Golden sunlight soaked the banners of the Guardians of the East as they fluttered wildly in the fresh, playful wind, as if the sky itself had decided to celebrate their return. Lyan rode at the front of the procession, his cloak trailing behind him like a second banner, its edges tugged and flared by the breeze, the silver sigil stamped on his back flashing with each sway of his horse’s stride. Beneath him, his steed’s steady gait humd through the leather reins, the familiar rise and fall of each step grounding him in a rhythm he had marched to for years. Yet despite the steady beat, there was a strange lightness to the air. The war was over. The march wasn’t toward another battlefield—it was toward ho.
Ho.
The word still felt foreign on his tongue, like he was borrowing it from soone else’s story.
The army stretched behind him, a long river of steel and color, its current split into the orderly ranks of Astellian soldiers and the unpredictable bursts of his private troops. There was no sharp line separating them anymore. The mountain tribesn wove through the march like drifting kites, so barefoot, so with makeshift whistles carved from river reeds, so carrying baskets of sothing they claid was stew but Lyan suspected was just an elaborate dare. Their laughter leapt above the rhythmic stomp of boots, as if they alone had decided a military march was ant to sound like a village festival. Their drums didn’t match the marching cadence at all—off-beat, too fast, too playful—but no one seed to mind.
At tis, the soldiers would chant his na, their voices rising and falling in waves that washed over him. Sotis the chants were sharp and disciplined, but just as often they were quickly interrupted by a tribesman tossing in his own version of the cheer, sotis twisting Lyan’s na into sothing ridiculous, sotis challenging the Astellian soldiers to see who could shout louder.
Lyan’s hand tightened slightly on the reins, though his posture stayed relaxed. He never thought he would lead a kingdom’s army. Even now, he didn’t know if he could wear that title properly. His eyes road the faces behind him—his people now, apparently. Soldiers who were far too formal when they thought he was watching, tribesn who paraded through the march as if they had always belonged, children perched on wagon edges waving their little wooden swords like miniature knights, their grins too wide, their teeth missing in places where youth hadn’t quite caught up yet.
It was strange. Absurd. Wonderful. All of it at once.
His mind wandered briefly to the conversation with Erich, half-expecting the prince to call him an idiot for parading into the mountains and coming back with a second army. He could still picture Erich blinking at his report, pausing just long enough that Lyan thought, ah, here it cos—but instead, Erich had laughed, clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his ribs, and said, "Of course you subjugated them. You probably shared stew with them and called it a conquest."
Maybe it was the euphoria of victory. Maybe Erich was just too happy the war was done to argue. Either way, Lyan had walked away from that eting with a grin and a scribbled docunt that made the mountain tribes officially his people.
His people. That thought still sat awkwardly in his chest, like a shirt he hadn’t quite grown into.
(You do love collecting strays) Cynthia’s voice ward in his head, soft like the brush of morning light.
(And you love watching them parade half-naked in front of you) Lilith purred, her laughter curling sweet and wicked.
I don’t watch that obviously.
(You do it terribly) Griselda snorted.
(You always think you’re subtle, but your eyes are loud) Arturia scolded, flustered, her tone caught between a sigh and a sword’s edge.
(But so of them have really nice legs...) Azelia added, childlike but with that sly maturity gleaming behind her words.
Lyan smothered a laugh, his shoulders twitching with the effort. He rembered that night vividly—the chieftains slapping him on the back, the fire crackling, the roasted hare so overcooked it could have doubled as a weapon, and the toasts that never quite ended. They had sworn loyalty between bites and mugs of sothing suspiciously sweet. By morning, the tribes had declared themselves his warriors. He hadn’t even asked. He had just... sat there, laughed with them, drank with them, and when the dawn cracked, they had already started carving his sigil into their shields.
He’d expected resistance. Instead, he got brothers.
The laughter from the rear ranks pulled his attention again—a tribesman challenging an Astellian captain to an eating contest, bowls of stew in hand, the loser already being warned he’d have to polish the winner’s boots for a week. Another tribesman draped a garland of bright flowers around a knight’s horse, declaring it the new spirit beast of the mountains, to the knight’s horror and the tribesman’s roaring amusent.
Lyan couldn’t suppress his grin. His people. His beautiful, chaotic people.
As the path bent around the familiar ridge, Grafen’s walls rose from the earth like old friends returning from a long absence. They stood solid now, outposts fully rebuilt, new banners stitched with silver thread fluttering from their towers. Villagers had gathered along the roadside, blacksmiths resting their hamrs, mothers holding their children high, old n leaning heavily on their canes but still standing tall as Lyan passed. The colors of Grafen—the silver wolf, the laurel crown—shone proudly across the crowd.
Children waved small flags so vigorously they almost toppled from the wagons they stood on. A blacksmith near the front offered him a quick, crisp salute, his palm still dark with soot. And then a baker ca barreling forward, flour dusting his hair, a basket of golden loaves clutched in his arms.
"For you, Guardian!" the baker bead, his voice cracking with excitent.
Lyan’s brows lifted. Wasn’t this the sa man who once pelted him with day-old bread when he failed to arrive in ti to protect the grain stores during a skirmish? He could still rember the stale loaf bouncing off his shoulder and the string of curses that followed.
The baker’s grin didn’t falter, so Lyan carefully took the bread, cradling it like it was so priceless relic, as if the loaf would crumble if he gripped it too tightly.
Josephine’s horse drew up alongside his, her lips twitching in barely contained amusent. "Slls like responsibility now, huh?"
He huffed, one hand resting lazily on the saddle horn. "I preferred it when it slled like sweat and burnt stew."
She snorted. "Too late. You’re married to this ss now."
Wilhelmina, never one to wait for pleasantries, rode ahead, already barking orders, her sharp voice cutting through the growing noise as she demanded imdiate security updates. She was probably planning the next garrison rotation in her head already.
On his other side, Raine clung quietly to his arm, her fingers curling into the fabric of his sleeve, as if afraid the stone walls ahead might vanish if she blinked. "I never thought I’d see Grafen’s gates again," she whispered, her voice trembling, not with fear, but with the brittle relief of soone who had held herself together just long enough to get here.
"Neither did I," he said, squeezing her hand briefly, as if to anchor them both to this mont.
The road stretched just a little longer, lined with familiar trees and the stubborn weeds he used to trip over during rushed patrols. The breeze tugged at his hair, the scent of ho mixing with the crisp sll of fresh-cut stone and distant forge smoke.
He didn’t know when it had happened. Grafen had been a warfront once. A duty post. Now it was... this. Sothing warm in his chest. Sothing that felt dangerous to want but impossible to refuse.
And then, as they passed the outer courtyard and crossed beneath the gate’s arch, the army’s cheers rippled like a tide through the walls, bouncing off stone, filling the air until the sounds tangled with the flapping of banners, the clatter of boots, and the clinking of armor. He could feel the weight of all their gazes—soldiers, villagers, children, all of them looking at him not like a passing commander but like a guardian who had co ho.
For a heartbeat, he let himself feel it.
And then the castle doors slamd open with a thunderous crack, the echo bouncing down the stone halls like cannon fire, and Arielle stord out as if summoned by the very gods of paperwork.
"Lord Evocatore!" she screeched, her voice sharp enough to shear the ears off an ox, waving a precarious stack of crumpled docunts so close to his face he could sll the ink still wet on the top sheet. "Do you know what I’ve been dealing with while you’ve been parading around like so blushing hero?"
She was a vision of chaos. Her usually neat hair was now a frayed ss, locks tumbling out of a lopsided bun where a bent quill jabbed out like a forgotten weapon. Her sleeves were rolled at uneven heights, one elbow peeking through a smudge of ink, the other still clinging to a button on the cuff. The gloves she wore bore the battle scars of frantic accounting—ink stains, parchnt dust, and sothing suspiciously like stew gravy. She rattled the stack of papers at him like a commander brandishing a sword, her words firing like rapid volleys without so much as a breath between them.
"Famine prevention plans that apparently nobody but cares about! Troop housing shortages because soone—soone—brought ho half a mountain of extra soldiers without telling ! Minor noble disputes popping up like weeds! Tax adjustnts! Trade caravans delayed by mudslides—oh, but wait—let’s not forget the three noble houses sniffing around like mangy hounds, ready to pounce the mont I blink! Strange sightings in Norhallow’s forests that your brilliant scouts conveniently glossed over! Smugglers popping out of Dunbridge tunnels like moles I can’t whack fast enough! And—oh—Valre’s salt flats are covered in mana mists again—AGAIN, LYAN!"
Her voice cracked on his na, her eyes wild, sowhere between exhaustion and murderous rage. The image of her head popping clean off like a cork flickered vividly in his mind, and he bit the inside of his cheek to stop the laugh threatening to slip out. Her breathing was quick, shallow, her shoulders trembling, the grip on her quill tightening until he half-feared she might snap it and hurl the ink-soaked shaft straight into his eye.
He should have let her keep ranting.
But he didn’t.
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