"So this means that you had wanted to lie when you said you agree?" Darion asked.

Aldric looked at him straight across the table, breathing hard. His eyes were red now, not from injury but from exhaustion and frustration layered on top of each other until they became something ugly. The man looked like he had aged several years in a single morning.

"I honestly don’t know why this is hard for you to do," Darion continued. "The same way you wrecked Percvale was the same thing I did to Valdenmoor. I don’t know why it’s difficult for you to accept and move on."

"It’s not the same," Aldric said immediately.

His voice came out rough.

"Because in the end... you won." He laughed once, bitterly. "You burned my barracks. You killed my men. You took probably took my treasury. You burned my farmland." He looked up sharply. "How exactly do I recover from that?"

Darion leaned back slightly in his chair.

That was a fair question.

The damage they had done to Valdenmoor had been significant. He wasn’t blind to that. The farmland alone would hurt them badly. The livestock losses would hurt worse over time. Replacing breeding stock was not something a kingdom did overnight.

But Percvale had survived worse.

When he first arrived in Percvale there had been nothing. No money. No food reserves worth mentioning. Knights so starved they looked half-dead before lifting a sword. The kingdom had been collapsing slowly, piece by piece, before he even arrived.

He still remembered hearing about the horses.

They had eaten horses.

Not one or two out of desperation, but enough that Percvale’s stable numbers had dropped catastrophically. Hundreds reduced to barely over twenty because starving people eventually stopped caring whether an animal was meant for riding or not.

And despite all of that...

Percvale was recovering.

Slowly, yes. Painfully, yes. But recovering.

"You rebuild," Darion said calmly. "That’s how."

Aldric scoffed.

"Rebuild?" he repeated. "You say that like rebuilding a kingdom is simple."

"It isn’t," Darion replied. "I know that better than you think."

Aldric stared at him.

Darion continued before the man could interrupt.

"When I arrived in Percvale, there was nothing there worth envying. The treasury was empty. The knights were starving. The farmland was failing. Half the people looked like they had already accepted death and were simply waiting for it or something.."

He paused.

"And yet we’re still here."

The room became quiet again.

Vera sat beside him without speaking, watching both men carefully. Her expression remained neutral, though Darion suspected she was listening very closely to every word Aldric said now that the matter of the oath had become complicated.

Aldric looked down at the table.

"You still don’t understand," he muttered.

"No," Darion said. "I understand perfectly."

He leaned forward slightly.

"You think Valdenmoor is ruined because this is the first time your kingdom has suffered real damage." His voice stayed calm. "Percvale has been suffering damage for years."

Aldric looked back up.

Darion continued.

"Years ago, the first invasion weakened Percvale badly. After that came more attacks. More pressure and more demands. Different kingdoms taking pieces whenever they thought they could get away with it." His eyes stayed on Aldric. "Valdenmoor was one of them."

Aldric’s face shifted slightly.

"Your father." Darion said.

According to Garren, Valdenmoor had participated during the period after Percvale’s first major collapse. Not as the primary aggressor, but as one of the many opportunists who saw weakness and decided weakness deserved to be exploited.

Percvale had been bleeding for years.

Kingdom after kingdom had taken their turn.

Some took land. Some took livestock. Some demanded trade concessions. Others simply raided because they could.

Valdenmoor had not started the destruction.

But they had contributed to it.

"You inherited the benefits of what your father helped create," Darion said. "A weakened Percvale. A starving Percvale. A Percvale too broken to resist properly." He gestured slightly around the room. "And when I refused to hand over the farmland, you decided to push harder."

Aldric didn’t answer immediately.

Darion could see the conflict on the man’s face now. Anger was still there, but so was something else. Thought.

Possibly realization.

"You make it sound justified," Aldric finally said quietly.

Darion shrugged once.

"I make it sound reciprocal."

Silence again.

The torchlight flickered softly against the walls of the side room. Somewhere outside in the castle corridor, footsteps moved past and faded again.

Aldric looked exhausted now.

The anger from earlier had burned through most of his remaining energy. What remained was a man trying to process the collapse of everything he had assumed would never collapse.

"You know what’s funny?" Darion asked after a moment.

Aldric looked at him warily.

"When I first met you, I actually thought you might be reasonable."

That earned the faintest reaction from Vera beside him. Not quite amusement, but close.

"You listened," Darion continued. "You asked questions. You didn’t seem like some mad tyrant."

"I wasn’t," Aldric snapped immediately.

"No?" Darion tilted his head slightly. "You sent two hundred knights to destroy farmland and kill livestock because someone refused to surrender territory to you, after I pleaded for more time and explained my situation."

Aldric said nothing.

Darion let the silence sit there deliberately.

"You could have negotiated," he said eventually. "You could have granted more time. You could have looked at Percvale and understood that squeezing a dying territory harder wasn’t going to magically create fourteen thousand gold." He paused. "Instead you decided fear would work faster."

Aldric’s eyes shifted away for the first time.

That small movement told Darion enough.

Not guilt exactly, but awareness.

Then—

The side room door opened.

Everyone turned immediately.

A knight stepped aside and Garren entered the place, then walked towards the hall.

His clothes still carried traces of soot from Valdenmoor. There was dried blood along one sleeve. His expression, however, was focused entirely on Darion.

Something about his face made Darion straighten slightly.

Garren looked at Aldric first.

Then at Vera.

Then finally at Darion.

"Pardon my interruption my lord," he said carefully.

There was a brief pause.

Then...