else had begun to form. Not helplessness. Resolve.

If the Empire had chosen her as its excuse, then she would not stand aside and let others bleed while she hid behind that excuse like a child. She lifted her head and looked once more at the avalanche of northerners spilling into motion below.

By the time the three of them reached the last ridge before Lionfang, the scale of it was already impossible to ignore.

The walls stood tall, stone and earth shaped with purpose, not just defense but intent. The fields around them, once open and quiet, were now filled.

Not scattered. Not disorganized. Lines of people stretched across the outskirts like a second wall, Lionsguard members, northerners, recruits, veterans, even civilians holding weapons with hands that looked too soft for war but too determined to step back now. Fires burned in controlled clusters. Supply lines moved. Orders carried. No panic. No wasted movement.

It looked less like a town preparing to defend itself… and more like something bracing to be tested.

Jeniifer gaze had already moved past the walls. Farther out. Toward the horizon. Eclaire followed her line of sight.

And felt her chest tighten. At first, it looked like a dark line cutting across the white of the snow. Then it moved. Then it spread. Then it multiplied. Not one army.

Several.

Banners of different colors broke the horizon in uneven clusters, advancing in layered formations. Some marched in tight, disciplined ranks, imperial soldiers, no doubt. Others were looser, more chaotic, adventurers or mercenary groups pulled in for coin or favor. There were even sections that didn’t march like soldiers at all.

Too irregular. Too… comfortable with disorder.

Rowan exhaled slowly. “That’s not just an army.”

Jeniffer’s eyes sharpened. “No.”

Her voice carried a faint edge now.

“That’s everything the Regent could justify moving without openly declaring a full war on the rest of the Empire.”

Eclaire swallowed. There were too many. Even at this distance, the numbers were wrong.

Not a punitive force. Not a show of power. An eradication attempt.

“The Regent didn’t underestimate them,” Rowan muttered. “He didn’t send a few thousand to make a point.”

Jeniffer shook her head slightly.

“He sent enough to make sure there’s nothing left to argue with afterward.”

Eclaire’s gaze flickered across the approaching forces.

Soldiers. Adventurers. And mixed among them, shapes that didn’t quite fit the clean lines of organized combat.

People who didn’t belong to armies. People who belonged to shadows. The underworld. Killers. Those who thrived when rules stopped applying.

Her fingers curled slightly at her sides. This wasn’t just war. It was permission. Permission for everything ugly to surface at once. A faint tremor ran through her again. Her eyes drifted back toward Lionfang.

Toward the walls. Toward the people standing there. Waiting. Because of her. The thought came back, sharper this time. Heavier.

Wouldn’t it be easier…? Her breath caught slightly. If she just walked forward. If she surrendered. If she removed the reason they were here. The fighting might stop. The blood might stop.

Fewer people would have to… Her stomach twisted.

Eclaire looked down, jaw tightening as the thought tried to root itself deeper.

What would it feel like…? To stand there afterward. Watching the battlefield. Knowing that people had died because she didn’t step forward when she could have. Her chest tightened painfully. She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to imagine the faces. Didn’t want to carry that weight. For a brief moment, the idea of surrender felt simple.

Then she closed her eyes. No. A slow breath. Another. That wasn’t how this worked. Even she knew that. Her mind replayed Jeniffer’s words from earlier.

They would have manufactured one sooner or later.

This… This wasn’t about her.

She lifted her head and looked once more at Lionfang, at the walls, the people, the lines forming with quiet determination.

They weren’t standing there because she had asked them to. They were standing there because they had chosen to.

Down toward the city that was about to become a battlefield.

Behind them, the wind carried the distant sound of marching.

Ahead of them, Lionfang stood ready.

And between the two … There would be no easy answers.