CHAPTER 41: A KNIGHT’S BLADE...

Lenko trembled, the shake in his hands betraying the fear coiled tight in his body, but he did not back down. He stood his ground, his chin lifted in a defiance that made his voice all the steadier when he answered.

"As... as per the kingdom’s law, you have to protect the royal bloodline. It doesn’t matter if they’re not your ward... you’re a knight of the crown before anything else."

The white-haired man, let out a soft, humorless laugh as he drew his sword. Metal hissed against the scabbard, the sound sharp enough to make Yona’s skin prickle. He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, each footfall eating the space between them.

"Royalty, you say?" His voice was almost mocking, tinged with cold curiosity. "Funny. I only see one here. And she’s not in any danger."

His gaze slid to Yona, golden eyes narrowing, and she flinched as though those eyes pierced right through her. A question lingered in them, unspoken but heavy... Why are you here?

Then, without warning, he moved.

The blade flashed, clean and merciless, and in an instant the tip of his sword hovered at Muzio’s throat.

Yona’s body reacted before her mind could. Her twin blades hissed free of their sheaths, her boots pounding forward until she stood just a breath from the ward. Not close enough to trigger the backlash---but close enough to bare steel in warning.

"Stop!"

The air cracked with Lenko’s desperate voice. His cry rang sharper than hers.

"It’s not her...!"

His hand thrust out, pointing to the motionless figure on the ground. His voice cracked, but the words rang with all the strength he had left.

"...It’s him."

Sir Keiser hummed low in his throat, head canting as though the very idea were laughable. His golden eyes narrowed, catching the boy’s features in the torchlight, the steel at his side flashing as it tilted just so.

"Really?" His voice dripped with contempt. "This runt is supposed to be spawn of that withered old king?"

The words fell like daggers. Blatant, irreverent, almost mocking.

Yona’s breath caught in her chest.

Diego’s gaze flickered, but he stayed silent.

Lenko, however, flushed hot with indignation. He snapped, his voice sharp despite the tremor in it.

"Sir, your words aren’t appropriate---"

He got no further.

With a sudden, fluid motion, Keiser swung his sword in a clean downward arc.

CLAAAAANG!

The blade met the ward with a sound that cracked the air, loud enough to rattle the stalls behind them and set their ears ringing.

The entire barrier pulsed red, jagged lines of light racing across its surface like veins of molten fire. For an instant it seemed alive, hissing, thrumming, as though it resented the intrusion.

The recoil did not lash at Keiser, again.

But this time... it struck his sword.

The weapon shuddered violently in his grip, quaking as if it might snap in half, the backlash howling along its edge. Sparks spat out in erratic bursts, scattering against the ground.

Keiser’s arm jolted, his wrist forced back by the sheer resistance, the blade rattling in his grip with a screech of tortured steel.

His eyes twitched, his lips flattening into a thin line of irritation.

But his body... his stance... did not falter.

Where another knight might have been hurled across the dirt, Keiser simply absorbed the force into himself, his boots digging deeper into the earth, shoulders squared like a mountain bracing storm winds.

The ward’s glow flared once, then receded, its surface rippling with disdain before settling back into stubborn stillness.

Keiser exhaled sharply through his nose, lowering the trembling weapon. The edge was no longer pristine. Where the steel had clashed with the ward, the blade was chipped, scarred... damaged in a way no ordinary barrier should have been capable of.

His expression hardened into open annoyance.

"Oi. How the hell did he change the ward if he wasn’t the godforsaken mage?" His voice cut like gravel against stone. He angled the ruined weapon so the others could see. "Since when does a ward break a kingdom-issued sword? These are forged for Sheol deployments."

He dropped the point to the ground with a dull scrape, the ruined steel catching the torchlight.

A knight’s blade, meant to endure the worst horrors of the border, marred and chipped as if it had struck something far beyond its measure.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Even Yona, who had seen her share of unnatural things, felt her stomach knot. Lenko’s jaw clenched, his hand twitching. Diego’s eyes lingered on the ruined sword, the corners of his mouth tight with something close to unease.

Even the royal brigade... men who had faced horrors at the borders of Sheol, men who had seen comrades torn apart and beasts made from nightmares... looked shaken. Their disciplined formation wavered as murmurs rippled through their ranks like cracks spreading across glass.

"...oh shit, that’s bad."

"That’s one hell of a ward..."

"Should we just go back to Sheol? I think Sheol is safer than dealing with Sir Keiser’s temper..."

"Wait... how the hell did that boy even pull this off? He looks like he has no blood left to bleed..."

Their voices were hushed but urgent, edged with the kind of fear that only comes when people sense the world has shifted into something they can’t quite grasp.

Or so they believed.

Because Yona... who had seen it all unfold with her own eyes---realized something they hadn’t.

Her heartbeat dropped, sinking cold into her stomach. Her fingers twitched around her blades as it crept over her. Slowly, unwillingly, her eyes drifted toward the gate wall.

And there it was.

The truth staring her in the face.

The foundation stones of the gate, where wards were always etched in orderly runes by appointed mages, glowed with a distorted light. The script was there... but twisted. Wrong. The smooth geometric shapes of traditional sigils were interlaced with something rawer, uglier.

Blood.

Smears and streaks of it dragged across the surface. She could trace, even now, the shape of a handprint, palm pressed flat and trembling as it marked the wall. Further along, lines where fingers had clawed downward, carving runes not with ink or chalk but with the trail of dripping crimson.

The answer.