Three days had passed since leaving Breza. The slope began immediately after leaving the outer wall of Stone Furnace Fortress, and the road to Varan Pass wound between rocks like thread through a needle. A narrow path barely wide enough for three people to walk abreast. Aria and Ivan proceeded down it in single file. The morning in the Krentza Mountains carried a different kind of cold. Not like the chill of dawn on flat ground—this was a thin, blade-edged air that made the back of the throat tighten with each breath. Aria's exhaled breath turned white. Ivan's exhaled breath turned white. The white mist dissolved between them in the short distance separating their bodies. From the previous night's camp, Ivan knew that Aria's bruised right flank had worsened. Aria began to suspect he knew around the first hour on the mountain pass. The marching pace was slightly slower than on flat ground. Not noticeably so. But over five days of travel, Aria had come to know this man's rhythm in her bones. That speed and this speed—they differed by exactly one beat. He said nothing. Offered no explanation. Just one beat slower. Aria was quietly startled by her own ability to read that consideration. Since the night in the corridor of the Sixth Chapter, since the morning they left Breza, her eyes for reading this man's actions had changed. There was no clear boundary to when it happened. It had simply changed. The ridge of the pass was outlined by the morning light. Aria looked up and traced its contour. Ivan's gaze rested on Aria's profile for exactly one beat. By the time Aria noticed, his eyes had already returned to the path ahead. Not the careful observation of a scout. Not the analytical gaze that read terrain. It was a gaze that confirmed something—something without form. That fact fell into the center of Aria's chest, and an inexplicable warmth kindled there. Deliberately, she let her gaze escape to the ridge. *(What am I becoming aware of?)* Aria stepped on the rocks beneath her feet and moved forward. 　　　　　＊ Two hundred meters before Stone Furnace Fortress—a caretaker-less stone shelter on the eastern side of the pass, equipped only with firewood stores and basic shelter from the elements—Ivan stopped abruptly. It was sudden. His feet halted, his arm rose, and a silent signal to stop was given to Aria. Aria froze. Ivan wasn't looking beyond the rocky ridge. He was observing the direction of the wind blowing across the pass and the angle of morning light striking the cliff face on his left. The light reflection was subtly sharp at one point on the rock surface. Distinctly different from a natural reflection—a polished blade, perhaps, or armor fittings. Aria couldn't read that difference. But Ivan's body had. "Ambush. At least three ahead." His voice was low, barely disturbing the air. "Nadia got ahead of us." She stated it as fact. Danilo had spread false information through the ledger's eye—the unofficial intelligence network operated by the Garesta Trade Consortium—routing it south to scatter the main body of the Gray Hunters. But Nadia Brenok had split off. Not everyone. Only her elite had headed toward Varan Pass. "If we retreat?" "Switching to the southern route consumes the deadline for our operations against Rutilia's Bicameral Council—the Aristocratic Chamber and the Merchant Chamber. You understand that." Aria had already formed her answer before Ivan finished speaking. "We break through." There was no hesitation. Not from fear, but as a deliberate refusal of the alternative. Turning back now meant returning to the path they came from, and that was something Aria could not choose. Returning meant surrender. Since the night her father's kingdom vanished in three days, Aria had become incapable of choosing surrender. Ivan paused for one second. Aria understood the quality of that pause. Not calculation. Not doubt. It was acceptance. Ivan nodded. "Get into the rock shadow. I'll draw the first two. When the third moves, handle it with your dagger." Ivan pushed Aria into the shadow of the cliff wall. It was a practical motion. His body became a shield between her and the enemy. In that moment, Ivan's back filled Aria's entire field of vision. The back of his black leather armor, the re-stitched seam on his left shoulder, his reddish-black hair. The same back she had seen that night in the corridor now stood in the cold air of the mountain pass. The difference was the weight of this back standing as a wall between her and the enemy. That weight pressed against Aria's chest. The ambush moved. 　　　　　＊ The first two emerged from the rock shadow the moment Ivan stepped forward. The elite of the Gray Hunters—the special pursuit unit organized by General Cozak for Aria's suppression—were indeed elite. One circled from the right, the other applied pressure from the front. Their coordination was swift. Moving not as individuals but as a single organism, they closed the distance. Ivan did not retreat. Instead, he advanced. He closed the distance with the one in front, entering close-quarters range deliberately. A choice to shatter the enemy's anticipated spacing. In the instant the second attacker tried to adjust trajectory, Ivan deflected the front opponent's blade and moved his entire body sideways. Aria watched the movement while gripping her dagger in the rock shadow. The third came. Silent, descending from the rock above Aria's left side. Tall, with a frame twice her size. Moving straight toward Aria, who had her dagger raised. Aria stepped back half a pace to create distance. The cliff wall met her back. She couldn't retreat. The enemy's blade closed in. Aria twisted her body to evade, but the size difference pressed her back. She parried once with her dagger but was pushed by superior strength, and her feet slipped. The slope of the mountain path threatened to steal her balance. Her arm was grabbed. She thought she was about to be thrown when impact came from another direction. Ivan had thrown himself between Aria and her attacker. He hadn't completely finished the first two opponents. One was still mobile, yet Ivan moved toward Aria. An action that defied tactical rationality. He exposed his back to one opponent to move forward—and in that moment of choice, a blade ran across Ivan's left shoulder. Not deep. But a definite wound. From the seam of his leather armor at the left shoulder, red slowly seeped. Aria's vision locked onto that red. A wound that couldn't be explained by the logic of payment. Everything Danilo had tried to tell her—the past of failing to protect those who should be protected—the night in the ruined fortress with their backs against the wall, the silence of the morning they left Breza, all five days until reaching Varan Pass—all of it took its most concrete form now in the red of that wound. "—Hear me, Aria von Aldia!" A voice rang across the pass. Nadia Brenok stood atop the rocky ridge. Her deep navy long hair swayed in the mountain wind, her golden eyes looking down on the battle below. Her 168cm frame stood straight on the rock, and her commanding voice cut through the mountain air. "Do you know what happened seven years ago? The south bank of the Vorna River, Nadva settlement—my homeland! When Selvadia's raiding party burned it, the House of Aldia received a request for reinforcements!" Aria's feet stopped. "Ferdinand the Third knew! He had soldiers! But he didn't send them—as a diplomatic consideration toward Selvadia to protect the Vorna River trade route, he silently abandoned the safety of the surrounding settlements! That is your father's justice!" Words came. Something shattered inside Aria's body. Not the sound of collapse—the sound of something accumulated over time trembling at its very foundation. Twenty-four years of inscriptions within her. The philosophy of governance inherited from her father, Ferdinand the Third—the words that justice and loyalty are a ruler's armor. The face in the portrait she looked up at every time she walked the palace corridors. The thin silver bracelet placed on her left wrist the night of her coronation. Beneath all of this, this question had been there from the beginning. "Whose justice!" Anger was in Nadia's voice. But not anger alone. Something unresolved was mixed in. Aria could see it now. The reason Nadia, as captain of the Gray Hunters, carried out the suppression mission while harboring something other than hatred in her motivation—this cry gave it outline for the first time. Aria couldn't answer. Her feet had stopped not from fear. She knew it in her body's response—the structure of her faith was being questioned at its very root. It wasn't anger or despair, but something quieter and deeper. Nadia confirmed the injury of one of her elite. A war of attrition with supply lines cut was not a viable choice. Nadia's golden eyes surveyed the pass and calculated. Not defeat, but a tactical decision to preserve her forces. She chose retreat. Just before disappearing into the rock shadow, Nadia cast one final glance at Aria. In those golden eyes was anger. Sadness. And something that fit neither of those two simultaneously. Aria could see all three now. The content of that indescribable gaze directed at the riverbank in the Fourth Chapter—she felt she could finally read it in this moment. Nadia disappeared into the rock shadow. The pass fell silent. Aria and Ivan crossed the ridge of Varan Pass. 　　　　　＊ The descent on the western side was steeper than the eastern. Watching the rift valley—the difficult stretch along the western cliff of the pass where several people fell each year—on their left, they descended to a rock shelf. Here the wind was blocked. Ivan settled onto the edge of the shelf, holding his left shoulder. Aria opened the cloth bag Danilo had given her. Medicinal herbs and linen cloth—items added to their travel funds along with information from the ledger's eye. Aria examined the armor's fastenings. The wound wouldn't be visible unless she removed the left shoulder joint. "May I remove it?" Ivan nodded silently. She unfastened the joint. Ivan's leather armor loosened at the left shoulder, and part of his upper garment had to be pulled down as well. Close. The practical distance required for treatment. Aria concentrated her awareness on the wound—but a gap opened between her intention to concentrate and her actual sensation. Ivan's chest loosened with the armor. A silver ring threaded on a leather cord was revealed there. Aria's gaze stopped. Something she had seen only once on the night in the ruined fortress in the Fifth Chapter. Something Ivan had kept concealed at his chest ever since. Now, in this moment as she tried to treat the wound, it entered her field of vision. Ivan noticed. He did something different from before. Rather than concealing it again at his chest, he drew the leather cord toward him and placed the ring in his open palm. No explanation. No reason given. He simply turned outward what he had kept hidden until now, in this moment alone. Aria returned to treating the wound. Her fingertips touched the edge of the injury. The bleeding was nearly stopped. Shallower than she expected—yet still a wound that didn't exist in the calculation of payment. She applied the medicinal herb, secured it with linen. Her fingers moved. Ivan's body heat transmitted through the cloth. *(Focus on the treatment.)* She thought that. Even as she thought it, she noticed her fingertips carried a confused sensation. It was the tension after combat beginning to ease—she tried to explain it that way. Before the explanation was complete, the treatment was finished. She tried to withdraw her hand. Ivan's hand touched her fingertips lightly and stopped. Not a restraint. Not a grip. Just one beat of contact. That was all. That was where it ended. But that warmth traveled from her fingertips to the back of her hand,