CHAPTER 44: YEAR OF CHANGE...

Keiser watched as Lenko helped the boy swing his legs over the bed and ease down onto the floor.

"See you later...!" Wally said brightly, lifting his good arm in a wave before shuffling toward the door.

The infirmary quieted again once he was gone.

Lenko mentioned that over the past days, there had been a steady stream of people moving through the guild’s infirmary... the only place the outsiders had been allowed to stay until everything was settled.

It made sense.

In most villages, the guild served as neutral ground. It gave out quests, organized mercenaries, adventurers, and merchants, and tended to those who didn’t quite belong to the village itself. Outsiders naturally gravitated there.

Here, though, it had become more than that.

The infirmary was now a gathering point for those who had been missing for a year in Hinnom... people once presumed dead, their disappearances written off as the curse of living too close to Sheol. In these parts, it was almost expected that loved ones might vanish without explanation. People didn’t ask too many questions.

But things had changed.

Because the princess had kept those people alive. Protected them. And now, all at once, those long-’missing’ souls had returned in droves.

Keiser lay still, silent, watching it all unfold as adventurers who had once abandoned Hinnom... believing their families or comrades were lost... now came flooding back.

Reunions played out before his eyes, bittersweet and overwhelming, as lives thought extinguished were suddenly restored. And Keiser could only watch, a silent witness to the fragile relief stitched together from a year of grief and betrayal.

Lenko settled back into the chair beside Keiser’s bed, a folded parchment in his hands... the very thing Keiser had asked for.

The reason they had gone to Hinnom in the first place, before everything had spiraled into chaos. Before chasing down a thief had revealed a princess

in disguise. Before the wards, the fighting, the collapse.

And now, after a week of drifting in and out of pain and bandages, Keiser finally laid eyes on it finally. The proclamation pinned to the guild hall’s bulletin.

The royal decree of the King’s Gambit.

He smoothed the parchment open, his good eye tracing the ornate script. His mouth pulled into a grimace almost instantly. It was as pompous, as gratingly self-congratulatory as he remembered.

***

Hear ye, hear ye!

"Let it be known throughout the Kingdom of Aurex that the realm enters once more its Year of Change.

All who dare may answer the summons; whether noble of birth, knight-in-training, maiden, farmer, mercenary, or wanderer upon these lands that His Majesty has seen to prosper.

Now the charge falls to you.

Take heed: only those of eighteen years and older may stand for the Trials.

By royal decree, it is hereby proclaimed:

Petitions shall be received until pridie Kalendas Februarius (the day before the first of February)"

***

The parchment crinkled slightly in Keiser’s hand as he lowered it, his expression shadowed with something sharper than pain.

Lenko’s head shot up at once, alarm flashing across his face. "What is it? Do your wounds hurt?"

Keiser shook his head, voice low and strained. "What’s today’s date?"

Lenko hesitated, then answered, "...ante diem xvii Kalendas Februarius." The seventeenth day before the first of February.

Keiser blinked once, then groaned, dragging a hand down his face. "Two weeks. We only have two weeks before February."

Lenko’s eyes widened, his breath stalling as if the weight of Keiser’s words had struck him square in the chest. He understood... too well.

"You’re still thinking of going back to the capital? And more than that... you still want to enter the trials? With your body like this?"

His voice cracked into anger, his hand cutting sharply through the air, pointing at the wrappings that bound Keiser from head to toe. As though Keiser himself couldn’t feel every stiff pull of linen, every sting beneath the bandages.

"I should really have someone check you for your head sickness, my lord," Lenko hissed, narrowing his eyes. His breath came fast, his chest rising and falling like he’d run a great distance.

"You’ve been acting strange... reckless. Running here, running there. Talking about returning to the capital. Don’t you remember what happened? Don’t you see what you’ve put yourself through?" His words were sharp, but beneath them was something else... an almost pleading note, as if he were praying Keiser would finally admit he knew something was wrong.

Keiser only stared at him.

He could end this right now. He could tell him the truth. That he wasn’t Muzio Auro Valemont, not the boy Lenko had sworn his loyalty to. From the first day, Keiser had noticed the way Lenko’s eyes lingered, searching him, testing him, as though trying to reconcile the person before him with the lord he once knew.

It was obvious... the vassal truly cared for the tenth prince.

But Keiser wasn’t him. No matter that the body, the mana, the cursed fragile shell belonged to Muzio... inside, he remained Keiser. He thought as Keiser. Spoke as Keiser. Moved, fought, and judged as Keiser.

And that truth was a blade he still couldn’t bring himself to unsheathe.

Suddenly, the door creaked open.

"Oh good... you’re awake..."

The princess stepped inside. Gone was the cloak that once swallowed her whole, now she was dressed with the poise of a noble, her bearing sharp with authority. For a moment, the room itself seemed to straighten under her presence.

Lenko let out a sharp, disbelieving huff... his expression saying clear enough that this wasn’t over, that they would talk later.

Still, with a reluctant sigh, he pushed himself up from his chair, offering the seat to her.

Keiser noted the small gesture.

It seemed the two of them had grown closer, or at least learned to tolerate one another better.

"You doing okay?" the princess asked softly as she eased into the seat "Think you can walk around yet?"

That made Keiser raise his visible brow... the only one not hidden beneath a wrap of bandages. He gave her a look caught somewhere between skepticism and amusement.

"...Oh." Lenko’s voice dropped suddenly, his tone losing its earlier bite. He set the teacup he had been fiddling with onto the bedside table, his eyes flicking toward the princess. "Was it today?"

The princess gave a small, solemn nod.

A knot formed low in Keiser’s stomach. "What is it...?"

Both of them turned to look at him. The princess straightened, her hands folding together as if bracing herself. Then, with a voice quiet but heavy, she answered.

"...A funeral."

Silence.

Keiser stilled, the word echoing in his chest.

Oh.