Chapter 624

Ludger reached Fittar at the end of the day, boots dusted white, scarf stiff with dried sweat and road grit.

The city sat in a shallow basin between low hills, its walls newer than most, stone reinforced, patched and improved in places where the original builders had been optimistic. It was barely bigger than Lionfang, maybe a little wider, with more storage yards and fewer permanent homes.

A branch city. A foothold. But right now it looked like a kicked anthill. Movement everywhere.

Wagons rattling through the main gate in bursts, guards waving them through with the kind of hurried authority that came from knowing time was leaking out like blood. Lanterns being hung. Water barrels dragged into position. Makeshift tents going up in the open squares and along the inner wall. People shouting names, arguing over space, pointing at lists.

The air tasted like smoke and fear and fresh-cut lumber. Fittar was bustling, but it wasn’t the healthy kind of bustle. It was the frantic motion of a place trying to assemble a defense before the storm arrived. The labyrinth breach had happened around midnight.

Ludger didn’t need to read that from a report. He could see it in the way everyone moved, tired, fast, already on their second wind because they couldn’t afford a first. The first portion of survivors had reached the city by horses and wagons, the lucky ones or the organized ones. A scattering of battered carts had arrived earlier, wheels chewing grooves into the road, pulled by animals with rolling eyes and foam on their mouths.

The refugees that made it in looked like they’d left pieces of themselves behind. Clothes torn. Hands shaking. Faces set in the blank, stunned mask of people who had watched a place die and still hadn’t accepted that it was real.

Some clutched bundles wrapped in cloth, food, documents, heirlooms. Some carried nothing at all, because all they had left was their lungs and the stubborn refusal to stop using them.

And that was only the front edge of the wave. The others were still on the road from Rokram. Still walking.

Still dragging children and the elderly. Still pushing wagons until their arms went numb. Still praying the monsters wouldn’t catch the scent and decide they wanted dinner. Ludger’s eyes tracked the city like he was scanning a battlefield.

He could tell a lot of people were getting ready to receive them. You saw it in the organized lines, the open gates, the piles of blankets and rough bread, the healers in simple aprons already staining their sleeves with someone else’s blood. You saw it in the way some locals stepped forward without being told, faces hard but hands moving, taking on tasks like they’d always been theirs.

But not everyone leaned toward help. Some leaned toward fear. Ludger caught fragments as he passed, whispered arguments sharp enough to cut.

“They’re bringing monsters right to our doorstep.”

“We should close the gates and let them head to somewhere else”

“They’ll eat our stores!”

A man in a trader’s coat shouted at a guard captain, red-faced and spitting anger. “If the beasts are following them, we’re inviting the beasts inside!”

A woman snapped back, voice raw. “And if we leave them outside, we’re beasts too!”

The guard captain looked like he wanted to hit both of them and then go cry in a barrel. It was the predictable fracture line of any crisis. Half the city saw refugees and thought: people. The other half saw refugees and thought: bait.

Ludger didn’t blame them for the fear. He just didn’t have time to indulge it. He pushed through the noise toward the branch hall, eyes moving, mind already calculating. Two more waves of refugees before full dark, if the road held.

Monster pursuit speed unknown. Local morale: shaky. Gate discipline: stressed. Food reserves: decent, for now. He inhaled once, slow.

Fittar was on the edge of becoming a shelter… or a trap.

Ludger didn’t waste time in the streets.

He cut through the city’s churn like a rock through water, heading straight for the Lionsguard branch hall.

Compared to the gates and the market squares, the branch looked almost… quiet.

Not empty, never empty. There were still runners moving between doors, a pair of recruits hauling crates, a tired-looking healer rinsing bloody cloth in a basin. But the noise here was contained. Focused. The kind of movement you got when people were trying very hard to look like they had a plan.

The building itself was newer than Lionfang’s main hall. Functional stone. Straight lines. A few defensive features built into the design, arrow slits, a reinforced inner door, a small yard that could become a muster point if needed.

He stepped into the yard and immediately felt the weight of their numbers. Around fifty Lionsguard. That sounded decent on paper. It wasn’t. Not for a situation like this.

Because ninety percent of them were new. Kids. Under fifteen, most of them. The branch had been set up to grow, recruit locals, train them, build a foothold near the reptilian labyrinth.

It hadn’t been built to absorb the shockwave of a fallen city.

These weren’t delvers who’d cut through labyrinth corridors and learned what panic tasted like. These were trainees who still argued about whose turn it was to clean the training yard, who still looked at a real blade wound like it was something that happened in stories.

Their experience and combat power for this kind of situation was severely lacking. They could swing weapons. They could run drills. Some of them had talent. But talent didn’t stop monsters. Not without time. And time was exactly what Rokram had run out of.

Ludger’s eyes swept across the yard. He saw it in their posture: shoulders too tight, hands hovering near hilts they didn’t fully trust, eyes constantly flicking toward the city walls as if expecting to see teeth crest the stone.

Then someone noticed him.

A boy near the door, barely twelve, spear too long for his arms, froze mid-step. His eyes widened. His mouth opened like he was about to shout and forgot how.

The boy elbowed the person next to him, hard. That turned heads. One after another, the trainees looked up. And something shifted in the air. It wasn’t confidence, not really. It was relief. The kind that hit like a wave and made you realize how close you were to cracking.

A few of them straightened like they were suddenly remembering they were supposed to be soldiers. A few of them visibly exhaled. One girl actually laughed once, sharp and nervous, then clapped a hand over her own mouth like she couldn’t believe the sound came out of her.

Whispers spread fast.

“Vice Guildmaster…”

“It’s him—”

“Ludger’s here.”

The fear didn’t vanish. But it reorganized. It turned from scattered panic into something that could be aimed. Because help was on the way, and in their minds that help had a name.

Their biggest ally had arrived. Ludger didn’t smile. He didn’t offer comforting words. That wasn’t his style.

But he did nod once, and the simple act of it made the nearest trainees stand a little taller, like that nod had been permission to stop imagining the worst.

The branch hall’s main doors opened with a hard, familiar

thunk

, the sound of reinforced wood meeting iron braces.

Four figures stepped out like the building itself had just decided to grow teeth.

Harold first, broad-shouldered and armored in practical plates that had seen real use. No polished parade nonsense, scratched metal, worn straps, a warhammer that looked like it had been chosen because it worked, not because it impressed. He moved with the easy weight of a man who didn’t need to advertise that he was dangerous.

Selene followed at his flank, rolling her shoulders like she was loosening up for a friendly spar, except her eyes were sharp and mean with focus. Her gloves were strapped tight, knuckles wrapped, and her stance had that ugly spring to it like she could cross a room and break a jaw before you finished a sentence.

Aleia came next, quieter. Bow on her back, quiver balanced, fingers already checking the tension of her string as if the act helped her think. She didn’t look nervous. She looked like she’d already picked targets in her head and was deciding the most efficient order to kill them.

And last was Cor.

Old. Lean. Wrapped in layered robes that hid more than they showed. A new staff tapped once on the stone as he stepped into the yard, and the sound carried like punctuation. He was calm in a way that didn’t come from confidence, it came from experience. He’d seen disasters before. He’d simply learned how to stand in them.

All four were armed. All four looked ready to leave

now

. They stopped when they saw Ludger.

For a heartbeat, surprise flickered across their faces, Harold’s brows lifting, Selene’s mouth twitching, Aleia’s eyes narrowing in quick assessment, Cor pausing like he was confirming something he’d suspected for a while.

Then the pieces clicked into place. Fittar. Refugees. Monsters. Rokram’s fall. Of course Ludger was here.

Harold’s laugh came out as a single rough huff. He walked up and smacked Ludger between the shoulder blades, hard enough that a normal thirteen-year-old would’ve stumbled, hard enough to be half greeting and half test.

Ludger absorbed it without moving more than a fraction.

“Thought you’d be buried under paperwork,” Harold said.

“I delegated to my Dad,” Ludger replied, deadpan.

Selene’s eyes flicked down, then back up, and her grin widened as she noticed something that apparently offended her sense of cosmic balance.

“…No,” she said, stepping in close.

Before Ludger could shift, she elbowed him in the ribs. Once. Twice.

Not full force, Selene’s “not full force” was still enough to make most people regret being born, but it was controlled. Teasing. Territorial.

“We’re the same height now,” she said like it was an accusation. “How dare you grow as much as tall as me?”

Ludger stared at her. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Selene snorted, then elbowed him one more time, clearly satisfied. Aleia didn’t touch him. She circled half a step, eyes scanning his gear in the way a hunter measured prey.

Cloak secured. Pouch. Potions. Armguards. Tools. Nothing loose. Nothing missing. Despite the speed, he was equipped to depart with them immediately.

Her gaze paused briefly on his face, like she was checking for fatigue, for panic, for that thin edge of hesitation that killed people at the worst moment. She found none. Aleia nodded once.

Cor watched the entire exchange without interruption. When his eyes met Ludger’s, the old sage’s gaze went deeper than armor and equipment. He measured posture. Breath. The stillness behind the eyes.

Ludger stood straight, shoulders relaxed, weight balanced. Calm, not because he didn’t care, but because he’d already accepted the reality of what was coming. Cor’s mouth twitched in something that wasn’t quite a smile. He nodded as well.

Harold turned slightly, gaze already shifting toward the road beyond the walls. “We’re leaving,” he said. “We’re going to stop the monsters’ advance and keep eyes on the survivors still coming in.”

His voice was steady, but the urgency under it was real. They weren’t going to be late. They couldn’t afford to. Ludger nodded once.

Then he said, simply, “I’m coming too.”

Selene’s brows shot up. Aleia’s eyes narrowed again. Harold’s grin widened. Cor’s nod deepened, like he’d expected it and was still approving anyway. Ludger adjusted the strap of his pouch and stepped into formation without hesitation. It felt… strange.

Right.

Time to fight alongside his old masters for the first time in a long while.

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