The road back was longer than the journey out.

  Not in distance, but in weight, time, emotion.

  Vannie walked with two bags slung across her back—hers and Edur’s, hollow and meaningless without its owner.

  Each step Vannie took was heavier than the st, and in her chest tightened every time she thought of what happened.

  The wind didn’t howl, nor did it whisper. It simply watched. Cold. Uncaring.

  The way the gods watched, perhaps.

  Winter was always a dead season, something that made it stood apart from the other seasons, as if it was stripped of something the others possessed-

  Life.

  Her boots were soaked. Her knees trembled. Her shoulders ached from days without rest.

  But she didn’t stop.

  She couldn’t.

  Time was ticking, she had to hurry.

  By dusk of the third day, the outline of Holbeck broke through the haze of falling snow.Chimneys coughed smoke into the darkening sky.

  She took much less time now that Edur wasn’t with her.

  But if he was here, she wouldn’t mind if the journey took a hundred years.

  The vilge, small and quiet as always, welcomed her without question. It was too early for anyone to notice her return.

  But everyone noticed their departure.

  After all, their small world would notice if their only star vanished for a whole week.

  But most didn’t know the reason as to why.

  Gavin must’’ve come up with something.

  Good.

  She needed a few more moments to carry this failure alone.

  She passed by familiar homes, ghostlike. The baker’s window still glowed golden. The tavern door still creaked with warmth and ughter. Children’s ughter echoed faintly from the square.

  She couldn’t even look inside.

  Without Edur, the inn would never be the same.

  How strange, he had worked there only a few months and yet, none could imagine it anymore without him, welcoming people with his warm smile.

  Vannie reached the city hall. Her legs stopped on their own.

  The doors loomed before her like a verdict.

  She stood there, unmoving. For seconds. For hours. For years.

  Then she stepped inside.

  There it was, her desk. The space that constituted most of her life for the past twenty years after her first failure.

  She walked past it, went down the hallway and entered.

  Gavin, she looked up from his desk, eyes widening.

  “Vannie?” he said, half-rising. “You’re back early, you’re not supposed to be-”

  He stopped.

  She didn’t need to speak.

  She just dropped Edur’s bag on the floor. The sound it made was small, but final.

  The message was clear.

  A soft thud that rang through the room like a broken promise.

  “He’s gone,” she said, her voice quiet.

  Albus, who had been seated at one of the chairs in front of the desk, probably to chat, slowly stood up.

  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  “I mean,” she said, “they took him.”

  The silence that followed was unbearable.

  Gavin was the first to speak again, softly, as if afraid to break her.

  “You were ambushed?”

  Vannie nodded.

  his eyes narrowed. “Recruiters?”

  She shook her head,

  “Svers”

  She sat down without being invited, dragging a chair across the stone floor and colpsing into it like her bones had finally given out.

  “They tricked him. Threw him the coin. He caught it. A cheap but effective excuse.”

  Albus paled, while Gavin cursed.

  “He didn’t know,” Vannie continued, more to herself now. “He sacrificed himself so they wouldn’t kill me. He smiled when he told me goodbye.”

  She ughed, just once, bitter and hollow.

  “He fucking smiled.”

  …

  Era burst through the doors less than ten minutes ter.

  “They said you were back—” She froze. “Where’s Edur?”

  Vannie couldn’t answer.

  She watched the girl’s eyes dart between them. Watched her lips begin to tremble.

  “Where’s Edur?” she whispered.

  ***

  Snow fell in delicate spirals, each fke drifting gently toward the earth, unaware of the heaviness that clung to Holbeck like fog.

  Era stood alone by the well, staring past the gate and at the daunting trees.

  The square was quiet. No merchants. No children chasing hoops. Only the creak of old shutters and the muffled crunch of her boots on snow.

  She held the letters she often exchanged between herself and Edur.

  It had been returned to her by Vannie with trembling fingers and hollow eyes.

  “It was in his belongings. You can keep them.”

  That’s all she said.

  Era hadn't asked for more. Not yet.

  The way Vannie gripped the edge of the table when she gave them to Era prevented her from shing at the secretary.

  Era wasn’t the only one hurt.

  The way she looked—no, refused to look—at the inn when she passed by it..

  Soon, she stopped going outside.

  Something terrible had happened.

  And no one would talk about it.

  A day passed.

  Then another.

  And the whispers came:

  “They took him.”“Edur is gone.”“Scumbag sve merchants.”

  …

  By the third day, Gavin came down from the watchtower to find Kiri sitting on the frozen steps outside the mayor’s hall, her bunny hat in her p.

  “He didn’t say goodbye,” she murmured.

  “I know,” he said, and sat beside her, heavy as stone.

  And by the fifth, even Albus had stopped pretending nothing was wrong. He closed the inn for the first time in fifteen years.

  The shutters were sealed. The fire left unlit.

  He spent the day at the edge of the northern palissade, pacing.

  …

  And then, on the seventh day, Vannie spoke.

  She stood before the elders’ table. Her back straight. Her voice unwavering.

  “The Commander is our only hope,” she said. “She can get him out of their cws.”

  “For what purpose?” asked Elder Eda, eyes narrowed. “It might be even worse in the army.”

  “There’s no other choice,” she answered. “I’ll make use of a name I thought I’d never call again to ensure he is safe there, at least. After the two years of service, I’ll use the favor to force their hand to allow him to leave.”

  She opened her coat.

  Beneath it, gleaming faintly in the ntern light, was the emblem she once hid away in the folds of her past:

  The badge of a high-ranking mercenary of the Sword Spear Company.

  A name spoken in taverns with awe and in war camps with respect.

  “You said you were done,” Gavin said, his voice quiet.

  “I was,” she said. “Until they took my son.”

  No one corrected her.