Ludger exhaled slowly through his nose as the pieces fell into place. Ragdar wasn’t the architect of anything. He wasn’t even a strategist. He was muscle, brutish, loud, easy to manipulate, and proud enough to think rebellion meant smashing something with his fists. Which meant someone else, someone with actual brains, had pulled his strings.

  “Looks like your guild wasn’t built on your idea,” Ludger said, more to himself than to Ragdar. “Someone with a functioning brain got involved. Someone who knew exactly how to use people like you.”

  Ragdar’s glare deepened, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The truth was obvious. Ludger stood and paced slowly across the chamber, his boots crunching over frozen dust and broken stone. His voice echoed faintly off the walls as he spoke, tone detached, almost instructional.

  “Underworld guilds are easy to control,” he said. “Too easy, honestly.”

  He lifted his hand and let the stone orb float lazily above his palm.

  “They don’t care about honor. They don’t care about reputation. They don’t even care about political alliances.”

  He pointed at Ragdar with the sphere.

  “They only care about money. And desperation.”

  Ragdar’s face tightened, not in disagreement, but in bitter acknowledgment. Ludger continued, his tone shifting into the calm cadence of someone explaining a dangerous system with uncomfortable insight.

  “Throw enough coin at them, and they’ll kidnap nobles… or farmers. They’ll steal letters… or children. They’ll sabotage caravans, spy on estates, incite riots, smuggle draughts, destroy evidence. Whatever the person paying them wants.”

  He shrugged, expression unreadable behind the mask.

  “And because they act in the shadows, they don’t get tracked. They don’t get investigated. They don’t get blamed. They become unofficial tools.”

  He crouched again, staring Ragdar in the eyes.

  “That’s the smartest part. Someone out there is turning troublemakers into gears. Cogs in a machine. Disposable weapons.”

  Ragdar swallowed hard, but kept silent. Ludger leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a cold whisper.

  “It’s a perfect setup to control the empire from the shadows. You take the rats, pay them, aim them, and watch them chew holes into your enemies. And if those rats get caught?”

  He tapped Ragdar’s iron restraints with one finger.

  “They’re just underworld scum. Nobody investigates deeper.”

  A long pause. Only Ragdar’s breathing filled the space. Ludger stood again, dusting his hands.

  “The scary part? Someone wealthy enough, and probably patient enough, to build multiple guilds like yours… is already playing the long game.”

  His tone didn’t change. But the air in the chamber suddenly felt colder. And Ragdar finally looked terrified.

  Ludger rose to his feet with a quiet exhale, brushing his hands together as if wiping off dust, or the last remnants of patience he had for this interrogation. The gesture was small, almost mundane, but it carried a certain finality. Ragdar recognized it immediately.

  “…Let’s get this over with,” Ludger said, tone flat and clinical.

  Ragdar didn’t whine or scream or beg. He just let out a long breath. Not a broken one, not resignation or fear. It was the sigh of a man who simply understood the end had arrived, and accepted it.

  Before Ludger could act, Ragdar spoke again, his voice low and oddly steady.

  “I heard rumors…” he muttered. “Said you could’ve joined the Imperial Magic Academy. With ease, eventually gained a noble title. With talent like yours, they’d have thrown gold at your feet. Why didn’t you go?”

  Ludger paused.

  His mask hid his face, but his posture changed just enough to show irritation. “None of your business.”

  But then he added, more slowly, “Since you’re a dead man… I guess you can die without that doubt.”

  He folded his arms, voice still calm, but sharper around the edges.

  “I wasn’t interested in being lured in by the nobles in the capital.”

  Ragdar snorted painfully. “So you hate them too. Then why work with Torvares? Just because of your half sister?”

  Ludger’s eyebrow twitched behind the mask. “Half of the reason, yes.”

  He stepped closer until Ragdar had to crane his neck to meet his gaze.

  “The other half is simple,” Ludger continued. “There are nobles who’ve wanted the Torvares family gone for years. The same ones who targeted Viola in the past. The same ones who helped spark wars in the north. The type who thrive on chaos and profit from suffering.”

  His voice dropped, quiet, cold, and honest.

  “They’re the exact kind of people I hate most.”

  Ragdar stared into Ludger’s visible eye, dark, steady, unflinching. There was no righteousness there. No heroic glow. Just the sharp focus of a boy who had already killed more monsters and criminals than most grown warriors. After a long moment, Ragdar’s shoulders sagged. His gaze slipped downward.

  “…I see,” he muttered.

  Not defiant. Not angry. Just… accepting. He finally understood that the boy in front of him wasn’t a watchdog. He wasn’t a noble’s pawn. He wasn’t a hero or a villain. He was a force of nature with his own war to fight. And Ragdar had been standing in the wrong place when that force arrived.

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  Ludger stepped fully into Ragdar’s shadow, the weight of his presence settling like a cold stone across the broken chamber. This was the part he normally didn’t bother with—the part where people begged or cursed or tried a last-minute bargain. But Ragdar had fought hard, and more importantly, he had fought honestly in his own twisted way.

  So Ludger gave him something he rarely offered.

  “Any last words?” he asked quietly. “I don’t give much leeway to enemies. But I’m feeling… charitable.”

  Ragdar didn’t raise his head immediately. For a moment, he simply breathed, slow, rough, rattling breaths through damaged lungs. Then he nodded once.

  “…I accept it,” Ragdar muttered. “My death. I earned it.” His voice wasn’t bitter anymore. Just tired. “I fought the only way I knew. Lost. So… that’s it.”

  He exhaled again, but this one wasn’t the calm acceptance from earlier. It trembled slightly, revealing hesitation, something unspoken weighing on him.

  “There’s one thing…” Ragdar said, voice rough. “One last thing.”

  Ludger’s eyes narrowed behind the mask. “What?”

  Ragdar hesitated, as if uncertain whether he even had the right to ask. “I heard rumors. Said you’ve been training some kids in your Lionsguard.”

  Ludger frowned. “What about it?”

  Ragdar looked up, meeting Ludger’s gaze head-on for the first time since he’d been tied up. The madness from earlier was gone. The bravado, the rage, the fanaticism, stripped away by defeat, replaced by something almost… sober.

  “You train them proper,” Ragdar said. “Teach. Discipline. Strength. Respect.” His jaw clenched. “But not everyone grows up with that. There are a lot of people like me out there. People who never had guidance. Never had choices. Easy to use. Easy to turn into pawns.”

  He swallowed hard.

  “If you want to stop more underworld guilds from forming… you should watch for people like that. The ones no one else bothered to look after.”

  Ludger’s stare sharpened.

  It was rare, very rare, for dying men to care about anything other than themselves. Ragdar’s words were rough, imperfect, but genuine in the rawest way. Ludger’s fingers twitched slightly, not in pity, but in recognition of something deeper.

  “You’re talking like you have someone specific in mind,” Ludger said slowly. “Do you?”

  Silence stretched, long enough that Ludger considered the possibility Ragdar would die without answering.

  But finally, the big man let out one last weary sigh.

  “…My village,” Ragdar whispered. “Two days south of here. Someone there might… go down the path I did. If no one stops them.”

  His voice faded. His shoulders sagged. And for the first time, he looked small. He said nothing more.

  Ludger didn’t draw out the ending. He lifted a hand, summoned a smooth sphere of earth, and flicked it forward with casual precision. The stone struck Ragdar square in the forehead with a blunt thock, not hard enough to crush bone, just enough to knock him senseless.

  Ragdar’s eyes rolled back. His head slumped forward. Silence swallowed the chamber.

  Ludger stepped closer, raised his right hand, and formed a narrow stream of mana, controlled, cold, razor-thin. A compressed arrow of water. He pressed two fingers to Ragdar’s chest, right over the heart. And fired.

  Pssht.

  The water sliced through skin, muscle, and bone in an instant, piercing the heart from point-blank range. No explosion. No scream. Just a brief shudder through the big man’s body as life left him.

  Ragdar Ironthorn, guildmaster of the Iron Moth Brotherhood, died with far fewer regrets than most criminals Ludger had met. Probably the closest thing to redemption the man would ever get.

  Ludger stepped back and exhaled, letting the tension drain from his shoulders. He wasn’t in the business of rehabilitating underworld guilds. He wasn’t na?ve enough to think he could turn thieves and cutthroats into honorable adventurers. He would never allow people like Ragdar to live anywhere near his family or his guild.

  But the man’s last words still sat uneasily in Ludger’s mind. His way of thinking had a flaw. Only crushing threats wasn’t enough. Ignoring the roots of those threats was how more would grow, stronger, smarter, and harder to track. Ragdar was proof of that. Someone with actual intelligence had noticed the instability in the Empire and used men like him as disposable tools. If Ludger continued to ignore the broken pieces of society, someone else might gather them, shape them, and weaponize them again.

  He clicked his tongue softly. He didn’t want Lionsguard to become a charity. He didn’t want to babysit half the Empire. But… Leaving obvious problems unattended was an invitation for disaster down the line.

  Another sigh escaped him, long, tired, and irritated. He extended his arms, mana pooling and rising in controlled bursts. One by one, he pulled every body, frozen, shattered, or intact, into the dirt. The earth swallowed them noiselessly, sealing shut with the finality of a grave.

  Then Ludger conjured a series of fireballs and hurled them around the chamber. Crates burst into flames. Scrolls, maps, and illegal equipment caught fire in seconds. Walls blackened. The underground room filled with smoke and heat until every last trace of the Iron Moth Brotherhood began to burn away.

  The flames roared violently, then settled into a steady blaze, consuming the underworld’s remnants. Ludger turned away, walking toward the exit tunnel with quiet steps, the orange glow behind him dancing across the stone walls.

  Another problem eliminated. Another mess buried. But his thoughts lingered on Ragdar’s last warning, and the village two days south that might harbor the next threat.

  “…More work,” Ludger muttered under his breath, annoyance creeping in. “As if I needed that.”

  He kept walking, leaving the underground inferno to finish the job.

  By sunset of the next day, Ludger was already moving through the tunnels beneath the borderlands. The route he carved before made the trip absurdly efficient; what should have been a two-day journey on horseback turned into a few hours of steady running and mana-assisted pacing. When he finally surfaced, it was at the outskirts of a small village Ragdar had pointed him toward.

  It was exactly what he expected. Another half-forgotten place rotting in the far corner of someone else’s territory. A village technically under a noble’s jurisdiction, yet clearly abandoned by any sense of responsibility. Dirt roads cracked with neglect. Houses with broken roofs. Smoke trickling from only a few chimneys. The kind of place where problems festered quietly because no one with power ever bothered to look.

  He didn’t bother hiding his face this time. Nobody here knew him. Nobody cared enough to ask questions. He walked openly through the main path, taking everything in with that analytical calm of his. The deeper he moved, the more obvious the poverty became.

  Thin silhouettes shuffled between houses. Women washed rags instead of clothes. Men carried baskets of firewood that looked lighter than they should be. Even the air felt heavy with resignation. And then Ludger noticed the building near the center of the village. Or what remained of it.

  A half-abandoned house, paint peeling, windows shattered, roof sagging. Old toys, wooden animals, broken dolls, lay scattered near the steps. For a moment Ludger wondered if it had been an orphanage. It certainly looked like one. The type that collapsed when its funding dried up and more mouths needed feeding than anyone could afford.

  In front of those broken steps sat a group of children. Seven? Eight? Hard to tell. All of them skinny, pale, clothes patched with whatever scraps someone could find. Dirty faces. Hollow eyes. The kind of tiredness that didn’t come from lack of sleep, but from lack of options.

  Ludger felt his jaw tighten, just a fraction. Ragdar’s warning made more sense now. Among that cluster of exhausted kids, one figure stood out.

  A boy. Tall, shockingly tall.

  He couldn’t have been older than ten, yet he already matched Ludger’s height and had broader shoulders. His posture wasn’t slouched like the others; he stood with an instinctive readiness, scanning the street with a natural predatory awareness that no child his age should have.

  Dark hair. Brown eyes with sharp northern focus. Half northerner. Just like Ragdar.