Chapter 91: The Storm Before Departure

Whatever Cassius meant to say next came out sounding like it was tearing something loose inside him on the way out.

"Didn’t I already tell you to stop this foolishness? You are no longer part of this family. So don’t you dare dream of fighting under a name you’ve already erased yourself from, like the worthless nothing you are."

Jeanne had agreed, at first, that Lucian shouldn’t be allowed to join the troops at all. But hearing her own father declare him no longer family, she couldn’t let that stand. She pushed back, demanding he take it back.

Cassius didn’t so much as blink.

Lucian bit down on his own lip, disappointment flooding through him, though it wasn’t the disownment itself that cut deepest.

It was the weight settling onto his shoulders, the sense that he should be the one capable of saving more lives than this, and instead he was standing here, begging.

"Patriarch Cassius. I swear it on my own life, I will bring Patricia home safely. So please, let me—"

The words came out wrong, nothing like a son speaking to his father, something closer to a stranger pleading with a wall.

Cassius didn’t acknowledge a single syllable of it. He simply walked past him, never once turning his head.

Lucian’s outstretched hand fell back to his side.

Something hollow opened up inside him. After everything tonight, after holding himself together through all of it, he finally wanted to cry.

He didn’t want his name recognized. He didn’t want to be part of some grand, inherited fate that kept tearing away everything he loved, piece by piece.

He wanted, more than anything else in this moment, to go back to being no one at all, someone small enough to be allowed to cry without the whole world’s weight balanced across his shoulders.

Then footsteps rose from somewhere behind, stopping Cassius mid-stride. Jeanne’s eyes, still fixed on Lucian, snapped toward the doorway instead.

"Mother."

She started toward it before her own feet froze in place.

Cassius looked like a man no longer certain of what he was seeing.

Sophia stood in the doorway, dressed in a clean, neatly fitted gown, exactly the woman Cassius remembered from before her illness ever took hold.

Something in her expression still carried strain, but her body stood straight, steady, every inch the picture of someone fully recovered. She stood without a single Phantom soldier’s hand supporting her.

Cassius reached for her face.

Sophia knocked his hand aside before it landed.

"You fool. You still dare show that face of yours, after what you just said to your own son? We’re losing Patricia tonight, and you want to throw Lucian away on top of it? Have you completely lost your mind, Cassius?"

Cassius said nothing at all, his left hand curling into a fist deep enough to whiten his knuckles, offering no explanation, no defense, nothing.

Sophia didn’t let the silence sit for long.

"If you want to discard him, I’ll disband the Phantom unit myself, the one I built with my own two hands. Let’s find out exactly who they choose to follow, you or me, Cassius."

Almost no one in this household dared speak to Cassius this way. Sophia was the single exception.

It was strange, given how gentle and even-tempered she was, the calmest of every wife Cassius had ever taken.

That gentleness was exactly why she’d been chosen as Vice Head of this entire house, and why command of the Phantom unit had fallen to her and no one else. None of Cassius’s other wives carried a fraction of the influence Sophia did.

The Phantom unit was hers in every sense that mattered, built over a lifetime of her own brutal, deliberate training. Sophia hadn’t only been gifted with raw talent.

She’d once belonged to the Valkyrie Guild, one of the most storied fighting guilds the empire had ever produced, and it was that same hard-won experience she’d poured into Jeanne, which was exactly why her daughter wielded a sword the way she did.

And the Phantom unit, at its core, answered to Sophia first, Cassius only in her absence. Given the choice between them both standing in the same room, there was no question which way they’d turn.

Cassius drew a long breath.

His expression went flat, and he lifted one hand.

"Whatever happens from here, consider me gone from it."

He turned his back on all of them, and as he took his first step away, his eyes flicked briefly toward Sophia.

"And this falls to you now, Sophia, since you can apparently stand on your own again. Make certain Patricia’s trail is found, or Liselle will have both our heads if she ever learns how this went tonight. I’ll see what reinforcements Julian can spare from the southern territory."

"Jeanne. If you cross paths with that creature again, pull your troops back first, every time. Don’t you dare so much as think about engaging it."

Jeanne nodded, watching her father leave the hall with Elder Burrel at his side.

Elsewhere in the hall, among the Seven Pillar families, several houses were already preparing to depart for their own territories.

Evalia was among the first, since Korven fell, by rights, within House Melampus’s own borders.

With its leading official gone, she knew the situation there would only unravel further the longer it went unaddressed, and she turned to Amelia, proposing they travel together, given their routes ran the same direction for now.

Amelia hesitated at first, assuming she was being asked to lend soldiers to help stabilize Melampus’s territory, troops she genuinely didn’t have to spare.

Her own borders already sat squeezed between two hostile neighboring kingdoms, and pulling personnel now, even with Andromeda holding that line, risked inviting the exact kind of escalation she couldn’t afford.

But Evalia clarified she wasn’t asking for House Winter’s soldiers at all. She only wanted Amelia to accompany her somewhere.

"Are you seriously proposing we wake that Spirit, Evalia?"

Whatever place Evalia named, it visibly shook Amelia.

But the longer she turned it over, the more Amelia suspected it might genuinely be the best option left to either of them.

As the only two female Matriarchs among the Seven Pillars, she found herself siding with Evalia’s plan without much more debate.

Both houses sought the Emperor’s leave to depart and see their operations through. Varka granted it without hesitation.

Alicia, meanwhile, had lost track of Lucian entirely, having glanced away for only a moment before he vanished from beside her and Cecilia, only to spot him again standing with Jeanne and Sophia across the hall.

She wanted to go say goodbye properly, but Cecilia pulled her back, their mother’s order to leave immediately overriding everything else. Even Amelia, who knew Sophia well, didn’t have time to exchange a single word with her before they were gone, swept out by their own urgency.

House Versys departed the same way, promising to send their elite Magic Archer corps to help retake Korven.

House Pneuma pledged to dispatch their Alchemy masters at once, capable of raising temporary fortifications and treating whatever citizens could still be reached.

Both houses were given leave to go.

Back near Lucian, Sophia had already closed the distance to stand beside him and Jeanne.

"Mother. Why would you leave your room? You haven’t fully recovered yet."

Jeanne’s worry showed plainly on her face.

Sophia only smiled, assuring her she was perfectly fine now, every trace of Dark Mana finally lifted from her body. She turned to Lucian and thanked him directly.

Lucian only bowed his head in answer.

Then Sophia’s gaze dropped to the black sword resting at his side.

Without warning, her hand closed around it and pulled it free.

Not my sword.

She cupped a hand briefly against the side of Lucian’s face, telling him, simply, that she only wanted to look at it again. Something about the blade, she said, felt familiar to her, like she’d known it once before.

Damn it. Don’t tell me she knows this is actually the sword from my mother’s room.

Sophia caught the flicker of fear crossing his face and let out a soft laugh.

"Relax. This sword is yours. I only wanted to see it once more."

Jeanne watched the exchange, clearly lost, as though her mother somehow already recognized the very sword Lucian carried.

Then Sophia leaned in close, her voice dropping low enough for only him to hear.

"If you mean to search for the silver-haired woman using my Phantom unit, I won’t let you anywhere near this joint force, Lucian, not unless you agree to two conditions first. Only then will I even consider it."

Lucian went rigid.

He didn’t dare ask how she already knew exactly what he intended to do inside that forest. What mattered more was that she was willing to grant it at all, if he could meet her terms.

"What are your conditions, Lady Sophia?"

Sophia’s smile softened.

"Don’t push yourself past your limits, Lucian. And come home safely."

That’s it? That’s the whole condition?

He murmured the thought to himself, bewildered, already trying to form the question of how she’d known about the silver-haired woman in the first place.

But Sophia had already turned away, telling Jeanne to depart with her unit at once and find Patricia without further delay.

Jeanne pulled Lucian along with her, back out toward the residence’s entrance.

Sophia, meanwhile, walked off with Elder Meron, pausing to greet Irvine, still lingering in the hall. She crossed paths with Helia and Rhaiven as well.

When her eyes landed on Rhaiven, something in her stare sharpened into something far more pointed than simple courtesy, the look of someone who recognized a face they never expected to see again. She held that feeling back, just long enough to turn and greet Varka properly.

"My greetings, Your Majesty."

"Sophia. I’ve heard for years now that you were unwell. Are you recovered at last?"

"Thank you for your concern, Your Majesty. Between your prayers and the one who saved me, I’ve survived my illness and come through it whole."

Sophia settled into the role Cassius had left behind, seeing to whatever guests still remained in the hall.

Outside, the rain was falling in heavy, relentless sheets, thunder rolling somewhere overhead in the dark.

No carriage waited for them. Instead, a mounted company stood ready, their horses larger than any ordinary breed, armored at the flank, each one crowned between the ears with a small, glowing crystal to light the road ahead through the night.

As Lucian reached for his own armor, a hand settled on his shoulder from behind.

"Young Master. Where do you think you’re going?"

Through the downpour, Lucian found Rumelia standing there, no hood, no covering at all against the rain, soaked through.

He caught sight of something else, too, a fresh wound across her right hand, the kind that looked like it had come from a real fight.

He studied her, confused.

"Rumelia, where have you been all this time? And Isabella, has she already left the estate too?"

Rumelia told him Isabella had left early on, and that she herself had been called away by Sebast to help with some matter of his own.

Lucian chose to believe her.

"I’m heading to Korven. Can you stay here for now, and look after Lady Sophia? She’s recovered, but maybe you could still help her with whatever she needs."

Rumelia wanted badly to refuse, to stop him from leaving at all.

But Jeanne arrived on horseback before she could say it, telling him to hurry, the road to Korven was a long one, and they’d be riding it without a carriage to slow them down.

"Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it, Rumelia."

Lucian pulled her into a brief embrace, offering her a smile. Worry still lined her face, but seeing that smile let her set it aside, if only for a moment.

He mounted up, pulling his rain cloak tight around his shoulders.

Three hundred Phantom soldiers, Jeanne riding at their head, rode out from the estate into the storm.

Rumelia stood watching until they disappeared from sight, both hands clasped together, praying, more than anything, that Lucian would come home safe.

Elsewhere, a convoy of white carriages moved quickly through the night, each one marked with the sun crest of the Order of Lumielle, flanked by paladins mounted on horses as white as snow.

Inside one carriage sat three figures. A man in his twenties and a young woman beside him, both dressed in the Order’s gold-trimmed robes.

Across from them sat a third woman whose age was impossible to guess, her face entirely hidden beneath a wide hat and a length of white cloth bearing the sun emblem, her gaze fixed on the window and whatever darkness rolled past it.

One of the men held a letter, freshly delivered by a paladin rider, and his face had gone pale reading it.

"Oracle. We’ve just received word. Our cathedral in Korven has been destroyed."