The march ended at last.

Seventeen long days after leaving the capital, the Indrath Empire's army finally reached the Tramplin estate.

The soldiers spread out across the snowy ground, pitching tents only a kilometer away from the enemy's walls.

Even from this distance, the estate looked like a fortress carved into the mountains.

The walls were tall, dark, and built straight against the rocky slopes.

They blended into the cliffs so well that the whole place looked less like a home and more like a giant stone beast lying in wait.

Vined sat on his horse for a moment, staring at those walls.

His breath fogged in the cold air.

Something in his chest felt heavy, like a warning he couldn't shake off.

The feeling had started the moment their spies were caught. Now it only grew stronger.

He turned his eyes away, but the unease stayed.

Something didn't add up.

"Why send out scouts at the fourth star?" he muttered under his breath.

Fourth-star warriors didn't do scouting missions.

They had rank. Status. They led squads, guarded borders, protected nobles.

They weren't sent into forests to track footprints.

Unless the army they belonged to was strong enough to spare them.

But the Tramplin family wasn't that strong. On paper, they had only three swordmasters.

Maybe ten warriors at fifth star. Their total army was around a hundred thousand.

Not enough to send away so many high-level fighters for simple scouting work.

Vined frowned, the numbers running through his head again and again.

If the Tramplins truly had enough power to use fourth-stars as scouts, then their real strength had to be far greater than what the empire believed.

And that… was impossible.

At least, it should have been impossible.

The cold wind brushed past him.

The camps behind him were busy, noisy, alive, but around the estate, the mountains stood silent.

Something was wrong here.

Very wrong.

The longer Vined stared at those walls, the more certain he became of one thing:

The Tramplins were hiding something, and whatever it was… it wasn't small.

As Vined kept frowning at the distant walls, he heard the thud of a heavy warhorse stopping beside him.

A black stallion, covered in metal armor, snorted clouds of steam into the cold air.

Its rider was an old man with proud eyes.

"What are you thinking about?" the old man asked.

Vined didn't need to turn to know who it was.

He lifted his hand slightly, forming a thin sound barrier around them.

No soldier nearby would hear a single word now.

The last thing he needed was to spread panic or suspicion through the camp.

"My bad feeling isn't getting any better," Vined said quietly.

Duke Sant, his father-in-law and the second general of the army, let out a long sigh.

He knew exactly what Vined meant.

A few days ago, Vined had reported that the Tramplins had sent out at least ten fourth-star warriors as scouts.

Vined had dealt with them, but the numbers bothered him.

Those kinds of fighters should never be used for scouting unless something far more dangerous was hidden behind the walls.

And there was still the matter of Ravan.

That man shouldn't have had the power to cause real trouble… yet everything pointed toward him hiding something.

Duke Sant rubbed his forehead, then asked, "Any new reports from the empire?"

Vined nodded. "Yes, but nothing important. His Majesty sent word that Dean Rolack Zaran is still chasing the Clown."

He continued, "he found a few bases, destroyed them… but there's been no news since. The Clown hasn't shown himself."

The old man clicked his tongue and stared at the mountains again.

The silence between them felt heavy, too heavy for a normal war.

Something didn't sit right.

Something was coming.

After a while, Duke Sant straightened his back and spoke in a firm voice, "Summon all the captains and meet me at the conference tent."

His expression was sharp, but Vined caught the small flicker of unease in the old man's eyes.

Without another word, Duke Sant turned his black warhorse to the left and rode away, snow crunching under the hooves.

Vined bowed slightly. "I will."

Once his father-in-law was gone, the sound barrier faded.

The world returned with the usual noise of soldiers shouting orders, tents being set up, and metal clashing as weapons were checked.

But Vined barely heard any of it.

He fell back into his thoughts, deep, troubled thoughts.

This time, it wasn't the war that weighed on his mind.

It was his eldest son.

Just yesterday, he had received a letter from his wife.

Her handwriting was hurried, almost shaky.

She wrote that their son had visited the family estate… even though he had only recently returned to the academy after staying in the royal palace.

That alone wasn't strange. A boy visiting his mother wasn't something to worry about.

But then came the part that twisted Vined's stomach into a knot.

His wife wrote that their son looked different.

She had written that something was wrong with their son… deeply wrong.

Charlotte seemed worried too.

She said he looked lost all the time, walking around like his mind wasn't inside his body.

His eyes were sunken, his steps slow. He barely reacted when people spoke to him.

Sometimes he would stop in the middle of a corridor, staring at nothing, as if he had forgotten where he was going.

Meals went untouched, conversations slipped past him, and even familiar faces failed to pull a proper response from him.

It was like he was present in body alone, moving out of habit rather than intent, and that quiet emptiness unsettled everyone who noticed it.

Charlotte mentioned that he had been like this ever since they returned to the academy.

Always silent. Always dazed. Like a part of him had been left behind somewhere.

That was why Charlotte finally decided to bring him back to his mother, hoping that seeing home, seeing familiar faces, might help him snap out of it.

But it didn't.

His wife's letter said she couldn't sleep out of worry.

Their eldest son stayed quiet, stared at walls, forgot to eat unless she reminded him.

She didn't know what to do. So she asked Vined to come home as soon as possible.

Vined let out a heavy breath, snow misting in front of him.

He wanted to return.

Every part of him wanted to grab a horse and ride straight back to his estate.

To see his son with his own eyes. To know what had happened to him.

But reality pressed harder.

Right now, he was one of the two men leading one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers.

If he left… all of that weight would fall on Duke Sant alone.

His father-in-law was strong, but no general could carry a war of this size by himself.

Vined clenched his jaw.

He couldn't leave.

Not yet.

No matter how much his heart pulled him back home, duty held him in place like chains of iron.

The estate would have to wait. The war would have to come first.

But the worry in his chest didn't fade.

It grew. Like a quiet storm building inside him, waiting for the moment it would break.

"Haa…" Vined let out a long, tired sigh and lifted his eyes to the cloudy sky.

The air felt heavy, like the clouds were pressing down on his shoulders.

"Is it because I didn't let him join the war?" he whispered to himself.

He wasn't sure. The thought had been bothering him ever since he read the letter.

But after a moment, he shook his head. He knew his son too well.

Vivian wasn't the type to fall into a daze just because he was told to stay out of battle.

'No… it had to be something else.' He thought.

Maybe it was linked to Vivian's attempt to reach Grandmaster.

He had been obsessed with breaking through ever since he was told that only after reaching Grandmaster could he join the war.

But that idea felt wrong too.

Vined had never heard of any swordmaster drifting into a daze like this while trying to reach the next realm.

It didn't match anything he knew.

He rubbed his forehead, feeling the headache that had been growing for days.

"Haa… I wish I could return," he muttered.

The weight of the war, the strange behavior of the Tramplins, and now the fear about his son, it all piled up until it felt hard to breathe.

He didn't know what to do anymore.

If he returned to the estate, Duke Sant would be left alone to command one hundred and twenty thousand soldiers.

And if Duke Sant asked for additional reinforcements, it would take at least two months for any backup to arrive, organize, and take command.

Two months.

That kind of delay would ruin the whole plan.

It would give the Tramplins more time to prepare, more time to build strength, more time to strike first if they wished.

Vined clenched his fists around his reins.

Duty held him here.

Family pulled him back home.

And he stood in the middle, feeling lost in the kind of way no battlefield ever prepared him for.

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