The heavy oak doors of the northern keep creaked open as the caravan rolled into the cobblestone courtyard.
Standing at the base of the stone steps, Baron Alric watched them arrive, his heavy brow furrowed under the flickering orange light of the courtyard braziers.
He had expected a grand, pristine procession, the kind of arrogant display the young Marquess usually favored.
Instead, the forty household knights riding escort looked weary, their armor splattered with mud and dark slush. And behind them, shuffling in a miserable, rhythmic clink of iron, came twenty or so ragged men bound in heavy chains.
Alric’s eyes narrowed as he took in the prisoners' injuries, the hasty bandages, and the dented shields of the Artos guards.
There had been a fight.
The carriage ground to a halt, its iron-rimmed wheels groaning against the hard stones. Alric stepped forward, his boots booming, and approached the carriage door just as the guard pulled it open.
"Lord Marquess," Alric began, his deep voice carrying the formal weight of a seasoned vassal. "We did not expect—"
He stopped dead.
Edric stepped down from the carriage, his boots sinking slightly into the frosted mud of the courtyard. He wasn't wearing the lavish, pristine silks Alric had grown used to.
He wore a practical, heavy fur coat, but it was utterly drenched in dark mud, and a thick, terrifying smear of fresh crimson was splattered across his chest and lapel. His face was stark pale, his golden eyes shadowed with a deep, hollow exhaustion.
Beside him, Lira and Celia stepped out, both looking thoroughly shaken, their hands trembling as they adjusted their cloaks against the biting northern wind.
Alric stared in blunt disbelief. "My lord... what happened? Are you hurt?"
Serah stepped into the light, her heavy iron helm tucked under her arm, her expression tight and professional.
"An ambush, Baron," the female knight interjected. "Roughly sixty bandits blocked the southern pass with a shattered transport wagon. We utterly destroyed them, but one managed to get to the young master."
Alric’s gaze drifted past Serah, landing squarely on the chained prisoners being pushed into the courtyard by the Artos guards. As the torchlight flickered across their gaunt, terrified faces, the old Baron froze.
His calloused hand instinctively tightened against his belt.
He recognized them. They weren't hardened mountain raiders.
"These men..." Alric murmured, his gravelly voice dropping. "They are from the lower ridge. The village that was abandoned about a year ago."
He looked back at the chained men, a flicker of sympathy appearing in his eyes.
'These men were forced to banditry by circumstances caused by you.' he thought to himself.
Dispensing with any formal courtesy, Edric raised a hand, his voice raspy and quiet.
"My vanguard captain took a heavy arrow to the shoulder during the opening volley." He quietly muttered. "The wound is deep. He needs immediate attention."
Edric looked Alric dead in the eye, his gaze entirely serious. "He needs a healer. Now."
Alric blinked, momentarily thrown off by the absolute lack of petulance. The Edric he knew would have been screaming about the threat to his own person.
This man was completely focused on his wounded soldier.
Alric noted, with a sudden jolt of realization, how much the young man had changed since they last met. The soft, padded fat of luxury was gone; Edric looked leaner, his shoulders held with a rigid, quiet discipline, and his eyes held a sobering weight that hadn't been there before.
"Harlen!" Alric barked, turning to his elderly steward. "Get the manor's apothecaries down to the barracks immediately. Have them bring the clean poultices and boiling water. Move!"
"Right away, my lord," Harlen squeaked, hurrying down the stone steps toward the lower courtyard.
Alric turned back to Edric, his posture softening into something genuinely respectful, though still deeply cautious. "My men will see to your knights and secure the prisoners, Lord Edric. But if I may ask... to what do we owe the pleasure of your sudden march into the deep frontier? Galehelm is a long way behind you."
Edric closed his eyes for a brief second, the image of the bandit gasping out his final breaths flashing violently behind his eyelids. The phantom sensation of the blade slicing and tearing flesh still made his stomach churn.
He was still quietly shaking beneath his coat, his mind completely spent.
"I am tired, Baron," Edric said softly, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a mud-stained hand. "It has been a very long road. Can we... leave the business for tomorrow?"
Alric looked at the young lord, then at the blood on his coat, and finally at the two terrified women standing protectively close to him. The old hound knew the look of a man who had just faced the raw, unglamorous horror of combat for the first time.
"Of course, my lord," Alric replied quietly, stepping aside and gesturing toward the warm, glowing entrance of the keep. "Business can wait until the morning. The fires are lit inside, and the guest quarters are ready. Let us get you out of the cold."
Edric gave a weak, fragile nod of appreciation. Guided by Alric’s servants, he numbly allowed himself to be led through the dark stone corridors of the keep, his boots leaving a trail of drying mud on the smooth granite floors.
The frantic shouting of the courtyard faded into a heavy, suffocating quiet as they reached the private quarters. Before the servants could even offer to unpack his things, Edric dismissed them all with a hollow wave of his hand, craving nothing but isolation.
By nightfall, Edric sat alone inside a private bath arranged for him by the baron. The steaming water did little to wash away the bone-deep chill that had settled into Edric’s chest.
He sat submerged to his shoulders in the deep, copper tub, his head resting back against the smooth rim.
The room was quiet, lit only by a pair of flickering tallow candles that cast long, dancing shadows across the stone walls. Thick vapor hung heavy in the air, smelling faintly of pine needles and crushed herbs, a hospitality gesture from the Baron meant to soothe a weary guest.
Slowly, Edric lifted his hands out of the water.
He held them up, letting the droplets run down his forearms. A faint, swirling trail of diluted pink spiraled off his skin and dissolved into the bathwater. The physical blood was gone, entirely scrubbed away, but the weight of it remained.
This is real.
The thought didn't scream in his mind this time, instead it whispered, cold and absolute.
Up until today, a part of him had still treated this world like a complex narrative, a high-stakes strategy game. He was the author trying to fix the mess he'd made. He had looked at the looming winter, the political corruption, and the threats of rebellion as problems to be solved with pen and paper.
But now..
The dangers are real. If I die in this place, I am dead for real. There is no reload. There is no waking up back in my apartment.
He gripped the edges of the copper tub, his knuckles turning white as he struggled to pull his fracturing thoughts together.
He was a modern man, a white-collar professional who had never even been in a fistfight, yet he was now forced to navigate a brutal, unforgiving world where life was cheap and survival had to be bought in blood.
And the funny thing is, he made it that way.
And then, a deeper, more unsettling realization crept into his mind.
As his head cleared and the initial fog of panic began to recede, Edric leaned back, staring blankly at the stone ceiling.
He remembered the fight on the embankment. He remembered the terrifying ease with which his body had moved. It wasn't just the memory of the grueling endurance drills Serah had forced upon him, it was something deeper.
Something latent.
When the bandit had lunged, Edric hadn't just defended himself out of desperation. Now that he could look back on those fleeting seconds with a sober mind, he remembered a sudden, overwhelming sensation that had flooded his veins right before he drove the steel home.
It was an intense bloodlust, a thrill.
Satisfaction.
A cold dread pooled in his stomach.
The original Edric.
The true master of this body had been defined by cruelty, depravity, and violence. He was a tyrant in the making.
Edric had assumed that when he woke up in this world, the old soul was entirely gone, completely replaced by his own consciousness.
But what if it wasn't? What if the old Edric was merely dormant, coiled up in the dark recesses of his head, waiting?
His body had moved on its own today. If the original Edric's muscle memory and dark instincts could surge to the surface during a crisis, what else was hiding in his mind?
What happens if he wakes up? Edric thought, his breath catching in his throat.
If the old Edric retakes this body... what happens to my consciousness? Do I just fade away? Do I become a prisoner in my own mind?
The horrifying thought gripped him, a claustrophobic panic tightening around his chest.
A soft, rhythmic knock on the wooden door abruptly shattered the silence.
"My lord?" Celia’s voice drifted through the thick wood, quiet and hesitant. "May I enter?"
Edric blinked, the stone walls of the bathhouse slowly snapping back into focus. He forced the terror down, burying it deep beneath the stoic mask he had spent weeks perfecting. "Enter."
The door creaked open, admitting a small gust of cool air and the young maid.
Celia stepped inside, her eyes carefully downcast out of respect, carrying a neatly folded stack of fresh, clean clothes over her arms. The heavy, blood-stained coat he had worn had already been completely removed from the room.
She set the fresh garments down on a wooden stool near the tub. "The Baron’s servants provided these, my lord, clean fresh clothes, more suitable for the cold frontier weather."
Edric didn't move. He barely acknowledged her presence, his gaze still fixed somewhere on the dark stone floor, his mind heavy and distant. "Leave them. Thank you, Celia."
Celia didn't immediately turn to go. She lingered by the stool, her fingers nervously twisting the fabric of her apron.
She looked at his pale face, his slumped shoulders, and the hollow look in his golden eyes. She had seen the aftermath down in the ditch, she knew the toll today had taken on him.
"My lord..." she began softly, her voice trembling slightly but filled with a profound, gentle sincerity.
Edric didn't look up, but he shifted slightly, signaling he was listening.
"I just... I wanted to thank you," Celia said, stepping a fraction closer. "For what you did today. For saving Lira."
"We were terrified inside that carriage, and when she was dragged out..." She swallowed hard, a small, watery smile touching her lips. "You didn't hesitate. You threw yourself into danger to protect her."
She took a quiet, steadying breath, wanting him to understand her words. "The people say terrible things about your House, about you."
She hesitated for a bit, "but the man who went down into that mud today... he wasn't a tyrant. What you did today was good, my lord. You protected your own."
Edric remained completely still, the water lapping gently against his chest. He didn't answer, unable to find the words to explain the terrifying duality warring inside his mind, but the heavy, suffocating tightness in his lungs eased just a fraction.
Celia offered a small, respectful curtsy. "I will be outside if you need anything else, my lord. Rest well."
She turned and quietly stepped out of the room, clicking the heavy door shut behind her.
Left alone in the rising steam, Edric looked back down at his clean hands. The guilt and the fear of the dormant soul hadn't vanished, but Celia's words hung in the quiet room like a shield against the dark.
He closed his eyes, let his body sink a little deeper into the warm water, and prepared himself for the morning.