Chapter 558

Taron’s expression tightened at that.

He understood that part. He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers like he could already feel tools in them instead of a staff or blade.

“I… didn’t expect this,” he admitted.

“I didn’t expect to need it,” Ludger replied. “But the guild is growing. People will bring gear to Lionfang. If we can repair it reliably, we will become necessary.”

Taron exhaled slowly, still frowning, but the surprise was shifting into something else now. Consideration.

Taron scratched the back of his neck, eyes drifting toward the door like he could still hear his friends outside laughing at his imaginary funeral.

“I… don’t really want to work separately from them,” he admitted. “And traveling on missions for the Lionsguard is… honestly pretty fun.”

He said it like it embarrassed him, like enjoyment was a weakness he wasn’t supposed to show. Ludger just nodded. No lecture. No visible frustration. His face stayed calm, unreadable. Inside, it was annoying.

Not because Taron was wrong, his reasoning made sense. You didn’t take a young runic mage, stick him in a workshop, and expect morale to survive. And Ludger wasn’t going to force someone into a role they’d resent. Not when he’d just finished telling himself delegation mattered.

Still. It would have been convenient.

He let the silence stretch long enough for Taron to feel the weight of the decision, then said, “Alright.”

Taron’s shoulders eased slightly, but his eyes stayed thoughtful, like he wasn’t done. Then, after a beat, he spoke again.

“…There is someone else,” he said. “Someone better equipped than me for that kind of work.”

Ludger’s gaze sharpened. “Who.”

Taron looked up, certainty replacing hesitation.

“Eclaire,” he said.

The name landed cleanly. Ludger didn’t react beyond a small nod, but he stored it immediately. “Explain.”

Taron’s mouth tightened, as if admitting someone else was better at anything felt like swallowing pride.

“She knows a lot about runes,” he said. “More than me. She’s… the kind of person who actually likes fiddly work. Fixing. Adjusting. Getting things perfect.”

He paused, then added the part that mattered for Ludger’s world.

“And she’s a better fighter than I am,” Taron said. “So she won’t get crushed if she has to test gear or deal with someone trying to cause trouble. She should be able to repair runic equipment without it turning into a disaster.”

Ludger nodded again. That was useful. Very useful.

“Good,” Ludger said simply.

Taron blinked. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Ludger confirmed.

He opened the door and gestured out toward the yard.

“You can go,” Ludger said.

Taron hesitated for half a second, like he expected a final jab or a hidden test. None came. He left.

As Taron stepped back into the noise and his friends immediately started grinning at him again, Ludger stayed in the quiet hallway, expression calm.

Eclaire,

he thought.

Ludger didn’t show anything on his face. He just stood there as Taron walked away, letting the noise of the yard wash over the hallway like distant surf. But inside his skull, something throbbed.

A slow, sharp pressure behind his eyes. Because the name wasn’t new. Not really.

Eclaire.

He’d wanted to forget about her.

Torvares had sent her to the guild alongside two others, wrapped in polite paperwork and “training opportunities,” as if that made her presence normal. As if you could file away a threat with an ink stamp and pretend it was just another recruit.

She wasn’t just some noble girl with ambition. She was an heir of the late Emperor. Not the clean kind. Not the convenient kind. The daughter of a consort. Which meant she wasn’t the obvious successor, wasn’t the favorite story, wasn’t the face on banners… but she was still blood.

Still legitimacy.

Still a piece on the board that the current Regent would rather see removed, or controlled, before anyone got ideas.

And ideas were what killed towns like Lionfang. It went without saying that Ludger didn’t want to work with her. Didn’t want to rely on her. Didn’t want to put her in the spotlight in any shape or form.

Because spotlight meant attention, and attention meant questions, and questions meant the wrong kind of visitors showing up with smiles and demands and knives hidden behind law.

A repair shop run by a girl with royal blood?

That wasn’t a workshop. That was a signal flare. Ludger’s jaw tightened slightly as the headache pulsed again. The guild was finally stabilizing. Growing. Building real roots.

He wasn’t about to invite a Regent’s paranoia into his front yard because he needed someone to patch rune channels faster. He exhaled, slow and controlled.

No,

he thought.

Not her.

Not unless he had no other choice. And Ludger hated having no other choice.

Ludger would’ve preferred a specialist.

Someone older. Someone with callused hands and boring habits. Someone who’d spent ten years fixing other people’s mistakes and didn’t come with political baggage attached. But Lionfang didn’t have that luxury yet.

And he wasn’t about to put Eclaire anywhere near the center of his operations. Not in a shop. Not in a role that would draw steady traffic and attention. Not in anything that could be twisted into a story.

So he made the decision he kept making lately: If the right person for the repairs job doesn’t exist, you grow one. From the next batch.

When the week off ended, the yard filled again, new members returning with less stiffness in their backs, more confidence in their steps, and that strange, hungry energy people got after resting long enough to remember they wanted more than sleep.

Ludger let them settle into formation, then stepped forward. He didn’t dress it up.

“There is another branch of the lionsguard,” he said. “Further south.”

A ripple went through the line. Some heads lifted. Some eyes narrowed. A few people looked suddenly homesick without meaning to.

“It’s closer to where some of you came from,” Ludger continued, tone flat. “Closer to the old roads. Closer to the places and people that still remember your names.”

He paused, letting that land.

“It’s work,” he said. “It’s travel. It’s less comfortable than Lionfang. But it’s also a chance to build something new, and to hold ground the guild will need later. It is also a chance for you guys to make a difference where you once came from.”

No hero speech. No promises of glory. Just an option.

“If you want to go,” Ludger finished, “step forward.”

For a moment nobody moved. Then one boy did. Then a girl.

Then two more, like the first steps broke some invisible wall. In the end, it was only twenty.

Not the full wave Ludger could have used. Not enough to flood a new outpost with instant strength. But twenty was clean.

Twenty meant the ones who stepped forward

wanted

it, instead of being dragged by guilt or fear of missing out. Twenty meant fewer problems later when the road got hard and people started blaming leadership for the fact that travel still sucked. Ludger looked over the group and nodded once.

“Good,” he said.

He didn’t praise them. Praise was cheap. He just accepted the choice like it mattered. Then he turned to Yvar.

“Organize wagons,” Ludger said. “Supplies too. Enough for the road and a week of buffer when they arrive.”

Yvar, already holding a slate like he’d expected this, nodded immediately. “How many wagons?”

“Enough that no one walks,” Ludger said.

A couple of the twenty looked relieved. A couple looked disappointed, they’d wanted to prove something. Ludger didn’t care. Proving things on a road was how you arrived tired and sloppy.

Yvar scribbled fast. “Departure time?”

“Tomorrow at first light,” Ludger said. “Put a captain in charge. Someone steady. No idiots.”

Yvar’s mouth twitched faintly. “That narrows it.”

“It’s supposed to,” Ludger replied.

The twenty stood straighter, a strange mix of nerves and excitement tightening their posture. Behind them, the ones who stayed watched with expressions that ranged from envy to relief to quiet respect. Ludger didn’t linger on it.

Now he was making a different kind of move: spreading the guild wider, planting Lionsguard roots beyond Lionfang.

And if he did it right… The south branch wouldn’t just be an outpost. It would be another lever. Another place the Empire couldn’t ignore.

Once the twenty were scheduled and Yvar started moving wagons like pieces on a board, the rest of the guild settled into the rhythm that always followed a big expedition.

People found work.

The new members either took simple tasks around the guild or they did what ambitious fighters always did when they had coin in their eyes and calluses on their hands. They formed parties… And they headed for the Frost Labyrinth.

It shouldn’t be a problem now. Not with so many northerners in the labyrinth. The routes were safer, the escorts stronger, and the worst kind of bandits had learned Lionfang wasn’t the place to test courage.

If anything, the delving parties would be welcomed.

Most of the fresh Lionsguard members had picked up decent healing skills, basic Healing Touch, enough to stabilize wounds, stopping bleeding, keeping someone alive long enough to make it back to the bathhouse instead of the graveyard. That alone made any party more attractive. You didn’t need a saint, just someone who could keep you from dying to bad luck.

So the flow continued. Work. Delves. Training. Coin. A guild acting like a living organism instead of a camp of exhausted survivors. Ludger watched it for a while from the guild steps, expression calm, mind measuring. Then the noise in the yard shifted.

New voices. New footsteps. A heavier crowd. The next batch of trainees had arrived. Ludger turned and looked them over. Two hundred newcomers.

Yvar had probably already checked their paperwork, but Ludger still made his own assessment the way he always did, eyes first, names later. And immediately, he felt the difference.

The last waves had been mostly children. Eleven. Ten. Nine. Small bodies with big fear, desperate for structure, hungry for the kind of strength that could keep them alive. This group wasn’t like that.

There were still kids, there always were, but now there were taller frames too. Broad shoulders. Faces with stubble. People close to twenty, old enough that their motives were harder to read.

Old enough to have options. Old enough to be dangerous for reasons that didn’t involve monsters.

Ludger’s eyes slid over the line, picking up details without thinking: some were too clean for frontier travel, some too quiet, some too alert. A few watched the walls like they were counting angles instead of admiring them. Others watched the guild members like they were measuring who looked soft.

He didn’t like it. Or rather, he didn’t like not knowing. Because two hundred newcomers meant growth. It also meant infiltration risk.

The Lionsguard was becoming something. That was the whole point. But when you became something worth noticing, you attracted two kinds of people: Those who wanted to be part of it. And those sent by others who didn’t want to see it grow. Ludger’s gaze settled on the older trainees again, lingering a fraction longer.

Did you come to grow,

he wondered,

or did you come to annoy me?

He exhaled through his nose, calm on the outside. Inside, he was already adjusting.

Security checks. Quiet observation. Team assignments that separated potential trouble from easy targets. Captains watching for patterns. A few “accidents” that weren’t accidents, tests disguised as routine.

He didn’t need to accuse anyone. Not yet. But he would know. Soon enough.

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