Kingdom of Emberfall — Royal Study
The candles in King Luthar Thero's private study had burned down to their last inch.
He hadn't slept.
For three days, he hadn't slept.
On his desk lay twelve sheets of parchment, each one sealed with the royal crest of Emberfall — a crimson flame devouring a crown. His quill had already bled itself dry twice over. The ink on his fingers had dried black, like old wounds.
His advisor, a thin man named Gregor, stood nervously by the door, watching the King stare at the final letter with an expression no one in the palace had ever seen on his face before.
Fear.
"Send them," Luthar said quietly.
Gregor blinked. "My Lord?"
"I said send them. All twelve. Every king in the alliance. Tonight."
Gregor stepped forward, picking up the stack of sealed letters. His eyes flicked over the one on top — he hadn't read them, of course. He wouldn't dare. But he had heard the King pacing. He had heard the King muttering the same name over and over in the dark.
Maren Walberd.
Gregor's hands trembled slightly as he tucked the letters under his arm.
"My Lord... if I may ask. What does the letter say?"
Luthar looked up. His SSS-rank aura, the one that made entire battalions kneel, flickered around him like a dying fire. His eyes were hollow.
"It says," Luthar began slowly, "that we are done. That the creature we have been hunting... is no longer just the creature."
Gregor swallowed. "What do you mean, My Lord?"
The King stood up from his throne, walking to the window. Below, the city of Emberfall blazed with lantern light, peaceful and unaware. He placed one hand on the cold glass.
"Maren Walberd is with him."
The room went silent.
Even the flames on the candles seemed to hesitate.
"Send the letters," Luthar whispered. "And pray to whatever god you believe in that Maren doesn't feel like getting involved."
— ✦ —
Kingdom of Veridia — The Forest Throne
King Valen of Veridia read the letter twice.
Then he set it down on his knee.
Then he picked it up and read it a third time.
His forest throne, carved from the oldest living oak in the continent, groaned beneath his grip as his fingers dug into the armrests. Around him, his generals and advisors waited with held breath, reading his expression the way sailors read storm clouds.
"Maren Walberd," Valen said the name out loud, as if testing whether the air in the room could survive it.
It couldn't.
His youngest general, Pell — barely twenty-five and still reckless with confidence — leaned forward.
"My King, with respect, the man is retired. He hasn't fought in years. Perhaps—"
"Sit down, Pell," said Commander Asha, the oldest woman in the room. Her voice was flat. Final. The voice of someone who had lived long enough to understand what that name meant.
Pell sat down.
Asha stepped forward, clasping her hands behind her back.
"I was nineteen years old when Maren Walberd ended the Siege of Tarenmoor," she said quietly. "Fifteen thousand knights. Siege weapons. Mages. Rune barriers. The whole north wall fortified." She paused. "He walked in alone. He didn't draw a weapon. He just... walked in."
The room was so quiet that the distant sound of wind through the treetops outside seemed deafening.
"And?" Pell asked, his voice smaller now.
Asha looked at him.
"And they found fifteen thousand knights unconscious. Not a single one dead. Not a single building damaged. The siege was over in four minutes."
Pell's face drained of color.
"He didn't even want to kill them," Asha continued. "That's the part that keeps you up at night. When a man that powerful decides not to kill you... it's not mercy. It's indifference."
King Valen folded the letter carefully and placed it inside his coat, close to his chest.
"Write back to Luthar," the King said quietly. "Tell him... Veridia withdraws from any operation involving the white-haired one. Effective immediately."
— ✦ —
Kingdom of Ashen Reach — The Iron Hall
King Harlon of Ashen Reach didn't say anything for a long time after reading the letter.
His hall was made of iron and coal-black stone. It smelled of forge smoke and machine oil. His kingdom was the most industrialized in the alliance — forty thousand mechanical knights, cannons that fired mana shells, walls reinforced with rune-steel. He had always believed that with enough machinery, enough firepower, enough numbers, anything could be beaten.
He believed that right up until he read the name at the bottom of Luthar's letter.
"General Mace," the King said.
"Yes, My King."
"Pull up the intelligence file on Maren Walberd."
A long pause.
"...My King, that file is classified Level Omega. It requires—"
"I know what it requires. Open it."
Another pause. Then the sound of a heavy cabinet being unlocked. Mace approached with a thick folder, sealed with three wax stamps. Harlon tore through them without ceremony.
The file was thin. Embarrassingly thin, for a man of such legend. Most of the pages were marked with the same phrase in red:
INSUFFICIENT DATA. OBSERVATION TERMINATED.
The analysts who had tried to follow him had returned with empty notebooks and pale faces. Two of them had requested early retirement. One had simply never filed a report at all — only turned in a single sheet of paper that said, in unsteady handwriting:
He knew we were watching.
Harlon closed the file.
"What is our cannon range against an SSS+ target?" he asked quietly.
Mace straightened. "Theoretical maximum... four kilometers, My King. If we fire everything simultaneously, we could—"
"And what is Maren Walberd's documented reaction speed?"
Mace hesitated. "The file says... unmeasurable. Every attempt to clock it came back as a sensor error."
Harlon nodded slowly.
He walked to his great iron window and looked out at the towers of his kingdom. His forges. His armies. His machines. All of it — the greatest military infrastructure in the human world.
"Write back to Luthar," he said. "Ashen Reach will not be participating."
— ✦ —
Across the Alliance — One By One
Queen Elara of the Mystic Isles received the letter during her morning meditation. She read it once, sat in silence for eleven minutes, then asked her head priestess to burn it. She sent back only three words:
We are out.
King Arion of Storm-Haven laughed when he first saw the name. His laughter stopped abruptly. He poured himself a drink. Then another. Then he wrote back:
Our alliance with Emberfall does not extend to suicide.
King Goran of the Boulderlands, a man who had once punched a mountain in half with his bare fists just to prove a point, received the letter while sparring with three of his best knights simultaneously. He stopped mid-fight. Read it. Dismissed his knights. Sat down on a boulder. Didn't move for two hours.
When he finally stood, he said one thing to his aide:
"Tell Luthar I respect him. Tell him I also like being alive. Tell him those two things are currently in conflict."
By the evening of the third day, eleven letters had returned to Emberfall.
Every single one said no.
Every single one — from the most battle-hardened war kings, the most powerful SSS-rank rulers, the most arrogant and untouchable monarchs on the continent — had read the name Maren Walberd and quietly, without exception, decided that whatever the prize was, it wasn't worth it.
Gregor placed the stack of refusals on Luthar's desk without a word.
Luthar looked at them for a long time.
"So that's it," he said softly. "One retired man. One man who isn't even in the field. And twelve kings just... folded."
Gregor said nothing.
"Do you know what that means, Gregor?" the King asked.
"...No, My Lord."
"It means," Luthar said, his voice dropping to a whisper, "that the creature we've been hunting just became untouchable. Not because of his own power." He looked up. "But because of whose shadow he's standing in."
(Chapter 54 Finished)