Maurien glanced back toward the tunnel, eyes narrowing. “The rest of what used to be the Empire splintered. Those regions became the countries beyond the range—the academies, the city-states, the forges that mix magic and machinery. Each of them with its own pride and grudges. Each claiming they’re the true heirs of civilization.”

Ludger absorbed the words silently, the flickering light from Maurien’s conjured flame reflecting in his eyes. “So what’s on the other side of this mountain isn’t just another country,” he murmured. “It’s what’s left of the Empire’s past.”

Maurien gave a single, solemn nod. “And the ghosts who learned to sell their legacy to anyone with enough gold.”

The mountain air turned colder then, and even Freyra’s usual bold stance softened as the weight of that history settled around them.

Ludger straightened, adjusting his scarf. “Then maybe it’s time we see how much those ghosts remember.”

Maurien’s mouth curved into a wry, knowing smile. “Careful what you dig up, boy. Some things under these mountains never stopped bleeding.”

Ludger walked slowly among the bodies, boots crunching over splintered crates and scattered brass casings. Most of the men were unconscious, breathing shallowly through broken noses and cracked ribs—his work. He crouched beside one of the prisoners, studying the makeshift armor and insignia sewn into the man’s sleeve—a mark he didn’t recognize. It wasn’t military issue, but it had money behind it: fine stitching, imported dye, a half-scraped sigil that once belonged to someone important.

“What the hell is going on behind all this…” he muttered under his breath. His voice echoed faintly through the hollow chamber.

Maurien glanced up from where he was dismantling one of the grenade launchers, but didn’t interrupt.

Ludger ran a hand through his hair and stood, exhaling slowly. “This doesn’t feel like simply bandit work,” he said. “It’s too clean. Too organized. The weapons, the tunnels, the silence in every village—it’s like someone’s cutting the threads holding this side of the border together.”

He looked over the unconscious men again. “And it’s not just coin,” he went on, tone turning harder. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say some noble houses are trying to make the rest of the Empire collapse from the inside.”

Freyra raised an eyebrow. “Why would nobles want that? They’d lose everything—their lands, their titles.”

“Maybe,” Ludger said, “but maybe they’re betting they’ll earn more from what comes after. When the Empire’s weak and choking on its own politics, the first ones to rebuild get to rewrite the rules.”

Maurien’s voice came low and even from behind him. “You’re not wrong. Some people think they can profit from a dying beast by carving it up before it hits the ground.” He turned the dismantled rune device in his hands, the carved channels still glowing faintly. “And they’re not entirely mistaken. The only question is how many throats they’ll cut before they realize the blood’s their own.”

Ludger’s eyes swept the chamber one more time, landing on the tunnel that led deeper into the mountain. The faint draft that came from it smelled of cold air and smoke—like something waiting.

“Then we’d better find out who’s holding the knife,” he said quietly. “Before they start carving.”

Ludger knelt beside the line of prisoners and began his work in silence.

He moved with precision, checking every body—hands, belts, boots, even under collars—for anything sharp enough to end a life. Hidden blades, poisoned pins, rune shards. Nothing escaped his inspection.

When he was sure they had nothing left to work with, he placed a palm on the ground. Mana pulsed downward, and the earth responded like a living thing—softening, swallowing, reshaping. One by one, the unconscious men sank into the floor until only their heads remained above the surface.

He hardened the soil around their necks, the texture shifting from loose dirt to compact stone. None of them would be digging themselves out without help.

“They could still bite their tongues,” Maurien said behind him, watching the work with mild interest.

Ludger nodded once. “If they do, I’ll feel it. All I have to do is touch their heads. Healing magic kicks in before they finish the job.” His tone was calm, detached—like he was describing a training exercise instead of a trap for men’s lives.

Maurien gave a low whistle. “Makes sense.”

Ludger stood, brushing off his gloves, eyes flicking over the row of half-buried captives. “It’s just obvious. Can’t get information from corpses.”

Maurien tilted his head slightly. “Ever interrogated anyone before?”

Ludger met his gaze and shook his head. “No.”

“Good,” Maurien said, stepping forward and cracking his knuckles once. “Then leave this part to me.”

Ludger arched an eyebrow but didn’t argue. He took a few steps back, folding his arms. “You’ve done this before.”

Maurien’s mouth curved into that thin, sharp smirk he wore when he stopped pretending to be a harmless old mage. “Let’s just say I’ve had… practice persuading people to talk.”

Ludger’s gaze lingered on him for a moment, reading the calm in the older man’s eyes—the kind that didn’t come from theory or training but from long, ugly experience.

Tricks up his sleeve, Ludger thought. Of course he does.

He stayed where he was, watching in silence as Maurien crouched beside the first prisoner, the air around him shifting with a faint pressure that didn’t quite feel like wind—something heavier, more deliberate. Whatever method the mage used, it wasn’t going to be gentle.

Ludger exhaled quietly, half to himself. “Guess I’ll just observe and take notes.”

Maurien didn’t bother with pleasantries. He stepped close to the first prisoner, the man’s face still slack with pain, and slapped him hard across the cheek.

The prisoner’s eyes snapped open, pupils blown wide, confusion turning to raw fear as he registered the cloaked figure looming above him.

“Wake up,” Maurien said, voice low and even. The words had no cruelty in them—only a promise of consequences if ignored.

The man gagged, spat blood, tried to push himself upright but the earth around his neck held him immobile. His eyes found Maurien, then Ludger, then Freyra, and landed on the nearest broken weapon half-buried in the muck. Recognition and terror mixed into a single, animal expression.

Maurien crouched so his face was level with the prisoner’s. The Tinder-flame at his shoulder painted the old mage’s features in a cruel yellow light. “Listen close,” he said, almost conversational. “You’re going to answer the questions I ask. You can suffer a little and tell me what I want, or you can suffer a lot and still tell me what I want. Either way, the answers are coming. Do you understand?”

The prisoner’s lips trembled. He managed a nod that looked like it might tear his throat open.

“There are others who can talk,” Maurien added softly, eyes cold as flint. “So if you decide to make a noble little martyr of yourself, you’re only making it worse for the men who come after. Trying anything funny will only make things more painful. Save us both the time.”

The man’s breathing hitched. “I— I—” he croaked, voice raw.

Maurien’s hand lifted, a slow, patient motion. “What’s your route? Who gave you these weapons ? Names. Places. Don’t screw around. We don’t have time to be polite tonight.”

The prisoner swallowed, the noise like a stone grinding. He looked from Maurien’s face to Ludger’s, as if measuring which threat to heed. Outside, the mountain wind moaned through the mouth of the tunnel; inside, the room felt suddenly small, full of the kind of hush that makes answers fall out of the air like rain.

Maurien’s patience was a blade honed to a hairline. He leaned in so close the prisoner could see the tired, practiced calm in the mage’s eyes—no theatrics, only a consequence waiting to happen.

“I asked you for names,” Maurien said, voice flat. “Routes. Buyers. Anything that points to who’s paying you to run fire to the passes. Don’t spin me a story about orders.”

The prisoner’s throat worked. He swallowed and spat a small, bitter glob of blood. “I don’t know,” he croaked. “I swear. I follow the leader. We get the boxes, we bring them through, we hand them over at the pass. We never meet them. We—” His voice broke. “We never talk with no one. We—”

Maurien’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit,” he said softly. He reached out and pinched the man’s jaw. Not hard enough to break bone—this wasn’t an execution; it was a calibrated instrument. The mage’s other hand drew a tiny sigil in the air, and the room filled with a thin pressure, like wind pressing into the lungs. The effect was immediate: the prisoner’s pupils dilated, his breath came short and fast, and a thin sheen of sweat broke across his forehead.

“Listen,” Maurien said, quieter now. “Lies make you survive a little while longer. Truth makes the pain smaller and useful. I don’t want you to suffer more than necessary. You can tell me now, or I expand the pressure and make your memories feel like a thing that happens again and again.”

The man’s eyes flicked to Ludger, pleading for some mercy in the boy’s face. Ludger didn’t move an inch.

“We never met them,” the prisoner repeated, but the words had the thinness of a reed. Maurien tightened the air a fraction more—enough to make the man’s jaw clench—and then, in a voice that mixed promise and threat: “There are always contacts. Give me one name. Give me a town. Give me anything.”

The prisoner’s lips finally parted. It came out as a broken list, butchered by fear: “Veshmar… the caravans… sometimes a merchant called Kadrin.”

Maurien’s face didn’t change, but his fingers relaxed. He let the pressure ease like water off skin. The prisoner fell back on the dirt, coughing as oxygen came rushing back into his lungs.

Maurien gave Ludger one look. Then, without warning, Ludger flicked his hand toward the man’s face.

A chunk of earth rose from the ground, compact and fast as a thrown brick. It struck the prisoner squarely in the jaw with a dull thud. The man’s head snapped sideways, and he went limp—out cold, but alive.

Ludger blinked once. “That’s one way to say we’re done,” he muttered dryly.

Maurien exhaled through his nose. “Better than letting him think he’s earned a break.”

Ludger folded his arms. “Do the names ring any bells? Veshmar, Kadrin, red stag?”

Maurien rubbed his beard, eyes narrowing in thought. “Veshmar, yes—heard it before. It’s an academy city beyond the eastern border, near the river passes. But Kadrin? The red stag patch? No. Either aliases or middlemen. I don’t like it.” He shook his head slowly. “Too many layers for a smuggling ring. Someone’s buying silence as much as weapons.”

Without another word, he stepped toward the next buried man and crouched. The prisoner’s eyelids fluttered, his breathing shallow from fear and pain. Maurien snapped his fingers once, and a faint current of wind hit the man’s face, waking him instantly.

The man’s eyes went wide when he saw the cloaked mage kneeling over him.

Maurien didn’t bother repeating his warning. “You’ve heard the screams,” he said softly. “You know how this goes. I’m asking once—names, routes, buyers. Who gives the orders?”

The man shook his head violently. “I— I don’t know names! We just move the cargo. Boxes, always sealed. We take them to a man named Toris near the crossing—he’s the one who pays! We never meet the client!”

Maurien leaned closer, voice lowering to a tone that made the air itself tense. “And who pays him?”

The prisoner’s lips trembled. “He—he gets the gold from a merchant house… said they’re from Farlen Port, east of the mountains. The mark on the bags—it was a golden wolf!”

Maurien’s eyes flicked briefly toward Ludger. The gesture was small, but it said enough: new lead.

The old mage straightened, expression darkening again. “Golden wolf,” he repeated. “That’s a noble crest. Not one I recognize, but it fits your guess—this goes higher than smugglers.”

Ludger nodded grimly, his voice dry. “Perfect. Nobles, academies, weapon traders. Just what we needed—a conspiracy with a budget.”

Then, with the same efficient motion as before, he summoned another small ball of earth and sent it flying. The second prisoner slumped instantly, unconscious before he hit the end of his breath.

Maurien clicked his tongue, a small, irritated sound that cut through the damp air. He crouched and flicked a finger over the lip of a launcher, the motion lazy but precise. “Useless grunts,” he said finally. “They’ve given us noise, not real names. Either they heard wrong from their leader, or they were fed nonsense on purpose.”

He straightened, beard rubbed between two fingers. “It’s how you run something that has to survive a bad shipment. Use throwaway men who’ll talk nothing of value or lie so wildly the trail goes cold. Layers upon layers—middlemen, brokers, aliases. If the operation sniffs trouble, you burn the contract men and leave no paper trail.”

Ludger felt the cold logic settle like ash in his chest. It made the whole thing smell worse: not just bandits with better toys, but an organization that expected to be traced and planned for it. “So the names we got—maybe nothing,” he said. His voice was flat, the frustration quietly organizing itself into strategy. “They fed us whatever kept them safe.”

Maurien nodded. “Exactly. They hired mouths they didn’t care about. They made sure the mouths were disposable.” He tapped the ruined launcher with his boot. “And they kept the good names further up the chain. Brokers hide behind merchants; merchants hide behind houses; houses hide behind ledgers and lords.”

Freyra spat onto the floor once, hard. “Then we gut out their lungs and see what bleeds.”

“Maybe,” Maurien replied, but there was no fire in it—only the fatigue of a man who’d seen the shape of such plans before. “Maybe not. It’s built to be slow work. Not everything you pull will point at a head you can lop off.”

Ludger let that sink in. The map of their problem rearranged itself: Veshmar and Farlen Port were threads, but likely tugged through many hands. The launcher runes and metals might trace to a forge; a broker’s ledger might show payment routes; a merchant mark—golden wolf—could tie to a house. Each led to another hedge to cut through.

“What do you want to do?” he asked finally—less a question than a passing of the baton.

Maurien looked toward the tunnel mouth, then back at the pile of ruined weapons. “You map the tunnel,” he said. “Make sure it leads where we think. Don’t rush—mark everything. I’ll take these launchers and study the runes and metal. If they’re lab-made, there’ll be signatures: alloys, channel patterns, runic dialects. Those are traceable.”

“And the prisoners?” Ludger asked.

“Keep them where they are,” Maurien said. “No more questions for now. If they wake and blabber, we deal with them. If someone comes looking, we’ll hear it.”

Freyra’s hand tightened on her axe. “I’ll hold them. Let them wake hungry and dumb—maybe they’ll remember real names before they hurt.”

Ludger nodded. “Fine. Two of you cover the horses and watch the camp—rotate. I will check the other tunnel. If anything goes sideways, we pull back and burn everything down. No heroes.”

Maurien gave a short, almost amused sound. “Look at you—discipline and paranoia. A delightful combination.”

Ludger did not smile. He only checked the way the light struck the runes once more, feeling the shape of the problem under his skin. Layers. Money. Nobles with too much patience.

They had work to do, and it would be the kind that wore you down. He breathed, tasted iron and rain, and set his jaw. “Then let’s get to work.”