Chapter 178

The fire in the room burned the same as before. The window, too, was shut without the smallest gap.

But somehow, a cold draft seemed to keep seeping in from somewhere inside. A piercing chill was draining the warmth from his body.

"……"

Joseph gripped the letter Mikhail had sent. Then he balled his trembling fingers tight and bowed his head.

In truth, Mikhail's wanting to trace the source of the mana he carried was reasonable enough. The question he held was the natural next step. Nothing strange about the inquiry. But.

If only I could keep him safe forever….

The moment the murmur slipped out — almost a sigh — a jolting breath surged up from deep in his chest. Ragged breathing scraped its way up through his lungs.

Joseph rode out the coughing that kept breaking from him in fits, pressed at his brow, and forced his breathing back under control.

"Haah…."

The wind carrying flurries of snow had grown stronger than before. It rolled past with a low, weeping current, rattling the window frame.

Clatter. Clack.

Beneath the noise cutting into the silence, Joseph looked down at his finely trembling palm.

In truth, he was afraid. The worst-case scenarios kept burrowing into his head and whispering at his ear.

If he couldn't hold out long enough. If Mikhail were broken before he could fully come into his own.

If everything he'd barely managed to hold together came to nothing….

"……"

Joseph let out a thin breath and dropped his eyes.

The bleak possibilities swelled like storm clouds and came rushing in all at once.

Beneath his lowered eyes, the mire of dread tangled in on itself and cast a deep shadow on the floor.

But the wavering lasted only a moment.

Joseph bit down on his lip and stretched his hand out. He put strength into his fingertips and curled them inward, pressing down.

There was no room to be caught up in soft-hearted sentiment. He would let nothing stand in his way.

Crack.

From his closed palm, white light leapt out and split the dark.

Joseph crushed down every one of the thoughts that had been tangling his feelings and eating away at his mind.

I'll protect him. No matter what.

A breath like something honed to an edge slipped out from Joseph's mouth.

The mana that sparked — as if proof of its master's will — surged up between his clenched fingers and left a stark white afterimage.

Crrrackle!

The noise rattling the window was buried under the static that erupted with the mana.

The dread that had been pressing down on his shoulders, riding the dim night air, also lost its color in an instant.

The tremor coiled through Joseph's whole body subsided just as quickly.

"……"

The white light that had filled the air soon faded. In the dim room, only the same silence as before lingered.

Joseph let the strength go out of his shoulders and sighed.

Then he raised both hands, pressed his creaking joints together, laced his fingers, and closed his eyes.

Beneath a sight as dark as a chapel with its candles snuffed out.

There, Joseph prayed an urgent prayer. He repeated, over and over, a wish he'd carried for a long time. Like a believer searching for salvation, desperate for it.

But he didn't believe in any god.

Alisha. Give me… the strength to protect Mikhail to the very end.

---

The night, holding a deep silence, slowly passed.

A private bedroom on the third floor of the Northern main castle.

Sion Senit, back at the castle after a long stretch away on the borderlands, stood at the window and looked out at the view stretching into the distance.

Among the rows of houses with bright white snow piled across their roofs, the snowfall that had seemed to pick up overnight had eased off.

Whooo—.

Sion shifted his head and set his eyes on the far sky.

The sleepiness clinging to his eyelids had long since fully retreated, but the scene spread out before him was still the small hours.

No… sunlight was just starting to break in from the far east, so maybe it counted as early morning.

Well, since I'm up. Might as well get an early start on training.

Sion checked how his body was holding up with a couple of arm swings, then started moving toward the wooden training sword propped against the wall.

Knock, knock.

The sound that suddenly cut across was not what he'd expected. Sion turned with a startled look.

Knock, knock, knock.

Someone was signaling from the other side of the door. The knocking that followed was unusually careful, the way someone might rap on a small child's door.

Who'd be here at this hour?

Caught by curiosity, Sion walked over to the door and turned the handle, opening it.

The moment he did, the source of the soft call was revealed. Standing in front of the door was a page of small build.

"Lord Joseph is asking for you. He's requested that you come to the central study without waking anyone."

"…Lord Joseph?"

Sion's face filled with questions instead of accepting the message straight off.

Honestly, the situation wasn't making sense.

Lord Joseph… no, his father had collapsed coughing up blood the moment he finished rebuilding the defensive formulas along the entire front, hadn't he?

The attending physician had said at least ten days. For that long, Joseph was supposed to put every thought out of his head and devote himself only to rest.

And yet at this early hour… for what possible reason?

"……"

Sion glanced out the window and asked.

"Right this minute, you mean?"

"Yes."

The reply came back as though it had been waiting. It seemed Joseph had even told the page what questions to expect. Sion nodded without saying anything more and answered the page.

"Understood. Let's go together."

"Yes, sir."

Sion stepped out of the room, muffled his footsteps, and followed behind the page.

Crossing the long corridor, then climbing flight after flight of blue-carpeted stairs — three or four sets in all.

Before long, Sion arrived in front of the central study. Then he looked at the closed door.

The oak door in front of him let out a creak from its right corner every time it opened.

Knock, knock.

The page knocked carefully. At once, a small chime from inside granted them entry.

Creak—.

The moment they stepped inside the study, the door behind them closed.

Sion took in the scene of the room growing closer with every step he took.

Heaps of paperwork filled the desktop.

And in the middle of the tall walls of documents sat a person bundled head to toe in a blanket.

Sion stood before the round little figure and opened his mouth.

"Lord Joseph. You call—"

【Father.】

The moment he began to speak, silver letters etched themselves before his eyes. Sion glanced at the contents and corrected himself.

"Yes, Father. You called for me?"

Having corrected himself, Sion ran his eyes quickly over the documents on the desk.

The papers stacked on the left side of the desk covered the state of the entire North — tax revenue, people moving in and out, production figures, and the like.

The ones beside them were meeting requests sent in from outside the North, or documents for reporting on the war situation.

But among them all, what sat directly in front of Joseph….

【Want to see?】

Joseph's silver voice surfaced across his field of sight.

Sion's shoulders twitched in surprise, but he soon nodded toward Joseph.

"Yes."

The letter that had been sitting in front of Joseph drifted feather-light over to Sion. Sion picked it up and looked it over.

A green envelope with a bear.

Going by the color of the envelope and the seal pressed into it, the sender appeared to be a great noble from the west.

Not the kind that carried an official request or any pressing matter — only personal correspondence.

Flap.

Sion worked his way carefully down the contents of the letter.

"……"

Beneath the silence, orange eyes followed handwriting that looked like strokes flung out in every direction.

Then Sion's blank expression slowly twisted, the corner of his mouth pulled crooked, and a dry laugh broke from him.

"Hah."

The text on either side of the actual point was packed with flowery phrasing.

But boiled down to the essentials, it came to this.

The Noble Direct Suppression Order soon to be carried out against Mikhail Senit.

He was not to involve himself, in any way, with its selection or its delivery.

A matter of building trust, a reasonable test of merit… smooth talk and nothing else.

But the displeasure that surfaced lasted only a moment.

Sion let out a breath that came ground through his teeth, then handed the letter back to Joseph, sullen about it.

"I've read it. That'll be for my elder brother to deal with."

At Sion's flat answer, Joseph only chuckled to himself.

Then he set the returned letter back on the desk.

"……"

What followed was a short silence. Joseph kept his smile as he watched Sion, then flicked a finger.

At once, silver letters etched themselves before the eyes Sion had dropped to the side, as though flowing into place.

【Aren't you worried?】

Sion read the line that had appeared, drew in his breath and swallowed, then turned toward Joseph and spoke.

"Worried? Of course I am."

Sion's voice was charged as he answered. He crushed the hand at his side into a fist and went on.

"I'm afraid my elder brother will fail. I'm afraid that those people — who understand better than anyone the power of ideal and legend — will use defeat as the pretext to whittle away at our foundation."

Sion watched the unease curled in one corner of his chest raise its head. Standing in the middle of a desolate plain, he stared down the dark currents pressing in on him with stubborn force.

Beneath wide-open eyes, the words came trembling with anxiety, rising toward an extreme.

"I hate the thought of defeat damaging Father's name — of it cracking the North's political balance, which only just stabilized under his near-miraculous legend and feats of arms. And—!"

【—You're worried, aren't you. About Mikhail.】

The line he couldn't turn away from drove in. Sion lost his words and went rigid. Even so, the silver sentences kept etching themselves in front of his eyes.

【That he'll break, just like that, and never get back up.】

With his lips pressed tight, Sion looked straight at Joseph on the other side of the letters.

But soon enough he dropped his eyes from where they'd been watching and let out a breath, neither confirming nor denying.

【Strange. Weren't the two of you close?】

"That—"

The question rang as clear as if a voice had spoken it. Sion gave the silver-lit words a glance, then lowered his tone and answered.

"That was only when we were young. And even then, I was the one clinging to him, one-sided."

A trace of self-mockery touched the corners of Sion's mouth as he traced the past.

"He always looked at me as something he didn't want around. I understand it. Watching some boy who'd just rolled in out of nowhere call Lord Joseph… 'Father' couldn't have been pleasant to look at…."

【Sion.】

The voice he'd been keeping up cut off sharply. Joseph caught Sion's eyes, then stretched out a finger and pointed at the door.

【Do you remember?】

The oak door looked spotless, not a scratch on it — except the right-side hinge, which was crumpled deep in.

【That door. The two of you broke it tearing around in here.】

"……"

【Mikhail ran off with something of yours, and you went after him and took a fall. And of all things, you ended up smacking your head on that hinge. …There was so much blood that day. Enough to soak every strand of your white hair.】

Joseph shook his head as if there was no controlling those two, then let a faint smile settle at his mouth.

The particular light of someone reminiscing flickered across his red eyes, which had drunk in the swaying candle flame.

【That day, Mikhail spent the whole night curled up in front of your bedroom door. His face a complete mess of tears and snot.】