Chapter 566

Now that it came down to it, Ludger stopped treating the situation like an annoyance and started treating it like a threat.

Not because the Regent had sent a letter. Because the Empire kept stealing his time.

Time was the only resource he couldn’t mine, forge, or bully into shape with mana. Every day dragged into “capital politics” was a day not spent making Lionfang stronger, making the guild sharper, making the north harder to break.

He was tired of it.

So the morning Arslan and Yvar left for the capital, with wagons packed, papers bundled, and a carefully rehearsed “we need preparation and time and mana” story ready to pour, Ludger didn’t stand around watching them depart.

He nodded once, gave Arslan a simple, “Don’t agree to anything,” and walked away before the knot in his chest could turn into something sentimental. Then he went north. Fast.

Wind Step carried him over the worst stretches of road, his boots landing light, his mind heavy with plans. The stone rails were useful, yes, but rails weren’t the real battle. Rails were infrastructure. The real battle was leverage.

Before long, the northerners’ settlement came into view, less “camp” now, more “town” in the rough frontier way. Taller palisades. More smoke. More movement. More shouting.

And the moment Ludger stepped into it, he felt the difference. Sigrid’s arrival had changed the place like a storm changed a coastline. People were

moving

.

Not drifting, not lounging, not sitting around waiting for the next delving run to fund another week of food and booze. There were work lines. Storage stacks. Half-finished structures. Young northerners hauling timber while older ones argued loudly about whose job it was to do it faster.

Busy. Noisy. Almost productive.

Ludger’s eyes swept the area, measuring the improvements and the chaos underneath them.

Sigrid’s style wasn’t subtle. It was a boot in the back. He was still processing that when another thought surfaced. Speaking of busy and noisy…

Where was Freyra?

Her mother had arrived. The whole settlement had shifted. Yet Freyra, who usually announced her presence like a war drum, was nowhere.

No loud laugh. No aggressive boasting. No heavy footsteps stomping toward him like she was personally offended he’d walked into her territory without permission.

Ludger slowed, frowning. That wasn’t normal. Freyra didn’t vanish. Not unless she wanted to.

And if she wanted to… that meant something had pushed her hard enough to make hiding feel like the smarter move.

Ludger scanned again, eyes sharpening.

Alright,

he thought.

Where did you go, Freyra? I was thinking that she should be the leader of the magic water expedition…

Ludger went looking for Sigrid’s voice first. It should’ve been easy. The woman could probably scold a mountain into moving. Instead, he found Kharnek.

The chieftain was in the middle of the settlement, tightening straps and barking orders with a rough efficiency that didn’t match the usual “laugh first, drink later” rhythm Ludger had come to expect from him.

And behind him… A line of northerners. Not ten. Not twenty. Fifty.

Armed. Armored. Packs ready. Faces set with that particular northern look that said they weren’t going for a stroll.

It almost looked like they were about to conquer the Frost Labyrinth themselves.

Ludger slowed, eyebrows lifting a fraction.

“Trying to show off your dignity while your wife isn’t around?” Ludger asked, voice dry.

Kharnek’s head snapped toward him. His eyes narrowed.

“Don’t even start,” Kharnek growled.

Ludger’s mouth twitched faintly, amused in the way only someone who enjoyed poking bears could be.

“Fine,” he said. “Where is she?”

Kharnek’s expression tightened, annoyance mixed with something that might’ve been fear, which was impressive considering the man could probably headbutt a wall down.

“She went to get more northerners,” Kharnek said. “From other tribes.”

Ludger blinked once. “She left.”

“Yes,” Kharnek said flatly. “And before you ask, no, I didn’t stop her. I value my eardrums.”

That got a faint exhale out of Ludger that was almost a laugh. Kharnek jerked his chin toward the half-built structures at the settlement’s edge.

“She said the town needs to expand,” he added, like he was reciting a sentence that had been hammered into him. “More shelters. More storage. Better palisades. And—”

He grimaced.

“She said she would probably ask

you

to expand it.”

Ludger nodded slowly, eyes tracking the bustle around them.

“That tracks,” he said.

Kharnek muttered something under his breath that sounded like a prayer for patience.

Ludger looked back at him and said, deadpan, “At least someone in your family is diligent.”

Kharnek glared. “She is not ‘diligent.’ She is a natural disaster wearing a skirt.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched again. “Same thing.”

Kharnek huffed, then waved at his fifty like he was reminding himself he had real problems.

“We’re going to the Frost Labyrinth,” he said. “If she comes back and sees me sitting around, she’ll peel my skin off and use it as a tent.”

Ludger glanced at the group again, measuring. Fifty northerners. That wasn’t a delving party. That was an announcement.

Kharnek grunted, then shouldered his pack. Sigrid had turned the settlement into a machine.

Now Kharnek was turning that machine toward the labyrinth. Whether the labyrinth liked it or not.

Ludger didn’t let Kharnek leave without him.

He stepped in alongside the column as if it was the most natural thing in the world for the Lionsguard guildmaster to join fifty northerners on a labyrinth run. A couple of warriors glanced at him, grinned, and then looked away, like his presence was just another weapon added to the line.

Kharnek noticed and grunted. “You’re coming.”

“Yes,” Ludger replied. “This is a good chance to use you guys to get more froststeel.”

Kharnek muttered something about foolish children and inconvenient alliances, then waved a hand and let it happen.

They moved out, boots thudding, packs shifting, the cold northern air filling their lungs.

After a few minutes of marching, Ludger walked closer to Kharnek’s shoulder and asked the question that mattered.

“Have you selected the northerners for the runic golems labyrinth?” Ludger asked. “The ones who’ll go for the magic water.”

Kharnek’s jaw tightened instantly.

“No,” he said. “My wife is working on that.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed slightly. “She’s choosing.”

Kharnek nodded once. “She said she’ll choose the best ones.”

There was a grim respect in his tone, buried under irritation. The kind of respect you had for a storm that always hit exactly where it meant to.

“She doesn’t know what this magic water is,” Kharnek added. “Not really. But she assumes it is very important.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched faintly. That sounded like Sigrid, act first, learn later, refuse to let ignorance slow momentum.

“It is important,” Ludger said simply.

Kharnek snorted. “Everything is important when you try to make it.”

Ludger ignored that.

“To make their job easier,” he said, “the stone rails to the coast are almost connected.”

Kharnek slowed half a step, turning his head with a frown like Ludger had started speaking a different language.

“Stone rail?” Kharnek repeated. “What is a stone rail?”

Ludger glanced at him. “A guided road. Hardened tracks. Smooth route for wagons, faster, less mana wasted for runic carriages.”

Kharnek stared for a moment, then grunted.

“I have no idea what you mean,” he said honestly. Then he shrugged with typical northerner practicality. “But if it is helpful, it is fine.”

Ludger nodded once.

“Good,” he said. “Because we’re going to need helpful.”

The column kept marching, fifty northerners moving like a slow, determined wave.

And somewhere out there, past frost and stone and the wrong kind of silence, was a silently cold labyrinth that didn’t care about speeches.

Ludger spent the morning in the third section of the Frost Labyrinth.

Not the easy corridors where recruits learned how to swing without tripping over their own fear. This was deeper, where the ice got thicker, the air got sharper, and the monsters stopped behaving like mindless hazards and started behaving like problems with intent.

Kharnek’s group pushed in like a wall of fur and steel.

Fifty northerners in a frozen corridor looked like an invasion. Loud breathing. Boot spikes biting ice. Weapons held ready, eyes scanning the third section.

Then the riders came.

Frost skeletons mounted on undead beasts, skeletal frames locked into saddles of frozen mana, lances and blades gleaming with pale light. Their movement was wrong, too smooth, too coordinated, like the ice itself wanted them to win.

The first charge hit hard. Northerners could fight. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was

space

.

The corridor didn’t care that they had numbers. The riders used the width perfectly, pinning shields, forcing bad angles, striking and withdrawing before the heavier northerners could fully commit. A couple of men went down in the first exchange, not dead, but slammed hard enough that their lungs forgot how to work for a second.

Kharnek roared and tried to brute it.

It worked, partially.

He smashed one mount so hard the ice under it spiderwebbed, then ripped the rider down and snapped the spine like he was breaking firewood. The problem was, the riders didn’t line up politely to be crushed.

They flowed around him. They punished gaps. They punished hesitation.

And the northerners, used to open ground and direct impact, had a hard time adjusting to fast, mounted enemies in tight corridors.

As one would expect, it got ugly. Not catastrophic. But messy.

And Ludger stayed behind the front line, eyes half-lidded, Seismic Sense mapping the rhythm of movement through ice and stone. He didn’t waste mana on flashy attacks. The northerners didn’t need a hero.

They needed time. They needed survival long enough to learn. So he did what he did best when other people were fighting:

He made the fight

sustainable

.

When a rider’s blade clipped an arm and opened it to the bone, Ludger was there with a palm pressed hard against the wound.

Healing Touch. Heat spread under his hand. Blood slowed. Tissue tightened. Pain dulled from screaming to manageable.

“Back,” he ordered, voice flat.

The warrior stumbled behind the line, still breathing, still useful.

When a lance punched through a thigh and pinned a man to the ice, Ludger stepped in, snapped the shaft, hauled the man free, and sealed the wound before shock could win.

When someone took a bad fall and their shoulder popped loose, Ludger set it with a quick jerk and a quiet curse, then sent them back into formation.

It wasn’t gentle. It was efficient.

The northerners noticed.

At first, they fought like they always did, rage and strength and volume, trying to break the riders by sheer aggression. Then they started adapting.

Because healing changed behavior. It let people take risks and

learn from them

instead of dying for them.

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