She had never tasted anything so good — was this really the kind of flavor you'd only find in heaven?
The little girl drank slowly, with an unusual intensity, as though this single bowl of soup were the last thread tying her to the world.
Victoria, naturally, kept one corner of her attention on the girl behind her the whole time.
Good. It seemed this technique — letting someone dissolve into the crowd, overlooked and unnoticed — worked best on a frightened little wild creature like this.
If she walked over right now to pat the girl's head, or forced her to speak, the child would probably go into cardiac arrest from sheer terror.
Better to exist like air. To eat like a shadow. To let her feel that she could survive here without paying any price at all.
Beside her, Bardess was still gulping down her soup, but those eyes, trained by years of scouting, had already caught the girl's movements with their usual sharpness.
She felt a strange tightening in her chest. The way the little thing drank was so pitiful it made something in her go unexpectedly quiet.
She reached to pass the girl a piece of Black Bread, but the moment her arm moved, she felt Victoria deliver a light, deliberate kick to her shin.
Bardess got the message immediately and turned back to Irene with a perfectly casual expression.
"Lord Irene, what were you saying earlier about fire bottles in the rain — how much longer does the fuse need to be?"
"Ah, that one depends on the air humidity, you see..."
Conversation bloomed again inside the tent, and within this noisy yet steadfast shelter from the wind, the little girl finally drained the very last of her soup.
She extended the tip of her tongue and, in the most private of gestures, licked the residue from the corner of her lips. Then she hugged the empty bowl tightly to her chest. The heart that had been scorched in the fires of Jasu seemed, in that moment, to finally stop its endless freefall.
The warmth inside the tent settled into something more stable as the meat broth disappeared, the tension that the destruction of Jasu had wound so tightly at last finding a little room to breathe — in a bowl of hot soup and the soft crackling of charcoal.
Irene used the last piece of Black Bread to mop up the final drop of thick broth from her bowl, then stuffed it into her mouth and chewed with great satisfaction.
Her stomach was full, but a rare shade of worry crossed those sapphire-blue eyes of hers.
She looked across the table at Sophia and couldn't help breaking the silence.
"Your Majesty, we've been out here for quite a few days now."
Irene dusted the breadcrumbs from her hands, her voice sounding unusually bright in the quiet of the tent.
"I wonder how things are going back at the Royal City. Can those two old codgers who stayed behind hold the fort?"
The "old codgers" she meant were, naturally, the two senior ministers left to hold Mason Royal City.
Though their loyalty to Sophia was absolute, in the eyes of someone like Irene — who believed firmly in the doctrine of overwhelming firepower — having scholars defend a city always felt a little lacking in peace of mind.
Valery was a tough old bird in a fight, sure, but he was still getting on in years.
Sophia set down her now-empty wooden bowl, her expression cool and composed. In the shifting light of the campfire, her perfect profile looked like a finely carved ice sculpture.
"The two of them, commanding the remaining soldiers, are more than sufficient to hold back any enemy force."
Sophia's voice was steady and certain, as though she were stating a simple established fact.
"Besides — the eyes of the Kingdom of Olan and those duchies are nailed entirely to our line of march right now. As far as they're concerned, where I am, that is the heart of this war. They won't squander great numbers of troops attacking an empty city with no heart inside it."
For those people, the moment Sophia died, Mason would simply fall into their hands. There was no need to trouble themselves with anything else.
Irene nodded reflexively at Sophia's words, but her brow quickly furrowed again.
"Alright, I'm not worried about the Royal City anymore — but what about my darlings?"
Irene hunched forward over the table, wringing her hands with visible anxiety.
"Those chicks and ducklings in the greenhouse, and the goslings that just hatched... Without my personal supervision, who knows whether those clumsy palace servants can keep them properly. If the temperature dips even a tiny bit, or the feed isn't distributed evenly, they won't grow up strong."
Once the subject of her beloved greenhouses came up, there was simply no closing Irene's floodgates.
"And the household lottery draw is supposed to start this week! Your Majesty set the rules yourself — those young birds being safely distributed to the lottery recipients are Mason's great livelihood project for the second half of the year. If some corrupt schemer skims from the top, I swear when I get back I'll blow his whole mansion sky-high with Black Powder!"
Beside her, Bardess had been listening to Irene's machine-gun stream of words and couldn't hold back a laugh, the cleaning rod in her hand catching the firelight as it swayed.
"Miss Irene, that's not worrying about your greenhouse — if you ask me, you're plain homesick."
Bardess teased her with a grin, and the laughter it brought lifted the tent's mood another notch.
"I am not!"
Irene shot upright like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, both pink eyebrows bristling.
"Bardess, don't talk nonsense — who's homesick?"
She turned to look at Sophia, and for one brief moment, her gaze turned blazing and fierce with something utterly pure — a devotion distilled to its absolute essence.
Wherever Your Majesty is, that is my home!
"Those stone buildings in the Royal City — without Your Majesty there to anchor them, they're nothing but a pile of soulless architecture."
Besides, the Royal City had never been her home to begin with. She was just a wandering spirit from another world.
Without Her Majesty, she probably would have died before last winter even arrived.
Victoria sat quietly nearby, watching the interplay between these few people from the corner of her eye.
She noticed something: whenever the talk turned to Mason's people, to those trivial matters of greenhouse chicks and lottery draws, these high-ranking officers — each so utterly different in temperament — all wore the same light in their eyes. The same light of hope.
What on earth had Sophia been feeding them?
Victoria turned the silver coin over between her fingers — the one the little girl had returned to her.
This is no longer an ordinary relationship between sovereign and subject, Sophia.
You've succeeded in turning every single one of them into a piece on your grand chessboard — pieces that will never, ever betray you.
And the most terrifying part? These pieces actually believe that a life of being moved by your hand is the greatest glory they could ever know.
While the adults murmured quietly about the distant Royal City and their greenhouses, the little girl sitting behind Victoria had already, in total silence, drunk down the very last drop of her soup.
She buried her face deep in the bowl, as though greedily drawing out every last trace of warmth it held.
This child, who had crawled out from a pile of the dead, lowered her head for the very first time — deeply, quietly — beneath Sophia's cold yet utterly unshakeable presence.
The noise in the tent gradually faded as the last of the broth disappeared, until nothing remained but the soft, intermittent crackling of wood in the charcoal fire.
Victoria was just about to turn her head to check on the little girl when she found her already asleep — at some point, the child had closed her eyes, slumped against the hem of Victoria's skirt.
The small hand that had been clutching the silver coin had gone slightly slack. Her breathing was even and deep, and her long lashes cast a small patch of shadow in the firelight.
This was her first true, genuine sleep in the long nightmare she had been living.
"Little brat — eats her fill and drops right off. Even easier than those newborn piglets back at the Palace."
Bardess kept her voice low and rose with exaggerated care, her heavy armor somehow not producing a single clink.
She opened her broad arms and, with movements that were clumsy but perfectly steady, gathered the little girl up into a horizontal carry. The wide travel cloak fell naturally around the small, thin body, wrapping it snugly.
"Your Majesty, I'll take this child over to my side to rest first. I'll sleep right next to her — not so much as a mosquito will get near her."
Sophia gave a faint nod, her gaze resting on the girl's peaceful sleeping face, her voice as level as ever.
"Go. Don't let her get cold. Her body can't withstand a second ordeal right now."
Victoria smoothed the slightly rumpled folds of her lake-blue skirt and rose to her feet. Those pale gold eyes swept across Irene and Daphne before settling on Sophia's perpetually impassive face.
Sickeningly wholesome. Truly.
One of them tending a child, another calling Sophia home, and a third who looked ready to tear her own heart out of her chest as an offering.
Sophia — this isn't a military camp, this is practically a rear encampment you've thrown together on the open plains.
Victoria complained inwardly, but outwardly she only gave an elegant bow, then turned and followed Bardess out of the tent to return to her own side and rest.
Irene stood as well, stretched enormously, and let her gaze drift back and forth between Sophia and Delilah lying on the floor bedding.
Truth be told, she very much wanted to stay. Even if it meant squeezing into a corner for the night.
But looking at the mattress — which clearly had no room for a fourth person — and then at Daphne's teal eyes, blurred with a mist of exhaustion, she ultimately didn't have the heart to say anything and make a nuisance of herself.
"Your Majesty, then I'll head back too. I need to check the seal on that batch of fire bottles first thing in the morning — if they've gotten damp, their effectiveness will be compromised."
Irene chuckled, cast one last long look at Sophia, and then reluctantly shuffled out of the tent.
Willow's small tent was right next to Sophia's, so she could leave with an easy heart — at the slightest sound, she would hear it perfectly clearly from her side.
As the tent flap fell, the interior went so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.
Outside, the rain had stopped entirely. Only the occasional drip from the tent's peak broke the silence, unhurried as a slow drumbeat.
Now, the tent held only Sophia seated at the table, Delilah sunk in a deep sleep on the floor bedding, and Daphne — fidgeting slightly, twisting the hem of her robe between her fingers.
"Check the oil lamps."
Sophia broke the silence first, her voice exceptionally crisp in the stillness, yet carrying that inexplicable quality that put people at ease.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Daphne sprang into motion as though she'd received a Royal Decree.
Her long white Saint's robes swayed in the confined space, trailing a faint scent — the clean fragrance of medicinal herbs layered beneath the lingering warmth of broth.
She moved carefully to the support pillar, where several alchemy lamps — special issue from Mason Royal City — hung from hooks.
These lamps burned with an exceptionally steady flame, nothing like the wavering flicker of ordinary oil lamps.
Daphne rose onto her tiptoes and carefully adjusted the wicks, making sure the light wouldn't fall directly onto Delilah's face.
This was the first time, on this entire campaign, that she had been this close to Her Majesty in an enclosed space.
There was still the unconscious General Delilah, of course — but this feeling of it being just the three of us, here in the dim light... it was so very strange.
Back in my original world, I never once imagined I would fight this desperately for any single person.
And yet now — even if she asked me to sacrifice my very soul to that silver light, I wouldn't feel the least bit cheated.
As long as I can keep watch by her side... even just checking a lamp is happiness.
Lamp inspection done, Daphne turned around to find that Sophia had at some point drifted to Delilah's bedside and was looking down, studying the red-haired general's color.
"Her pulse has been trending steady tonight, Your Majesty. You can rest easy."
Sophia didn't turn around, but she seemed to sense Daphne's approach as though she had eyes in the back of her head.
"Daphne. Come rest. You're tired too."
"I'm not tired at all, Your Majesty — as long as I can be of help to you..."
Before Daphne could finish, she felt a cool, soft hand close around her wrist.
Sophia's grip wasn't firm, but it carried an imperious certainty that brooked no argument — she simply drew Daphne down to the edge of the floor bedding.
Their hems overlapped. In this corner lit only by firelight and lantern glow, it formed a strange, quiet tableau.
Sophia sat at the edge of the soft mat, her silver hair slipping over her shoulder, almost brushing Daphne's fingertips.
Daphne went completely rigid. The heat flooding her cheeks instantly outpaced the warmth of the campfire.
She kept her head lowered. From her angle, she could see the elegant line of Sophia's throat, and those pale gold eyes glimmering with a distant, translucent light in the glow of the lamp.
The night lay heavy outside. The campfire beyond the tent walls let out the occasional weak pop in the damp air left behind by the rain.
Victoria, draped in a deep-toned velvet cloak, her flame-red skirts brushing through the tips of muddy grass, moved with a grace that might have belonged to a red carpet in the Imperial Capital.
She didn't head straight back to her tent. She slowed her pace — and came upon Willow and Irene just emerging together.
Firelight played across these three women, each so different, each so remarkable. The measured footsteps of the patrolling guards provided the perfect ambient score.
Victoria came to a stop. Her ivory folding fan tapped lightly against her palm, and a playful curve settled at the corner of her lips.
"You two look to be in rather good spirits," she said, her voice gentle as small talk.
"Honestly? Seeing you both walk out this peacefully — I find that quite... remarkable."
Irene, still fiddling with a small vial in her arms, looked up with a vague expression at these words, her sapphire eyes filled with simple, sincere confusion.
Willow blinked, then stopped politely.
"Among colleagues, harmony is only natural. What particular aspect does Your Highness have in mind?"
Willow replied softly, her phrasing airtight.
"In the popular imagination, people in your position — keeping close to the center of power — however harmonious things appear on the surface, there's never any shortage of jealousy and quiet rivalry underneath."
Victoria took two steps closer, those pale gold eyes making a slow circuit of both faces, carrying a trace of amused provocation.
Look at these two sweet fools.
One whose every thought is about making a contribution to Her Majesty, the other who might as well have the word "loyalty" tattooed on her forehead.
Has that stone-faced little Sophia been brainwashing them — or are these two genuinely pure to some transcendent degree?
In the courts of Olan or the Imperial Capital, by now someone would already be calculating who had spent more time inside the bedchamber tent.
She wasn't trying to stir up trouble. Her perfectly capable mind simply couldn't get itself to turn fast enough.
Historically, kings had always kept a queen and a handful of favourites besides — she had genuinely never seen a court this harmonious.
Irene scratched at her pink hair, clearly unable to follow Victoria's circuitous train of thought.
"Jealousy? Why would we be jealous of each other? Everyone has clearly defined roles. It's perfectly obvious that Willow and I can't do anything to help heal Delilah — what would there even be to compete over?"
Victoria gave a light laugh and shook her head, her gaze shifting to Willow's expression — which had gone noticeably stiff.
"Miss Irene is just... endearingly naive."
Victoria snapped her fan shut and, in a lowered, distinctly insinuating tone, asked:
"Don't tell me — Sophia hasn't actually... bestowed her favours on any of you yet?"
The words "bestowed her favours" fell from Victoria's carefully painted lips with the thick, decadent scent of old aristocratic excess.
Irene blinked. The phrase was probably somewhere in her mental archive under "exclusive to ancient monarchs," and it hadn't occurred to her that Victoria would use it so casually. Her mouth fell open; her brain seemed to stall.
Willow's reaction, however, was far more direct.
That face of hers — typically so composed and gentle — flushed crimson all the way to the roots of her ears at visible speed. Even her breathing skipped a beat.
"We are... not that kind of relationship, as the Third Princess seems to be imagining!"
Willow drew a deep breath and fought to keep her voice level, but the hands clenched around the edge of her cloak betrayed her entirely.
"The trust Her Majesty places in us is built upon shared ideals and a shared future. That sort of vulgar..."
"Vulgar?"
Victoria raised an eyebrow in theatrical disbelief, flicking her gaze back and forth between Willow and Irene with an expression that said surely not, that can't be right — before finally settling her eyes pointedly on Sophia's tightly closed tent.
"She's sixteen years old. The precise age at which people are most easily swept away by their feelings. She has this many beautiful women around her, each one remarkable in her own way — and she's actually managed to keep herself in check?
"Or could it be... none of you are her type?"
A note of profound bewilderment ran through Victoria's voice.
She truly hadn't expected this. Sophia and these women were that innocent?
Absolutely baffling.
That stone-faced little Sophia — she must have something broken in her somewhere.
A sixteen-year-old queen. Absolute power at her fingertips. A stunningly beautiful red-haired general lying at her feet. A pure and holy Saint burrowed into her blankets. Two hopelessly devoted young women waiting just outside. And she's genuinely just... studying maps?
Willow saw that "observing a rare specimen" expression on Victoria's face and felt her chest rise and fall with controlled emotion.
She understood that Victoria was doing this deliberately. Yet some strange thoughts were already rising unbidden in her mind.
"Your Highness the Third Princess," Willow said with a slight bow, her voice returning to something cool and unshakeable, "the future of Mason is far grander than you can imagine.
"The favours Her Majesty bestows upon us are nothing like what you're envisioning. Her Majesty gives us the right to change our own fates. Our reverence for Her Majesty goes without saying — it does not require that kind of thing to constitute true favour.
"That distinction, perhaps, is something a person accustomed to the old order, as Your Highness is, will never truly be able to understand."
With that, Willow took Irene — who was still standing there in a daze — by the arm, stepped cleanly around Victoria, and walked straight toward the neighboring tent without looking back.
Victoria stood where she was, watching the two figures disappear into the darkness, and found herself laughing quietly, entirely to herself.
Sophia. Oh, Sophia. You haven't just turned them into pieces on your chessboard — you've turned them into your faithful.
She turned around and looked up at the lone moon half-hidden in the night sky, her fingertip tracing slow circles along the ivory fan's handle.
But could this ascetic balance really hold indefinitely?
Victoria still couldn't shake the feeling that something was off, somewhere. That something here simply didn't add up.
She decided she'd watch a little longer.
Inside the tent.
Daphne sat on the soft mat, her heart hammering from the moment Sophia had clasped her wrist.
She had no idea what conversation was unfolding just outside. But looking at the curve of Sophia's profile, so close she could almost reach out and touch it, her fingertips curled instinctively inward.
"Your Majesty..."
She called out softly.
Inside the tent, the alchemy lamp's light flickered gently, stretching both their shadows long and overlapping across the pile of thick map papers.
Sophia's fingers still rested on Daphne's slender wrist. That cool touch was like a stream of clear water — yet it made Daphne's whole heart lurch up into her throat.
"What is it?"
Sophia turned her head slightly. In the dimness, those pale gold eyes had taken on a quality that was nearly translucent.
That face of hers — the one that rarely held any expression — was so close now that Daphne could catch even the faint tremor of those long lashes.
Daphne bit her lip. The stillness of the space — nothing but the breathing of three people — let the unease she'd been suppressing deep inside begin to quietly rise to the surface.
"Your Majesty..."
Daphne's voice was small, like a wisp of wind in this rain-washed late night.
"If one day you truly do become the ruler who has conquered every nation — if you ascend to that absolute summit...
"Would you still be... the wise ruler you are now?"
Sophia's motion paused for just a moment. She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she turned it back.
"What do you think?"
Daphne lowered her gaze, watching the place where both their hems lay overlapping. When she spoke, her voice held a barely perceptible tremble.
"I believe you would, Your Majesty.
"You are the most clear-eyed, most wise person I have ever met."
She paused, and her voice shifted into something a little lost.
"But in my original world... that world full of magic and monsters...
"I once knew many very kind girls. They first took up weapons to protect others, to keep the cities from being destroyed by monsters.
"But as time passed — as they witnessed too much darkness — some of them...
"In the end, became something more terrifying than the monsters themselves."
Daphne thought of the scorched black ruins of the Royal City of Jasu. She thought of the bodies buried in the mine shafts.
"Even though in my world we fought monsters every single day, and the chaos was constant...
"I have never seen so many people die at once.
"That kind of annihilating malice... it frightens me."
She lifted her head. Those teal eyes shimmered in the lamplight with something that looked like a plea.
"Time changes so many things.
"Your Majesty — I am afraid that this cruelty might erode your will, little by little.
"If you changed — if you became like those mad predators — then what would I do?"
Sophia listened to Daphne's somewhat childlike worry, then released the hand she'd been holding by the wrist and instead let her fingers drift lightly across Delilah's cheek — color had returned to it.
"Daphne, your definition of a wise ruler is far too sentimental."
Sophia rose to her feet, her silver hair sweeping a cold arc through the air.
"By my logic, whether or not a ruler is wise has nothing to do with whether her heart remains tender.
"What people call a 'wise ruler' is, in essence, simply a highly efficient administrator — someone who allocates territory, population, and resources in the most rational way possible, and extracts maximum output from the machine called a nation."
She turned and looked down at Daphne, who had gone somewhat blank, her gaze calm to the point of near coldness.
"Those monsters who turned bad — they turned bad because they were overruled by excess emotion, because private desire swallowed efficiency.
"Since I can already see the one path capable of ensuring everyone is fed and clothed, then no matter how many nations I conquer — as long as that goal remains unfinished — I have no room in my budget to become something worse."
Daphne hadn't expected Sophia to respond so seriously.
She doesn't even stoop to comfort me with hollow promises.
This near-absolute rationality — this was the most reassuring shield of all.
Because Her Majesty will never lose herself to rage, and will never grow lax from arrogance.
The so-called ruthlessness she possesses is, in truth, the deepest possible compassion for every living soul in this world.
As long as that goal endures, Her Majesty will forever be the silver aurora that can lead us out of the mire.
My shallow little anxiety, set against Her Majesty's grand ambition — it really is terribly small.
"So stop dwelling on meaningless hypotheticals."
Sophia looked at Daphne's small face, flushed pink with embarrassment, and her tone softened by one degree.
"You're tired. Lie down.
"Delilah needs rest. So do you."
With that, Sophia sat directly down on the other side of the floor bedding.
The space was simple, but it was spread with thick dry straw and expensive velvet padding — genuinely the warmest spot in the entire camp.
Daphne stared at Sophia, overwhelmed with a sense of being granted an unexpected grace, and lay down stiffly along the very edge of the mat.
To one side: Delilah, deep in her unconscious sleep. To the other side: Sophia, close enough to reach, radiating a faint, cool, clean fragrance.
"Your Majesty... are you really not going to sleep?"
Daphne asked in a small voice.
"I still need to verify tomorrow's supply losses for the march to Yurilland."
Sophia leaned against the padded rest but did not lie down, picking up that map again.
Daphne looked at Sophia's slender silhouette, edged in lamplight, and listened to the steady sound of Delilah's breathing beside her. The unease in her heart, miraculously, truly did dissolve.
She burrowed into the thick quilts, feeling that faint, elusive coolness radiating from Her Majesty.
Her Majesty's words are always cold. But this feeling of being forcibly managed by her...
It really is such happiness.
The cool morning breeze moved through the damp chill of the Yurilland border, raising a thin layer of white mist that wrapped the entire temporary encampment in hazy, indistinct shapes.
The campfires outside had mostly burned down to ash, leaving only scattered embers glowing faint dark-red in the morning light.
Sophia sat on a simple wooden stool, her silver hair falling loose down her back, giving off a faint cold gleam.
Willow held a cloth soaked in warm water and was wiping her cheeks and slender fingers with careful, gentle strokes.
This habitual act of service was not merely an expression of rank — it was a rare, quiet intimacy in the middle of a military march.
"Your Majesty, the moisture is heavy today. Before we set out, I should put the windbreak cloak on you."
Willow murmured attentively.
Sophia closed her eyes, feeling the touch of the warm cloth, and gave a faint sound of acknowledgment.
"Mm."
At that moment, a set of footsteps came from outside the tent — slightly hurried, slightly heavy.
"Your Majesty — it is your subject Bardess, requesting an audience!"
Through the tent flap, Bardess's normally gruff voice had dropped considerably, but it couldn't fully conceal that thread of anxiety and distress running through it.
Sophia opened her eyes. Those pale gold pupils returned to their usual cool clarity.
"Come in."
The flap was lifted, and Bardess entered, carrying the cold morning dew on her shoulders.
Her black armor was still dotted with fine water droplets, and her face was crumpled and worn — like a sour plum that had been left out in the blazing sun to dry.
"What is it?"
Sophia looked at her, tone perfectly even.
"That expression first thing in the morning."
Bardess wrung her hands a bit awkwardly and let out a sigh.
"Your Majesty — it's the little girl we brought back yesterday...
"I was going to get her up this morning for some hot porridge, but... she hasn't shown the slightest sign of waking. Not since she went to sleep last night."
Sophia's brow moved in the smallest, subtlest way.
"She won't wake up?"
"That's right!"
Bardess nodded heavily, her eyes full of worry.
"At first I thought she was just exhausted and sleeping in. But then something felt wrong. I called out to her for a good long while, and even... even took the bold step of shaking her a few times, but the girl just lay there like her soul had left her body — limp, eyes still closed, still asleep.
"I'm genuinely afraid something got injured inside her yesterday, or... or that the Olanese put something in her, some drug, and she's fallen ill."
Bardess had slain countless enemies, but faced with this wisp of a girl as thin as a stray kitten, she was absolutely at a loss.
Those tiny arms looked like dry twigs — one squeeze and they'd snap.
Having strength and nowhere to use it left her with only one option: run and get help.
"I thought — could we perhaps ask Saint Daphne to come take a look? Things like physical health, I really can't make heads or tails of. If something really has happened to this child, I... I just can't feel right about it."
Sophia, hearing this, shifted her gaze to the floor bedding at the rear of the tent.
By now, Daphne — who had been making up sleep in those thick quilts — had already been roused by the voices. Her golden hair was slightly disheveled, spread across the cushion, and she was rubbing her drowsy eyes, those teal irises still carrying the soft blur of someone newly awake.
Catching what Bardess had said about the little girl, Daphne forgot her own unrecovered fatigue at once and threw the covers back to sit up, her expression instantly turning serious.
"She still hasn't woken up until now?"
Daphne pulled her robes straight with one hand and looked toward Sophia.
"Your Majesty, let me go have a look. In conditions like these, this kind of response is genuinely unusual."
Sophia rose to her feet; Willow swiftly draped her outer robe over her shoulders.
"We'll go together."
Sophia's voice remained cool, but to Bardess, those three short words landed like a steadying stone in the chest.
"Yes! Thank you, Your Majesty — thank you, Your Highness the Saint!"
Bardess hurried ahead to lead the way, her broad back looking noticeably relieved in the morning mist — entirely stripped of that ferocious air that could normally cleave a heavy infantryman in two.
At this hour, early-rising soldiers had already begun setting up cooking fires or grooming and feeding the horses.
The movement of Mason's highest-ranking officers drew the notice of more than a few sharp-eyed soldiers who sensed that something was unusual.
Everyone knew that the single survivor pulled from the scorched earth was, at this stage, the most critical variable of all.
But in Sophia's mind, this was not a matter of mission objectives. It was simply that since she had assumed control of these ruins, every living person within them was her responsibility.
As long as the final reckoning had not yet come, she would not allow anyone to quietly slip away under her watch.
The air in the tent still held the cool of the night. Bardess's campaign quarters were arranged with extreme simplicity.
Aside from a camp bed and a few wooden crates filled with gunpowder components, the most prominent feature was the pile of thick blankets mounded up in the corner.
The small, thin girl was curled up in that pile of blankets, her whole body tucked into herself like a hedgehog seeking safety — small and tight.
Sophia walked closer and looked down at the child.
Perhaps the bowl of warm broth the night before had done its work. Or perhaps, within this iron encampment, she had sensed a long-forgotten kind of safety.
The little girl's breathing was very even now. The small face that had looked ashen and grey from prolonged hunger and terror was, at this moment, showing the faintest tinge of color.
Compared to the broken, fragile thing she'd been in the ruins yesterday — looking as though she could shatter at any moment — the girl in front of them now, at last, looked like a living being.
"Daphne. Take a look at her."
Sophia gave the short, simple instruction.
"Yes."
Daphne set aside the last trace of drowsiness and came to kneel at the girl's side.
She extended slender, jade-like fingers, and a soft, holy golden light kindled gently in her palm.
It was the purest healing force of the Holy Light Arts — and even though Daphne's magic power hadn't fully recovered to its peak, checking the condition of one small girl was more than sufficient.
As the Holy Light slowly sank into the girl's frail chest, Daphne closed her eyes and carefully attuned herself to the rhythm within.
Sophia watched in silence from one side. Even without drawing on her own magic, those sharp pale gold eyes caught the subtle shifts in the air around them.
A moment later, Daphne withdrew her hand and turned to Sophia, her gaze carrying a thread of heartache and quiet wonder.
"Your Majesty, her condition... is far more resilient than any of us imagined.
"The scrapes on her body, and those tiny subcutaneous bruises from the shock and fright — they've essentially healed, nourished by the Holy Light and last night's food."
"Then why isn't she waking up?"
Bardess scratched her head beside them, frantic.
"My grip has cracked stone before. I shook her twice — and she didn't even twitch an eyelid?"
Daphne narrowed her eyes slightly and spoke in an even tone.
"Because her body has powered down.
"Looking at Bardess's puzzled expression, Daphne gazed down at the sleeping child and explained quietly.
"By my assessment, from the moment the Royal City of Jasu was destroyed, this child has been awake for what is likely close to sixty hours or more.
"Extreme fear and survival instinct kept her brain locked in an abnormal state of hyperarousal the entire time. If that state had continued much longer, she very likely would have died of cardiac failure before she ever found us.
Daphne paused, then extended one finger and pressed it very lightly to the tightly furrowed space between the girl's brows.
"Right now she can't wake up because her body has activated a forced protective mechanism. She has finally perceived that the environment around her is safe — and so three days' worth of accumulated exhaustion detonated all at once. She is undergoing what you might call a forced deep-sleep recharge.
"In this state, unless you use violence to drag her awake, she will not produce any logical response to being moved or shaken from outside."
Bardess went still.
She looked down at her own big, rough hands, and for a moment pulled them back with something close to belated fright.
I only saw a child who wouldn't wake up. Daphne saw a child who hadn't slept in over sixty hours.
It seems — Her Majesty's insistence on bringing this child back yesterday wasn't only about intelligence. She had already calculated, long before the rest of us, that this child was right on the edge between life and death.
Beneath all that seemingly cold, detached management — there is the most precise instinct for keeping every single one of Mason's people alive.
Following a sovereign like this — even into the man-eating swamp that is Yurilland — as long as Her Majesty says we'll be fine, we absolutely will not die.
This is no queen. This is a walking arbiter of life, here in the mortal world.
"Let her sleep."
"Your Majesty, then this child..."
Bardess looked down at the little figure curled up like a ball of old wadding in her arms, a little unsure.
"Do we leave two people in camp to watch over her, or...?"
Sophia adjusted the thin windbreak cloak at her collar. In the early morning light, her eyes were unusually deep.
"There is no option called 'wait in place' in Mason's marching order."
Sophia turned around, her voice clear and decisive.
"Bardess — carry her to the carriage. Use the cushions to make a soft couch and let her sleep on the road.
"The padding is thick enough, and the environment is more stable than this drafty tent. She can keep sleeping on the way."
Victoria was standing by the carriage when she watched Willow bring two handmaids aboard to bustle about, and then Bardess carry the little girl up after them.
She hadn't been there earlier and didn't know what had happened with the girl.
She asked with a slightly puzzled air.
"Commander Bardess — what happened to the little girl?"
"Worn out," said Bardess, setting the girl down with exaggerated care before turning to Victoria.
"Her Majesty and Daphne reckon this little girl hasn't slept in over thirty hours. Yesterday, she saw that she was safe — that she wasn't going to die — and that's when she finally let herself go under.
"Right now she's catching up on... something. I didn't catch the exact term Her Majesty and the others used."
Looking at Bardess's good-natured grin, Victoria worked out the general picture well enough.
She'd been wondering why the girl's eyes were so vacant and her movements so slow. She'd assumed the child was simply traumatized — it hadn't occurred to her that she'd gone that long without sleeping.
Victoria had once stayed up all night reading a storybook, and even adding the daytime hours that was only about fifteen or sixteen hours without sleep — yet even that left her feet feeling hollow beneath her, her chest tight, her head swimming.
More than thirty hours without sleep, on top of witnessing an entire city's worth of people die — that was a suffering ordinary people couldn't begin to imagine.
A trace of pity surfaced in Victoria's eyes — she who prided herself on being somewhat cold to matters of life and death.
As she reached to lift her skirts and climb aboard, even the step of those small leather shoes onto the carriage fell lighter than usual.
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Translator's note: Sorry for the delay.
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