“Why o one answer me? Where is His Majesty? Where are the other Round Table knights?” Landevale demanded, her voice cutting through the thick air of the pace halls. The chamberins, the ministers, the aides, the servants, the guards—everyone she entered avoided her gaze, their faces pale and tight-lipped.

  “Why is the entire Camelot spiring against me when it es to my brother?” Her voice cracked, anger and desperation seeping through. She was moments from tears, though her pride kept them at bay—for now.

  Patience had never been Landevale’s virtue, and now was no exception. She stormed through the pace like a tempest, tearing through every corridor and room, scattering startled attendants and guards who scrambled to stop her.

  But none of them dared to truly stand in her way. She was, after all, the Lioness of Leodegrance, a knight of the Round Table—and a force of nature when angered.

  “Your Majesty!” she bellowed, her voice eg through the ornate halls. “Gahad! Percival!” Eaame lea sharpened into an accusation.

  It was at the back of the pace, in a quieter, more desote wing, that she found them. A cluster of Round Table knights l around a single locked door like nervous vultures. Their faces were shadowed with fatigue, their stances uneasy.

  They noticed her immediately, but none of them moved to greet her. None except Gahad.

  “Landevale—” Gahad stepped forward, his arms outstretched, and in one swift motion, he pulled her into an embrace that was more of a desperate restraint than fort.

  “Let me go!” she roared, struggling against his iron grip. Her strength, formidable as it was, was no match for his. “Where is His Majesty? This is about my brother, isn’t it?! What’s happeo him? Do you know where he is?! LET ME GO!”

  Her cries reverberated ione hallway, but the knights surrounding the door stood mute and rigid, their faces averted. The silence was deafening, and it only fueled her rage. She cushed at Gahad, her heart pounding with a mix of fury and dread.

  The silence wasn’t just an absence of sound—it was an answer in itself. A cruel, eg void that told her everything she didn’t want to know. Behind that locked door y the truth she was chasing, but none of them would let her near it.

  “Landevale,” Gahad said softly, his voice breaking slightly as he tightened his hold. He didn’t meet her eyes. “You don’t want to go in there.”

  But she did. She wa more than anything. A, as she felt the tension in the air arouhe way the knights averted their gazes, the way Gahad’s arms trembled ever so slightly—something inside her twisted.

  The truth was oher side of that door. But the truth, she realized, might be worse than anything she could imagine.

  “Your Majesty!” Landevale’s voice broke as the tears finally came, her posure shattering. “Your Majesty…! Where’s my brother?! Is he iell me you’ve found his body! What did they say ierrogation? What… what did they do to him?!”

  CLACK.

  The sound was louder than it should have been, a sie that silehe world. The air grew thick, the stillness oppressive. Even the wind, faint as it had been, seemed to hold its breath.

  The door swung open.

  The man who had ope didn’t look at them, didn’t speak. He left the door ajar as he turned and walked baside, his tall, anding frame now stooped, bearing an invisible weight. His leather apron hung heavily on him, stained dark with blood, and in one hand, he still held a butcher knife.

  Burn didn’t stop them from entering, but he didn’t ihem either. His silence, like the door, en-ended—a choice they were left to make.

  Landevale’s wide, tear-filled eyes darted to the room beyond. The first thing she noticed was the bright, unnatural glow of the space. Then came the details. A loop of pig iines hung on a wooden bar, swayily. A pig’s snout discarded in the er like trash.

  She swallowed hard, wishing—desperately—that her body would give in, that she would faint and escape the sight before her. But fate was not so merciful.

  Gahad didn’t stop her this time. He stood rooted in pce, his fa unreadable mask of grief and exhaustion. And so, urained, Landevale stepped forward, trembling as she crossed the threshold into the hellscape.

  There, sitting on a chair in the ter of the room, was Burn. Blood streaked his hands, his arms, even his face. He looked like a man who had been devoured and spat back out by his own demons. His pallor was ghostly, his eyes sunken, and as he wiped at his with a bloodied cloth, he looked up at her—hollow and weary.

  “Where’s Aroche…?” Landevale whispered, her voice a fragile thread. Her body felt unnaturally cold without Gahad’s arms arouhe warmth of his embrace repced by a creeping numbness.

  “Where’s my brother, Your Majesty…?” she repeated, barely audible now, her words trembling like her frame.

  Her feet carried her forward, though every fiber of her being screamed to stop, to turn back. Her eyes darted around the room, cataloging each grotesque detail until they nded oable.

  Stripped bones. Fragments, really—too small to piece together into something whole. It was all that remained of Aroche, all that Burn had been able to salvage after weeks of butchering, disseg, and s through what had once been human—and pigs. The rest had been digested, deposed, or lost.

  It had been two weeks since Aroche’s death and the war, and this was all that remained of him.

  Landevale’s breath hitched. The room spun, her vision blurred, and her legs buckled beh her. This time, fate granted her reprieve.

  She fai st.

  ***

  “I thought I could pick apart every microscopic piece of flesh that had fused into the pigs,” Burn said, his voice low as he held onto the warmth of Man. His grip was firm, like she was the st thread keeping him tethered to the earth. “Every cell that had absorbed even a trace of him, I could feel it. I kept cutting and cutting, separating inch by inch.”

  His voice cracked, almost imperceptibly. “But it wasn’t him anymore. It was… flesh. A pig’s flesh.”

  He had thought of everything. Every absurd, grotesque method. He even sidered digging through the pigpen, sifting through the mud and mao find anything that might still belong to Aroche. The idea of calling a Vision user crossed his mind too—someone who could craft a spell to separate the pigs from his best friend. But even theopped himself.

  “I couldn’t ask anyone else to bear that job. I couldn’t subjeyoo what I did. What I must do.”

  So, he did it all himself. Everything and beyond. Alone.

  In the end, he mao retrieve something—some bones, fragments of what were unmistakably Aroche’s. He pced them carefully into a box, resting them gently among flowers. A hollow victory, if ever there was one.

  “Caliburn…” Man whispered. She couldn’t see his face as it remained buried in the crook of her neck. Her hand traced through his hair, soft and slow, as if she could pry him away gently. But his grip was ironrelenting, almost desperate.

  She khat even now, even today, he believed someone had to do it. Someone had to piece together his best friend, no matter how inplete, no matter how impossible, no matter where or in what form.

  And he had chosen himself.

  Man closed her eyes. Words felt insuffit—there was no nguage for this level of loss, no balm for this kind of wound.

  “Caliburn… you’re human. You’re not supposed to bear this burden.”

  “I am a sword.”

  He replied.

  In the safety of her warmth, Burn finally surreo something he had fought against for 23 years. Not even the loops, the loss of his father, or the horrors of war had broken him. But now, in this moment, he broke.

  His tears were warm but Man’s presence was warmer.

  Not a human.

  Perhaps a butcher knife. Perhaps a throne. Perhaps the w. Perhaps the Empire itself. Perhaps a sword.

  But not a human.