“There was a tremor too. Looks like the ground gave way.”

One of the mercenaries Ariela had assigned to her said it with a grim face.

“……We should head over there.”

Blair gripped the reins tightly and spurred her horse forward. The terrain was rough, twice as demanding as riding on flat ground, so she could not afford to relax for even a moment.

The deeper they went into the forest, the darker it grew under the dense canopy, dim as early evening.

She was beginning to feel a creeping unease in the strange, cold air when—

“That’s—!”

Not far ahead, a jumble of collapsed earth and rocks lay scattered across the ground.

“It looks like the area above gave way.”

Where the mercenary pointed, a steep cliff face was visible, clearly freshly broken.

“Be careful. We don’t know what’s out here.”

At the mercenary’s warning, Blair tensed every muscle and slowly scanned the surroundings.

Then something half-buried in a mound of dirt caught her eye. It looked oddly familiar. Blair dismounted and walked closer.

“!”

Her heart dropped. Buried in the rubble of the collapsed cliff was an insignia bearing the Eiron crest.

She frantically cleared away the dirt and picked it up. The mercenaries, seeing her reaction, ran to her side.

“This…… this is the insignia Kalintz and the knights were wearing.”

Blair stared at the insignia in her hand with a blank expression. She didn’t know whose it was, but one thing was certain: something had happened to them.

“We’ll search the surrounding area.”

The mercenaries set their faces and began looking around.

It’s just an insignia. He probably dropped it trying to get clear of the collapse.

This was exactly the moment to stay calm and focus on finding traces.

Blair steadied herself and searched the collapsed rubble alongside the mercenaries.

They had been sifting through the dirt looking for any sign of Kalintz and the knights when one of the mercenaries called out to her in an urgent voice.

“There’s movement on the other side. We should take cover.”

Blair held her breath and followed the mercenaries behind the undergrowth.

Soon, sounds of movement came from deep within the dense forest. From the footsteps, there were quite a few of them. But they stopped moving almost immediately.

“……It seems they’ve noticed us too.”

The surroundings went deathly quiet in an instant.

The duke might not have only released the mutant.

They could be more of Kalintz’s would-be killers. Blair sharpened every sense and closed her hand around the hilt of the dagger Ariela had given her.

The breathless standoff stretched on, and then someone rose slowly from the undergrowth on the other side.

“……?”

A familiar shade of brown hair.

“Your Highness, they’re armed. Please fall back to the—hm?”

The mercenary’s urgent warning died in his throat. Blair had abruptly thr*st her head up above the undergrowth.

“Sir Werner?”

Blair caught the brown hair flinching.

“Sir Werner! It’s me!”

She called out loudly again. The still undergrowth on the other side erupted as someone shot to their feet.

“Your Highness?!”

Blair let out a breath of relief and walked toward Ernst, whose eyes had gone wide with shock.

“How on earth are you……”

Ernst murmured as though he had seen a ghost. Then, one after another, the Eiron knights under Kalintz’s command emerged from behind him, and Rashid Remarque along with them, though when he had joined the group was unclear.

But Kalintz was not among them.

“What in the world are you doing out here!”

“I’ll explain later. Where’s His Highness?”

Blair asked Ernst back as he shouted in agitation. But he quickly looked away and said nothing.

Blair swept her eyes over the other knights. Not one of them answered her question.

The grip of her hand tightened. The insignia she had been holding in her left hand since finding it in the rubble pressed cold and sharp against her skin.

“Sir Werner. I’ll ask again. Where is Kalintz?”

Her voice wavered. She didn’t care.

Please. Anyone. Just tell me he’s fine. That he stepped away to scout. That he’s moving separately. Or if not that……

Blair’s legs buckled beneath her. Rashid caught her quickly.

“Are you all right.”

“Please tell me, Your Grace. This insignia, is it Kalintz’s?”

Blair opened her tightly clenched left hand and held it out.

She already knew the answer. Every Eiron knight, Ernst included, had their insignia pinned to their chest without exception.

“……Where did you find this.”

Blair couldn’t bring herself to answer, and one of Ariela’s mercenaries spoke for her.

“We found it while searching through the rubble of the collapsed cliff.”

A brief silence followed. Then Ernst opened his mouth in a stiff voice.

“We encountered a monstrous beast in the hunting grounds and were fighting it when the ground must have been unstable. The cliff collapsed without warning…… and His Highness Kalintz was swept away with it.”

Blair felt her heart drop straight to the floor.

Kalintz had been swept away by a collapsing cliff? The man whose combat skills surpassed the finest royal knights, who had survived dozens of assassination attempts?

“……This is Kalintz.”

Not anyone else. Not him.

“He wouldn’t go down this easily.”

The thought, somewhere between belief and desperate hope, took over her mind. He would have found a way out of this somehow.

“……That’s right. An insignia can fall off.”

Ernst said it with steel in his eyes.

“There’s nothing we can say for certain. Right now, what matters is that we all focus on finding traces.”

Blair steadied herself and nodded.

Ernst ordered the knights to spread out and search the rubble and the surrounding area. Ariela’s mercenaries joined in and the search resumed.

“……How did you get all the way out here, though.”

“Those mercenaries are Ariela’s escorts. Did she tell you something?”

After Rashid, Ernst asked carefully.

Blair composed herself and took the antidote Ariela had given her from her pocket.

“Yes. According to her……”

Blair explained everything from the beginning. When she finished, Ernst’s expression twisted into something dangerous.

“D*mn Brienne. I suspected that monster was his work.”

“Ariela said…… it’s nearly impossible for a human to fight a beast that’s been mutated like that.”

Rashid, who had been listening in silence, spoke up.

“You knew it was that dangerous and still came out here. With only two escorts.”

His grey eyes had darkened, and in them worry and something unresolved were tangled together.

“Your Grace. If the situation were reversed and I were the one in danger, what would you have done?”

“I would have come running to help. Without question.”

“Even if you hadn’t trained a day in your life?”

“……I would have.”

“Then it’s the same for me. Even with no escort at all, I would have come without hesitation.”

Rashid’s gaze dropped.

“It seems we feel the same way.”

Only the person that feeling was directed at was different for each of them.

Rashid was silent for a long moment after Blair’s words, then slowly opened his mouth.

“……I understand what you mean.”

He bowed his head, almost like a farewell, and walked toward the others searching through the rubble.

Blair bit her lip, fighting back the surge of emotion rising in her chest.

Saying it out loud, like an admission of her own heart, had sent everything she had been pushing into a corner crashing over her like a wave.

And with it came urgency again. The fear that she might not get to tell him. That she might lose him forever.

Then Ernst, who had been quiet, spoke softly.

“His Highness will be all right.”

He added with a faint smile,

“He’s not the type to leave before hearing your answer.”

Blair rubbed at the sting that had crept into the tip of her nose and said,

“Thank you, Sir.”

And a short while later, as if to prove Ernst’s words, someone shouted out.

“Over here! This way! Come look at this!”

Blair ran straight toward the voice. Several knights had gathered near a large tree.

One of them held out a lasso made of tough rope.

“This…… this is definitely His Highness’s.”

Ernst took it and said in an excited voice,

“The way it’s twisted and the knot, I’m certain. He must have thrown this over the tree to keep himself from hitting the ground directly.”

Blair looked at the large tree Ernst was pointing to. The other end of the cut lasso was tied around a thick branch.

“Then Kalintz is—!”

“What did I say. He’s not the type to go down that easily.”

Blair let out a long breath of relief and pressed her hand to her chest.

“Still, it’s too soon to relax. He may have avoided hitting the ground, but his body would have taken an enormous impact. And the fact that he moved from the spot despite that means……”

“It must be because of the mutant.”

Ernst nodded without a word.

“Ariela said it would chase its target until its own body gave out, unless given the antidote. Truly horrifying……”