Chapter 669

The Guildmaster’s office felt smaller with five people inside it.

Not because the room had shrunk, but because the air was full of rank and intent. The kind of pressure you got when people who commanded others sat close enough to hear each other breathe.

Ludger sat at the side of the desk, posture straight, eyes calm. Arslan sat behind it, the rightful owner of the chair, the one who could smile like a father and still look like a man who’d cut his way out of worse rooms than this.

Yvar was off to the side with a ledger already open, quill poised, expression polite and unreadable. He didn’t speak unless he had to. He listened, and he remembered. Across from them sat Varik and Rufas.

Varik looked like he belonged here, even in a foreign office. Soldier to soldier. Guildmaster to guildmaster. His gaze moved with the habit of scanning exits and calculating angles.

Rufas Dalmoren looked like he belonged anywhere. That was the real problem. Arslan poured water first, then reached for a bottle.

“Wine?” Arslan offered, tone neutral. Hospitality without surrender.

Varik shook his head.

“No,” he said simply.

Rufas’ smile flickered into place, polite as a mask.

“Thank you,” he said, “but no. We’d prefer to get into business straight up.”

Arslan set the bottle down without comment. Ludger didn’t bother with pleasantries. He’d already done his “polite” for the day.

He looked at them both and asked, “What’s the reason for this visit?”

Varik answered first. His tone shifted slightly, less official, more blunt.

“In unofficial terms,” Varik said, “we came to thank you for the help in Rokram.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed a fraction, remembering dust, chitin, and a castle full of eggs.

“And,” Varik continued, “to ask you for something else.”

Ludger raised an eyebrow. Rufas watched him like the eyebrow was a negotiation move. Ludger leaned back a little in his chair, voice dry.

“So,” he said, “the Regent didn’t send you.”

Varik didn’t deny it. Ludger’s gaze sharpened.

“But you came anyway,” he continued. Then, with the calm certainty of someone who understood how chains of command actually worked, he added: “With his permission, I assume.”

Rufas folded his hands on his knee with deliberate calm, the kind of posture that made it look like he was relaxing even when he was calculating. He didn’t answer Ludger’s assumption directly. Not yet. Instead, he chose the angle that let him speak without sounding like a messenger delivering orders.

“You’ve become… a topic,” Rufas said, voice smooth.

Ludger’s expression didn’t change. Yvar’s quill paused for half a heartbeat, then resumed. Rufas continued, laying the words down carefully.

“Many assumed your refusal to become a noble was a sign of disrespect to the Crown.”

Arslan’s jaw tightened slightly, but he didn’t speak. Ludger didn’t either. Rufas didn’t push the accusation. He framed it like an unfortunate rumor drifting through halls of power.

“They see a young man with influence,” he said, “who is offered elevation and refuses it. In the capital, that reads as defiance. Even if the reality is more practical.”

Ludger’s eyes narrowed a fraction, as if to say

and you just noticed that now?

Rufas kept going.

“But others assumed the refusal had a different cause,” he said. “That it was because you are close to the northerners.”

The word

close

carried weight. It wasn’t just “allies.” It was “tainted by association.”

Rufas’ gaze flicked toward the window for a moment, like he could see the northern camp through stone.

“In the Empire,” he said, “many believe those who deal too much with northerners become like them.”

He spoke it like a social fact, not a judgment.

“They think the imperials who stand near the northerners are brutes like them,” Rufas added, his mouth tightening slightly as if he found the stereotype distasteful but useful. “Loud. Simple. All muscle, no restraint.”

He lifted one shoulder in a small, helpless gesture.

“It can’t be helped,” he said, meaning: it

can

be helped, but the people who believe it have power, and you don’t correct powerful idiots by insulting them.

Ludger’s gaze stayed flat. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he pictured Freyra hearing that and punching someone through a wall.

Rufas’ tone shifted, subtly more serious.

“Still,” he said, “the situation is complicated.”

He leaned forward a fraction, making the room feel tighter.

“Because you are not a noble,” Rufas continued, “and yet you have influence that rivals many of them. You are close to a frontier militia that grows stronger by the dat. You have a working relationship with northerners that the capital doesn’t fully understand.”

He paused, eyes steady.

“And when people don’t understand something,” Rufas said, “they don’t assume the best.”

The silence after that was thick. Because everyone in the room understood the unspoken end of the sentence.

They assume threat.

Ludger didn’t even bother to soften it.

“I don’t care about optics,” he said, voice flat as packed clay. “The capital can keep talking. The Regent can keep posturing. They can spin whatever story helps them sleep. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of the Lionsguard.”

Silence held for a beat.

Rufas Dalmoren exhaled through his nose, the kind of sigh that wasn’t frustration so much as resignation, like a man who’d walked into a wall he’d been warned about and still tried his luck anyway.

“As blunt as ever,” Rufas said. Not an insult. More like a diagnosis. “Fine. If you won’t play the image game, then we’ll use the only language people actually listen to.”

Varik sat back, hands folded, watching the exchange like he was watching two swordsmen measure distance before the first step. Rufas’s eyes flicked to Arslan, then to Yvar, then settled back on Ludger.

“To improve the Lionsguard’s image,” Rufas continued, “and to make sure people understand that the northerners and the Lionsguard aren’t their enemies… we came with a job for your guild.”

Ludger’s expression didn’t change, but his posture did. He crossed his arms, weight shifting in the chair like he was anchoring himself. Then his brow furrowed.

“What kind of job?” he asked.

Rufas didn’t smile. Didn’t try to dress it up. He just said it like it was a line item in an imperial ledger that had started bleeding money.

“Recently,” Rufas said, “a large beast in the ocean has been sinking ships that belong to the Empire.”

Yvar’s quill paused mid-scratch.

Arslan’s eyes narrowed slightly, the way they always did when someone said

beast

and meant

problem that kills men fast.

Varik’s gaze stayed on Ludger, as if he was weighing whether the boy would flinch. Ludger didn’t.

Rufas went on. “It’s not rumor. It’s not fishermen telling stories for coin. We’ve lost cargo. We’ve lost crews. And the capital is growing… angry.”

He let that word hang. Not fear. Not worry.

Angry.

“People know your guild survived the coastline,” Rufas said. “They know you and the Ironhand Guild faced things out there that would’ve drowned other orders. Varik here was there as well. So the request is simple.”

His tone sharpened. Clean. Official.

“They want you to eliminate it.”

Ludger didn’t answer right away.

He squinted, eyes going distant, not at Rufas, not at Varik, not even at the office walls, but somewhere past them. Somewhere colder and darker.

Somewhere that smelled like salt and old blood.

He remembered the stone under his hands. The slow grind of earth-mana as he dragged a bridge out of the seabed like a spine being pulled from the world. He remembered Gaius running his mouth the entire time, half encouragement, half work, like jokes could plug holes in a sinking plan.

And he remembered something else. A presence. Not a roar. Not a charge. Not even a threat shouted into the sky. Just an eye. Massive. Watching. Unblinking.

It had been so large it made the horizon feel small. A slice of something old staring up through the surface like the sea itself had opened a lid and looked back.

The beast hadn’t fought them then. It hadn’t needed to.

It had simply moved, once, like a thought, and ships had snapped like driftwood. Ironhand hulls, thick and rune-braced, torn open as if the ocean had decided they didn’t belong. Ludger’s fingers tightened around his own forearm. He looked back at Rufas.

“You’re telling me,” Ludger said slowly, “this thing isn’t just hitting merchants. It’s hitting imperial ships.”

Rufas nodded. “Imperial flagged. Imperial owned. Imperial insured.”

“And the Ironhand?” Ludger asked.

Rufas hesitated for half a second, long enough to be honest without meaning to.

“They’ve been hit too, but not as much,” Rufas admitted. “But right now, the Empire is the one bleeding loudly. Which means it becomes everyone’s problem.”

Ludger huffed, a short sound with no humor in it.

“So this is your ‘image job.’” He tilted his head. “Send the Lionsguard to kill a sea monster so the capital can point and say,

Look, the frontier dogs still bite for us.

”

Varik finally spoke, voice calm and even. “Or so the people see the Lionsguard saving imperial lives instead of threatening them.”

Ludger’s gaze slid to him. “And what do

you

get out of it, Varik?”

Varik didn’t blink. “Stability. The Silver Talon Order is tired of watching the capital turn every frontier problem into a political weapon. If the sea becomes unsafe, trade dries. If trade dries, some people will starve, the east riots, and the Regent starts drafting boys instead of negotiating.”

That was the clean version.

The ugly version sat behind it, unspoken: when empires panic, they start looking for scapegoats, and the Lionsguard had already been painted with enough foreign colors to be convenient.

Rufas leaned forward slightly, voice dropping.

“This isn’t just about ships,” he said. “It’s about perception. Right now, too many in the capital believe you refused nobility out of contempt. Or because you’re tied too closely to northerners. Or because you’re building your own… power.”

Ludger stared at him. Then he shrugged, small and cold.

“Let them believe it.”

Rufas’s jaw tightened. “They will use that belief.”

Ludger’s eyes sharpened. “Then I’ll use the job.”

The room stilled.

Rufas blinked. “Meaning?”

Ludger uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, elbows on the desk like a man twice his age.

“If this beast is sinking imperial ships, then it’s not random,” Ludger said. “Nothing that big moves for no reason. Either it’s territorial, or it’s hunting, or someone’s pushing it.”

Yvar’s quill started moving again, faster now.

Arslan’s expression hardened. He knew that look on Ludger’s face, the one that meant

the job isn’t the job.

Rufas frowned. “There’s no evidence someone’s controlling it.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile.

“There wasn’t ‘evidence’ of an ant king either until it tried to cut my head off with silver swords.”

Varik’s eyes narrowed, interest sharpening. Ludger’s gaze drifted again, back to the memory of that massive eye in the ocean. He could still feel the weight of it. The pressure, like the sea itself had leaned closer to listen.

“It looked like it was time for a rematch,” Ludger said quietly.

Rufas frowned. “You’ve seen it?”

“I saw something,” Ludger corrected. “While I was building the stone bridge with Gaius. Big eye. Didn’t fight. Just watched. Then it destroyed some Ironhand ships like it was swatting flies.”

Rufas’s lips pressed together. “This isn’t a ghost, Vice Guildmaster. It’s a loss report with bodies.”

Ludger nodded once.

“Good,” he said. “Then it’s real enough to stab.”

He looked at Rufas, then Varik, voice sharpening into something that could’ve been called agreement if it wasn’t wrapped in steel.

“I’ll take the contract,” Ludger said. “On my conditions.”

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