Raukor went quiet again.
The forge continued to burn beside them, metal glowing in the coals, but the beastman’s attention had turned inward. His ears twitched once. Twice. He stared into the fire as if weighing how much of this was worth saying out loud.
He did that a lot, Ludger noticed. Finally, Raukor spoke.
“When people want answers to things like this,” he said slowly, “when they’re chasing possibilities that don’t exist in the open world anymore… they look at the labyrinths.”
Ludger’s gaze sharpened. “Why?”
Raukor didn’t answer immediately. He rubbed his palm against the edge of the anvil, claws scraping softly. Silence stretched again, broken only by the hiss of hot metal cooling.
“There are rumors,” Raukor said at last. “Old ones. Legends that never quite died.”
Ludger waited.
“They say most of the magic people use today,” Raukor continued, “didn’t start in academies. Or temples. Or royal bloodlines.”
His eyes lifted from the fire and met Ludger’s.
“It came out of the labyrinths.”
Ludger frowned slightly. “Figuratively?”
Raukor shook his head.
“And literally,” he said.
“The labyrinths aren’t just dungeons or tests or monsters stacked on top of each other. They’re… archives. Fault lines. Places where rules are thinner.”
He gestured vaguely with one clawed hand. “Spells. Materials. Concepts. Entire branches of magic, some refined, some broken, leaked out of them over time.”
Ludger absorbed that in silence.
“So if Lucius went looking for something beyond sanctioned knowledge,” Raukor finished, “a labyrinth would be the first place someone would point him.”
The forge crackled louder for a moment.
“And if someone wanted to guide him without being seen,” Raukor added quietly, “they wouldn’t need to push very hard. The legends do most of the work for them.”
Ludger studied Raukor in silence. The thought came uninvited.
He has ties to the elders.
Probably more than ties. The way he spoke, measured, careful, aware of where the line was, felt familiar. Not the caution of a merchant or craftsman, but the restraint of someone raised around knowledge that wasn’t meant to circulate freely.
A son, maybe, Ludger thought. Or something close enough.
He didn’t ask. Prying never made people open up faster. And Raukor had already said more than most would.
Instead, Ludger turned the words over in his mind.
Labyrinths as sources. As fractures. As places where rules were thinner. Rumors, maybe. But they fit too well.
There was far more he didn’t know about labyrinths than he did, and that imbalance bothered him. He’d delved them. Exploited them. Extracted resources and power from them. But understanding? That was still shallow.
His father had once mentioned, never in a lesson, that some labyrinths weren’t fully here . That they connected to other worlds. Other layers. Other somethings.
Ludger had never confirmed it. Just like he hadn’t confirmed that magic itself bled into the world through those same cracks. Still…
If even half of it was true, then Lucius being drawn toward a labyrinth made perfect sense. Especially if he was searching for answers that normal paths couldn’t give him.
Life. Death. Creation. Those weren’t subjects the Empire liked examined too closely. Ludger exhaled slowly.
Interesting, he thought.
Not comforting. Not reassuring. But interesting.
And in his experience, interesting mysteries were the ones that reshaped the board, whether he wanted them to or not.
Raukor broke the silence first.
“You know,” he said slowly, eyes still on the fire, “it’s usually people like you who go after that kind of knowledge.”
Ludger didn’t react.
“Not nobles chasing prestige,” Raukor continued. “Not scholars filling shelves. I mean the ones who change things . The ones who don’t wait for permission. The ones who start bending the world before the world notices they’re doing it.”
He turned his head slightly, studying Ludger from the side now.
“Age doesn’t matter,” Raukor added. “It never has. If anything, it makes it worse. Younger ones adapt faster. They don’t have habits yet. They don’t know what’s ‘impossible.’”
The forge popped, sending sparks upward.
“Those are the people who get whispered to,” Raukor said. “The ones legends latch onto early. And they’re usually the ones who pay the highest price.”
Ludger shrugged lightly. It wasn’t dismissive. Just factual.
Raukor huffed once, a short, humorless sound. “Yeah. Figures. I didn’t even have to say it. You already knew.”
He shook his head. “You have that look. The same one the elders used to warn about.”
Ludger raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.
Instead, he asked, “If you were Lucius, grieving, isolated, searching for answers you shouldn’t want, and you believed the labyrinths held them…”
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
“Which one would you go to?”
Raukor didn’t answer.
The silence this time was heavier.
He leaned forward, resting both hands on the anvil, eyes narrowing as he thought. Not recalling rumors, calculating . Mapping risk against promise. Cost against temptation.
The fire crackled. The waves rolled in the distance. Finally, Raukor exhaled slowly.
“…That depends,” he said. “On whether he wanted answers.”
Ludger waited.
“Or power,” Raukor finished.
He went quiet again, clearly still thinking.
Raukor sighed.
It was a deep, heavy sound, the kind that came from turning over too many possibilities and finding none of them solid enough to stand on.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Not yet.”
He straightened, rubbing a hand over his face. “I don’t have enough clues. Not about what Lucius actually believed. Not about what he thought he’d find.”
Ludger didn’t interrupt.
“Still,” Raukor continued, “from what you told me, and from what I’ve heard on my end, Lucius didn’t bring knowledge in from beyond the Empire’s borders.”
He tapped the anvil once with a claw. “That matters.”
“How so?” Ludger asked.
“If everything that pushed him in that direction came from inside the Empire,” Raukor said, “then his personal library is the key. Whatever made him choose a direction would be there. Titles. Marginal notes and so on.”
He met Ludger’s gaze. “That would make guessing the labyrinth a lot easier.”
Ludger nodded once. He didn’t say it aloud, but the conclusion was obvious: Raukor knew far more about labyrinths than he was letting on. Names. Locations. Purposes. And he was choosing carefully what to share. That was fine. Raukor had already helped more than most would. Pressing him further wouldn’t get better answers, just closed doors.
“Thank you,” Ludger said simply.
Raukor grunted. “Be careful.”
Ludger turned away from the forge, thoughts already shifting. Lucius’ library wasn’t just a curiosity anymore. It was a map. And maps, especially incomplete ones, always led somewhere dangerous.
For the rest of the night, Ludger didn’t return to the camp. He moved.
Faster than the wind, quieter than the silence of the night.
Wind Overdrive wrapped around him in controlled bursts, erasing sound, scent, and presence. One minute he was above the shoreline, the next he was miles inland, boots never truly touching the ground long enough to leave a trace.
Villages first. Small places. Simple layouts. Easy to read.
Seismic Sense spread outward in layered waves, mapping stone, soil, wood, and movement with ruthless efficiency. Houses. Wells. Cellars. Storage pits. Buried vaults. He checked everything, every room, every foundation, every hollow space. Nothing.
No sealed chambers. No recently collapsed tunnels. No unnatural voids where someone might have been erased. He pushed the sense deeper, ten meters, twenty, thirty. Fifty. Still nothing.
No signs of disturbed strata. No fresh constructions masked as old ones. No hidden restraints. No lingering echoes of violence or panic. He moved on.
Towns next. Larger. Messier. More noise, but also more patterns.
He skimmed rooftops and alleyways, slipped through backstreets and docks, crossed administrative buildings and merchant halls. He checked beneath them all. Warehouses. Inns. Guard stations.
Again, nothing. No hidden prisoners. No underground holding cells. No erased spaces pretending to be solid ground.
And more importantly… No signs of anyone covering something up .
No underworld guild footprints. No smuggling tunnels. No layered false floors. No behavioral anomalies in movement patterns that suggested intimidation or control.
No one to shake down. No one even pretending to hide. By the time the eastern horizon began to pale, Ludger slowed.
He stood briefly atop a low ridge overlooking Lucius’ territory, wind tugging at his green scarf, senses retracting one layer at a time. Nothing. Not a single usable clue. Lucius hadn’t been hidden here. And he hadn’t been erased here either.
Which meant only one thing… Whatever path Lucius had taken… it didn’t end inside his own lands.
The sun was just cresting the horizon when Ludger returned to the camp.
Pale light washed over the beach, turning the water silver and casting long shadows across the stone structures he’d raised the day before. The camp was already stirring. Recruits were waking, stretching sore muscles, tightening straps, checking weapons. Trainees moved in disciplined lines, half-awake but functional. Morning training was about to begin.
Ludger took it in without slowing.
He ignored the activity entirely when he felt a presence slip into his awareness from behind.
He stopped and turned slowly. Luna stood a few steps away.
She wore travel leathers darkened by dust and salt, hair tied back, expression unreadable. A backpack hung from one shoulder, heavier than it should have been. The scent gave it away before the weight did.
Old paper. Ink. Leather bindings. Books. Ludger smiled faintly.
“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me,” he said.
Luna blinked. Then her gaze slid away, her mouth tightening in a complicated expression he couldn’t immediately place.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked.
Ludger paused. He hadn’t meant anything loaded by it. Just… trust, confirmed. He didn’t get the chance to clarify. Luna reached up, slipped the pack off her shoulder, and opened it. Inside were books.
Not neat ledgers or official records, but warped spines, cracked leather, pages yellowed with age. Titles in unfamiliar scripts. Margins packed with cramped annotations. Some of the symbols made Ludger’s mana stir uncomfortably just looking at them.
“I couldn’t read most of it,” Luna said. “Different languages. Old ones.”
She reached deeper into the bag and pulled out a thinner stack.
“But these are Lucius’ notes.”
Handwriting he recognized from Rathen’s descriptions. Ludger’s smile vanished, replaced by focus. He nodded once.
“Good,” he said. “Bring them to Raukor.”
Luna looked at him. “You think he can help?”
“Yes,” Ludger replied. “I’ll join you shortly.”
For the first time since arriving at the coast, the uncertainty shifted. They finally had a lead. And whatever Lucius had been searching for… it had left footprints after all.
Ludger didn’t linger.
He turned toward the camp and raised his voice just enough to carry.
“Everyone,” he said calmly, mana threading through the word. “Morning run. Full perimeter. Twice around the beach.”
Movement snapped into place instantly.
“Then,” he continued, “after the run, practice water manipulation. I want fish for breakfast. No explosions. Control over power.”
A few groans slipped out before discipline crushed them. People started moving. Ludger was already walking away.
By the time he reached Raukor’s forge again, the rhythm of running feet and shouted instructions had blended into the background noise of the camp. Raukor and Luna were waiting.
Both wore expressions that were… complicated.
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