On the night the moons shone twin and full, the Kingdom of Altia fell.
Princess Serena watched from the shadows as her father, King Verdan IV, was struck down upon his own throne—and in that instant, grief became fuel. With nothing but the clothes on her back, a silver ring left by her dead mother, and the castle's secret passages memorized long ago, she flees through culverts, muddy irrigation ditches, and moonlit farmland, leaving behind everything—including those she could not save.
She has
The Princess's Sword - Beyond the Ashes, the Foundation of an Oath
The mouth of the mineshaft swallowed the three of them whole.
The instant she stepped inside, a cold unlike the mountain air outside wrapped itself around her skin. The smell of damp rock. The smell of rotting timber. And then—faint but unmistakable, a peculiar, gritty vibration like scorched metal, traveling up through the soles of her boots into her feet.
The residue of phosphorite arts.
Phosphorite arts—a system of casting that used phosphorite ore, mined from deep underground, as its catalyst. Even after mining ceased, traces of that power continued to seep into the walls and bedrock of a shaft for years. Over time, the residue would mutate and accumulate, eventually drawing monsters. It was one of the reasons abandoned mines were considered dangerous. Serena had learned this in her royal palace coursework on the arcane arts. As tidy knowledge on a page. Now that knowledge matched the sensation beneath her feet.
(The distance between theory and reality is so much greater than I imagined.)
Garen Raizen took the lead. His short, gray-tinged dark brown hair blended into the gloom. The old sword scar on his left cheek caught the faint phosphorescent glow running along the shaft walls, surfacing now and then. His footsteps made no sound. This man's way of walking minimized noise on any terrain—mountain passes, forest floors, and now the stone floor of this abandoned mine.
Mira Faren walked in the middle. Her chestnut braid hung over her shoulder, and her jade-green eyes scanned the walls as she moved. After the night camp on the mountain pass, her legs should still have been worn out, but her stride was steady. Over seven days of flight, Serena had seen the strength of this girl's core again and again.
Serena took the rear. The ring on the ring finger of her left hand was cold in the mine's chill. When she touched the phosphorite fragment hidden in her sleeve—a small shard she'd taken from the arcane instruction room when leaving the royal palace—she could feel a faint warmth. Was it reacting to the residue? She understood the principle. But feeling it for herself brought her knowledge one step closer to reality.
No one had ordered the formation. After seven days of running, each person's role had seeped into their body, and this shape had simply emerged.
──
A short distance after turning left at the fork toward the old mining section, Mira stopped.
Without a word, she pointed at the right-hand wall.
Serena followed her gaze. Deep, regular scratch marks ran across the stone. Not scratches, exactly—claw marks. Wide and deep. The trace of claws hard enough to carve rock, dragged along the wall as something moved.
The marks of a rock lizard.
Garen turned. He glanced once at the wall Mira indicated, then faced forward again. Without a word, he changed direction. Not the main passage, but a narrow side tunnel leading to the old mining section on the west side. The three of them followed that choice naturally. There was no discussion. It was a form of coordination built over seven days that needed no language.
The old mining section had a low ceiling. Even Garen had to stoop slightly, and the wooden pillars were mostly rotted and collapsed. Broken stone and fragments of decayed wood littered the ground. They advanced carefully, testing each step.
──
The moment they entered the mid-level chamber beyond the old mining section, a piece of stone fell from the ceiling.
It wasn't a small fragment. A fist-sized rock crashed down near the center of the chamber with a dry crack. Immediately after, fine dust poured down in ribbons from cracks in the ceiling.
Serena looked up. She could see fissures running across the chamber ceiling. Not just one. Multiple cracks branched and spread. The mine ceiling, having lost its supports, was slowly being pulled down by gravity.
It was a precursor to collapse.
At the same moment she registered this, a low sound echoed from deeper in the passage.
The sound of claws scraping stone. The sense of a heavy body pressing against the rock floor.
A rock lizard.
Garen put his hand on the hilt of his sword and glanced for an instant at Serena and Mira. Before he could speak, Serena and Mira had already moved to the eastern side along the old shaft wall. Not by instruction—both had made the same judgment at the same moment. They pressed their backs to the wall, positioning themselves out of the lizard's path.
Garen stepped forward.
The lizard entered the chamber. Roughly three meters long. Its scales glinted dully in the phosphorescent light. Its head was low, its tail striking the stone floor. Its eyes—even in the darkness, reflecting the afterglow of the phosphorite—glowed yellow.
Serena held her breath and watched Garen move.
He drew his sword. Quietly, killing the sound.
The instant the lizard stepped forward, Garen moved.
Not straight on. A diagonal forward step. Slightly off the lizard's charge line, angling toward its belly. The belly was the weak point—of all its thickly scaled body, only the underside was relatively thin. He didn't just know that fact; the movement was ingrained in him as combat experience.
The lizard's movement broke. Its charge halted, its body swinging sideways. Garen pulled back to create his next angle.
In that interval, another large stone fell from the ceiling.
A roar echoed through the chamber. The collapse had begun.
Garen set his blade against the lizard's neck and threw his weight into it, driving the creature against the wall. The lizard slammed into the rock face, thrashed once—and went still.
In that instant, the sound of the ceiling cracks spreading all at once filled the air.
"Run."
Only the single word flew back. The three of them ran as one. Toward the eastern exit. Crushing broken stone underfoot, the roar of the collapse filling the chamber behind them.
The moment they cleared into the passage beyond the exit, the chamber ceiling came down.
The heavy sound carried into the passage. Dust flowed out like a wave. The three of them kept moving without stopping.
──
It was some time later that Mira spoke.
In a whisper, at a distance that reached only Serena walking ahead.
"I saw Lord Garen's sword work up close."
Serena turned her gaze slightly sideways. Mira's jade-green eyes were looking not at Garen's back ahead, but at the ground.
"The Imperial Northern Expeditionary Corps—the elite force Imperial Granveld assembled to expand its territory northward, which maintains its own distinctive swordsmanship training style—there are movements similar to that training style. In the royal palace's diplomatic archives, there are imperial military records documenting the sword angles and weight-shift characteristics of various nations' forces. I was permitted to view them when I was assigned to organize them as a lady-in-waiting. That stepping and cutting angle matches the standard training style of the Northern Expeditionary Corps recorded in those documents."
Serena said nothing. Mira continued.
"I will say nothing here. I only thought you should remember it."
That was all she said, and Mira closed her mouth. She added nothing extra.
Serena faced forward. She looked at Garen's back. The gray-tinged short hair. The sword scar on his left cheek. The story of the Gray Wolf Company he'd told her on the mountain pass at night. His way of moving that knew the blind spots of the Imperial Northern Expeditionary Corps' deployment from the inside—those things overlapped with Mira's words.
(Who this man truly is—I still know only half.)
That awareness was beginning to take a new shape. But for now, getting through this mine came first. The judgment could be made beyond the exit.
──
The passage near the exit, close to the deepest part of the mine, was narrower than the chamber before.
Just wide enough for two people to pass side by side. The ceiling was low, the walls pressing in from both sides. The light of the exit—the pale white of dawn—showed small and distant at the far end of the passage.
In front of that light, shadows moved.
Multiple shadows spread out, blocking the exit.
Garen stopped instantly. Serena and Mira stopped too.
Imperial soldiers. Five of them. Entering the passage from the exit side. Leather armor, with shoulder guards bearing the crest of the Imperial Northern Expeditionary Corps. Naked blades in their hands. Scout equipment—an advance unit ahead of the main force, fast-moving.
She looked back at their retreat. The collapsed chamber blocked it. There was no falling back.
It was a battle in an enclosed space.
Garen drew his sword. At the same time, he began to move. Drawing the two in front toward him while using the walls to restrict lateral movement. Only someone whose body had learned close-quarters combat could do this in a narrow passage.
"The remaining three are trying to circle around along the right wall."
Mira spoke in a low voice. She was watching the changes in the shadows on the wall—when the enemy moved, the phosphorescent residue etched into the mine walls subtly altered the shape of the shadows. Tracking those changes, she read their path ahead of time.
"After they pass the hollow in the left wall three meters ahead, they'll come out on our side."
Serena looked at that point. There was indeed a small hollow in the wall. Once they passed it, the flanking maneuver would be complete.
—She had only seconds.
Serena took the phosphorite fragment from her sleeve.
It was a small shard. About the size of a fingertip. Whether she could activate the basic spell she'd learned in the royal palace's arcane instruction using this as a catalyst—she had studied the theory repeatedly, but she had never once cast it with her own hands.
(An art my body doesn't know—I have to force it out with will alone.)
She began the incantation. No voice. Only her lips moving. She poured strength into the palm gripping the phosphorite. The shard began to heat.
The three Mira had read passed the hollow. They turned toward her and stepped forward.
The spell—activated.
It wasn't a complete form. The fire-element spell produced not the intended flame, but only a flash and a wave of heat. An incomplete art. But that flash spread like an explosion in the dark passage.
The three shielded their eyes. Their advance stopped.
A few seconds. In those few seconds, Garen had changed the situation. After subduing the two in front, he turned toward the three. Against enemies whose movement had stopped, with movements free of waste—he drove the three in turn against the wall and rendered them unable to act.
All five were subdued.
The phosphorite crumbled to pieces in Serena's palm.
At the same time, dizziness came. Mild vertigo and sudden exhaustion—the sensation of overusing phosphorite arts beginning to affect her consciousness. Her legs sought the wall. She reached out and touched the rock face. The cold feel of stone entered her palm. Leaning on it, she stayed standing.
Garen approached one of the subdued scouts. He quickly checked the belongings. From a leather pouch, he took out a folded slip of thin paper. He unfolded it.
Without any change in expression, he read it in seconds.
—He read it fluently.
It was a document inscribed with the internal identification codes of the Imperial Northern Expeditionary Corps—a cipher system the imperial military used for communication between units, a unique code combining numbers and symbols that was meaningless to anyone who had not belonged to the military's internal organization. To decipher which unit each code indicated, its march direction, its expected arrival, required having actually been drilled in that system from within the imperial military. Garen grasped its contents at a single reading.
Mira was watching that scene.
The earlier sword work. The decoding of the document now. The two overlapped inside Mira. Her jade-green eyes narrowed quietly. She did not voice that suspicion.
Garen held the document out to
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