Ludwig found himself in an unenviable situation.

So did everyone still standing in the vicinity of Solania.

The Second Prince had arrived too late to matter and early enough to claim authority. That alone would have made him unbearable, but he had not come with a ceremonial escort or some token banner meant to show imperial concern. He had brought an army. A true imperial army. Ranks enough to swallow the open field before Solania, formations wide enough to stretch from one broken edge of the battlefield to the other, and enough aura users, mages, cavalry, and siege specialists to make smaller nations reconsider the shape of their borders.

They had not bled against Sloth.

They had not protected the walls.

They had not held the line while priests trembled and paladins forgot how to stand.

They had come late. Far too late to be useful. Just in time to collect.

And the Second Prince, sitting tall atop his warhorse at the front of that polished army, looked like a man who had been waiting for exactly such a moment. He was arrogant in the way only someone raised near a throne could be arrogant, full of himself not merely because he believed he deserved power, but because he needed others to believe it too. There were more reasons than duty moving him now. Ludwig had shamed him before, at the imperial audience. The Holy Order had been caught rotting from within. The Tower Masters had used forbidden dark magic in front of half a city. The people of Lufondal had witnessed undead saving holy lands. To a clever ruler, the situation would have required delicacy.

To the Second Prince, it was justification.

Seeing black magic without understanding, or caring to understand, why it had been used was all the excuse he needed. He could crush rabbles under the name of law, pressure the Holy Order under the name of purity, humble the Tower Masters under the name of imperial order, and finally drag Ludwig in chains under the name of justice. It was almost impressive how many foolish goals one man could fit under a single raised hand.

"Do not resist!" the Second Prince shouted. "You will be promptly executed!"

The order rolled across the field.

The imperial army answered as one machine. Aura blades flared with color along the front line. Mages lifted their staffs and began charging spells behind rows of shields. Archers nocked arrows. Cavalry lowered lances. Soldiers who had never seen Sloth raise his hand now aimed their weapons at the people who had survived him. They were ready for war, disciplined and eager, but against the wrong opponent.

Ludwig, still exhausted enough that his bones felt borrowed, stared at the army from where he sat half-sprawled on the ice.

"Help me up, will you?"

The Red Tower Master did not hesitate. He reached down, grabbed Ludwig by the shoulder, and hauled him to his feet as if lifting a badly damaged sack of trouble. Ludwig’s knees wobbled once before he forced them straight. Noctivex had withdrawn into its compact form, Nightbreaker was no longer in his hand, and most of the wrath that had made him look like a demon of the mountains was gone. What remained was a pale, tired young man with too much blood on him and eyes that still looked like they were considering violence as a valid form of conversation.

Van Dijk stepped forward first.

"What is the meaning of this, little prince?"

He said it calmly.

That made it worse.

He did not say Crown Prince. He did not say Your Highness. He did not even bother to wrap the insult in proper etiquette. Little prince was delicate enough to avoid immediate stupidity from anyone with sense and sharp enough to split the skin of someone who lacked it.

The Second Prince lacked it.

His face flushed with rage almost instantly. "You cursed dark being, you dare call upon dark magic on these lands! Who do you think you are to talk to me this way?"

"Apparently he didn’t like little prince," Kaiser muttered from above the Necropolitis.

The Second Prince’s eyes snapped upward. "Capture everyone here! And if anyone resists..." His lips pulled back in something that was almost a smile. "And I hope someone does, kill them!"

Ludwig glanced at the Red Tower Master, who was still holding him by one shoulder to keep him from testing gravity again. "You’re gonna let that happen?"

"Nothing much we can do about this right now," the Red Tower Master said, voice lower than usual. "We swore a mana oath to the Emperor. So we have to hear what he has to say."

Ludwig slowly turned his head toward him. "You are telling me that as if it makes things better."

"It does, a little. Not that they can actually do anything meaningful. Let him have his moment. Once we’re done with the formalities, we’ll all be sent back to where we belong with a slap on the wrist at most."

"That doesn’t sound comforting."

The Red Tower Master shrugged. "Wasn’t meant to be."

Ludwig sighed. "Kaiser, I think it’s time for you to dip."

"Wasn’t going to wait on you for that," Kaiser called back. "Toodeloo."

The Second Prince looked up just in time to see the small noble-looking boy standing high upon the black battlements of the Necropolitis turn into motes of dark light.

He disappeared.

So did Gale.

The Death Knight, still holding Oathcarver and standing amid the ruined bodies of the drowned giants, dissolved into dust and black specks without ceremony. The undead archers vanished from the walls. The skeletons on the field collapsed into shadows. The lowly undead mages inside the towers faded one by one. The entire army of the dead followed Kaiser’s retreat, turning to dust, then to nothing.

The Necropolitis began to break apart after them.

Its walls crumbled without sound. Its towers loosened into black mist. Blue soul flames winked out across the battlements. Streets, gates, roofs, and dead stone dissolved into motes that rose briefly in the cold air before vanishing. There was so much disintegration at once, so much dark matter returning to nowhere, that no one, not even the Red Tower Master supporting Ludwig, noticed two narrow streams of black specks separate from the rest and slip toward Ludwig’s side.

They vanished into the invisible Codex Necros.

With the dead city gone, Van Dijk finally withdrew his massive black swamp. The tar-like darkness folded in on itself, swallowing the last half-submerged monster corpses before disappearing beneath the ice. What remained was not a battlefield held by necromancy and forbidden magic, but a ruined open field before Solania, littered with broken ice, monster remains, exhausted clergy, wounded soldiers, and a handful of people standing directly in front of the imperial army.

The Second Prince looked furious that his most impressive target had left without permission.

"Surround them!" he shouted. "Also, where is that dark mage? Find him!"

The soldiers began moving at once, spreading around the survivors in disciplined arcs.

Then the prince pointed directly at Ludwig. "You! Where is that bastard?"

Ludwig blinked at him, then shrugged. "I don’t know. Never saw that guy before."

The prince’s jaw clenched so hard it was a wonder his teeth survived.

Before he could speak again, another voice tore through the field with the confidence of a man whose instincts were perfectly shaped to make everything worse.

"I saw that lich with Ludwig!" Hiro shouted. "It’s his companion! His accomplice!"

Every head turned toward him.

The dissatisfaction was immediate and nearly universal.

Tower Masters stared at him as if he had been born for disappointment. Paladins looked away in shame. Even a good portion of the priests seemed unable to decide whether they wanted to correct him or pretend they had never seen him before. Titania’s expression hardened into something colder than anger.

The Second Prince’s eyes lit with opportunity. "Oh, so he’s responsible for the dark arts used here! Good. I have some things prepared for you."

Then he turned his glare toward Hiro.

"Also, weren’t you supposed to be the Hero? To stop this darkness? What have you been doing, allowing dark magic to be used? What a waste!"

Hiro’s face twisted. "I didn’t! They attacked me!"

"I’ll hear everything back at the capital!" the Second Prince shouted. "Bring them all! In cuffs!"

The soldiers closed in.

No one on Ludwig’s side moved to resist. Not because they could not. That was the absurd part. The imperial army was powerful, certainly, but the people it was trying to arrest had just fought Sloth. The Five Tower Masters stood there. Titania was present. Mot had not even looked particularly bothered yet. Van Dijk alone could have turned a large portion of the field into a grave if he decided the conversation had ended.

But oaths, politics, imperial authority, and consequences wrapped around the moment tighter than chains.

The soldiers surrounded them and began herding everyone together.

Mot looked at the approaching formation, then at Ludwig. "Should I handle this?"

Ludwig turned his head slightly. "By handle?"

Mot’s lips widened.

Not into a smile.

Into a promise.

"No," Van Dijk said immediately. "Do not do anything you will regret. You think any of the Tower Masters could not simply overturn this battlefield? We are not doing that for a reason."

Mot’s widened lips settled back into something more human.

Van Dijk continued, "Let us hear him out. They will not do anything stupid."

"He’s threatening to send us to the gallows, Master," Ludwig said.

"They do not have the ability or the power to do so. And if they tried, the Emperor himself would move." Van Dijk’s gaze remained coldly fixed on the imperial banners. "Just follow for now. We will deal with the aftermath later."

Ludwig looked at the army.

Then at the Second Prince.

Then at the exhausted people of Solania watching in stunned silence while their saviors were chained by the empire that had arrived after the danger had passed.

"Sure then," Ludwig said. "Let’s see how this rolls."

"So," the woman said gently, "which one would you like first?"

Ludwig sat chained to a steel chair in a room too deep, too thick, and too isolated from the world for sound to matter.

The chamber smelled of old iron, damp stone, and blood scrubbed badly from places where it had once gathered in quantity. The walls were heavy blocks, reinforced with warding lines that glowed faintly under layers of grime. No window broke the stone. No breeze entered. The chair beneath Ludwig was old, bolted to the floor, and stained dark where too many people had discovered that confessions and screams both sounded the same after enough pressure.

His wrists were cuffed to the arms of the chair.

His ankles were locked to its legs.

Additional chains had been looped across his chest and waist, each link engraved with suppression runes meant for mages, dark casters, and anything else the empire considered unpleasant enough to bind before questioning. They had stripped him of visible weapons, searched him for tools, and clearly believed they had done a thorough job.

That was cute.

Beside him stood an old woman who looked almost gentle when she smiled.

Almost.

She had the face of a doting grandmother, soft cheeks, silver hair tied neatly back, and eyes that crinkled at the corners when she looked at him. If one saw her in a market, one might assume she baked sweet bread for neighborhood children and scolded young couples for not eating enough. Here, under dim light beside a table of torture tools spread atop an old cloth, the smile became something else.

The table was crowded.

Pliers. Hooks. Spikes. Thin blades. Needles. Tongs. Small hammers. Heated rods resting in a brazier. Instruments whose purpose Ludwig could guess and several whose purpose he did not care enough to imagine. Some were polished. Others were not. A few still had crusted blood in places where careful cleaning would have required effort.

Ludwig looked at the tools.

Then at the old woman.

Then back at the tools.

"The pliers," he said. "They look kinda unsanitary. Would you mind not using those to remove teeth? I mean, it’ll be awkward if they were in someone else’s mouth before. Not a big fan"

The old woman smiled wider. "Ah, don’t worry. I keep my tools very clean."

Ludwig leaned his head slightly to one side, eyes settling on a pair of forceps with dark flakes near the hinge.

"I’m kinda doubting that."

Her face changed.

The grandmother vanished.

Something vicious twisted through the old skin, turning the smile into a snarl so sudden that a weaker prisoner might have recoiled. She snatched a long spike from the table, stepped forward, and drove it into Ludwig’s thigh with a sharp, practiced thrust.

"SHUT UP!"

The spike sank in.

Blood welled around the metal.

Ludwig looked down at it.

Then his left brow rose.

He lifted his gaze back to the old woman and stared at her for a long, confused second.

"Euh," he said. "So... was that supposed to hurt?"