Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king-Chapter 1060: Departure

Alpheo stood on the rise, his gaze climbing the sun-bleached ramparts of the city that had been his sanctuary and his forge for thirteen years.

He could still vividly recall the day he had first arrived at these gates, a man with little more than the barest skeletal remains of a plan and a staggering, nearly translucent mountain of dreams. It had been a desperate gamble, where the dice of luck and iron mixed in the best of way , in something that happens perhaps once in a century. By all rights of the world, he should have died in the dirt; instead, he had built a princedom.

He closed his eyes, allowing the architecture of the place to etch itself into his mind, the smell of the bakeries, the rhythmic clanging of the smithies, the laughter of the children who knew no other world but the one he had secured.

This was home. This was where he had finally stopped being a ghost and started being a man.

This was where he truly started to live.

"And people are coming to take it from you."

The voice, which had remained a muffled whisper for so long resurfaced now with the clarity of a bell. It made his chest tighten.

They are coming to steal it. Thieves, every last one of them.

He pictured them: the high-born princes sitting jolly in their saddles, their laughter ringing out over the thud of thousands of hooves. They knew nothing of the bone-deep agony he had shed to turn this dust into stone. They cared nothing for the blood spilled to buy this peace. To them, Yarzat was just a territory to be partitioned, a lowborn’s mistake to be corrected.

Are you going to let it happen? Are you truly going to let them lead you in chains once more?A slave?You?Once more?With a leash to answer at their call?Like a dog...

For the first time in his life, Alpheo reached a perfect consensus with him. He felt the weight of the iron shackles that had once defined his existence, the cold bite of the metal against his wrists.

"Never again," he whispered to the wind and only heard by it, though everyone would feel its consequences.

He would never have iron put upon his hands again. If the world demanded his submission, he would give it only his corpse.Death was the only coin he would pay.

He looked back at the city walls rising behind him. If he were to fail, if his genius faltered for even a second, those walls would be tested until they crumbled.

He hoped it would not come to that. But hope was a luxury for boys and poets. No, hope was dead. It had to be. In its place, he forged a plan, he had no trust for hope but he trusted his plan.

He would show them. He would show the comfortable lords and the manicured princes exactly what happens when they cornered him.

This would not be the chronicle of his fall. They would all die. They had to. The Prince of Oizen with his hollow crown, the Big Bull of Kakunia, the arrogant Cock of Ezvania, and Nibadur, the architect who thought himself a god.

He closed his eyes, and for a fleeting, dark second, he allowed himself to dream. He didn’t dream of gold or peace; he dreamed of his fingers closing around their throats. He imagined the silence that would follow as he ignored their prayers, his hands pressing into their tracheas until the bone snapped,the final, satisfying weight of a man who had toiled more than all of them combined, multiplied by a thousand.

His life had been but a long march to the grave, there would be a time when he would miss that final pit that would claim him to the dark, but this?It would not be.

The sudden, piercing screech of black birds broke his reverie. Crows and ravens cawed in the sky above, circling the marching columns of the Yarzat host.

They would care not where the meat came from, as long as they had plenty of.

They were the camp followers of death, faithful scavengers that had learned over the years that wherever Alpheo’s banner flew, they would be well-fed.

This time it would be no different.

He looked at his army, his state, and the family he had built. It was a duty, something he could finally warm himself with . This time, it was no longer about his personal wants or his selfish desires for safety. It was higher than that.

He was higher than he was before.

A crown was a pretty thing, he had seeked it for so long. And only now that everything he loved was about to burn , he just realised how big was the shadow it cast.

’’Dear?"

The soft, melodic voice drifted from behind him, acting as a tether that pulled Alpheo back from the dark, cold heights of his own thoughts and onto the mortal plain. The internal roar of his vengeful thoughts vanished and melted away as if they never was.

He turned, and the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding escaped him. She was there.He feared she would not, but she was.

How long had he waited for this specific silence? He had once feared he had burned every bridge between them. But as he looked into those deep green eyes, that had seen him when he laid himself bare and at his most triumphant, he realized not all was lost.

His son was right.

They stood motionless, the space between them filled with the ghosts of a thousand unspoken apologies. Her hand moved nervously against the silk of her gown, brushing against the thigh he knew so well, a thigh he had spent countless nights kissing and biting in the safety of their bed, their bodies warming against each other, the smell and taste of her on his tongue.

How long had the frost sat between them? Too many cold nights on opposite sides of a vast, silent room. Behind him, his commanders and friends stood like statues, their capes snapping in the wind, waiting for their captain to steer the ship toward the storm that promised naught but death.

Alpheo was acutely aware of their gazes, and what they expected.

The silence was broken not by words, but by the light, persistent small tugging of cloth at his waist.

Alpheo looked down, his features instantly softening into a genuine smile as he beheld his daughter. At four years old, she was a living mirror of her mother, possessing the same graceful poise and the same piercing, soulful gaze. She peered up at him with the raw, unfiltered affection of a girl who believed her father was the strongest force in the universe.

"When will you come back?" she asked, her small hand coming up to rest idly against his shoulder.

"Soon, my little star," he replied, his voice thick as he leaned down to kiss her cheek, the scent of lavender and home clinging to her skin.He would remember that smile when he was on the field, he knew that.It would give him the strength he would need.

"Do you have to go?" her eyes filled with a sudden, devastating sadness.

How many times such quesstion were asked to fathers about to do their duty?How hard was it to leave them knowing they could never come back to witness such moments again?

"I do," he whispered. He couldn’t see his own eyes, but he felt the heat behind them, mirroring the sorrow in hers.

He stepped back, allowing Jasmine to take the girl back into her arms. The child buried her face in her mother’s neck, a small sad moan escaping her.

"I would have liked for Basil to bid me goodbye, too," Alpheo muttered, his voice trailing off as he fought to keep the silence from reclaiming the garden.

"I am sure he will come to regret not doing so," Jasmine said softly, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. "I suppose I should call it a child’s pride. Who knew he had one too..."

"I gather so as well..." Alpheo let out a long, ragged sigh. He was asking for too much; he was asking for the world to be perfect even as he went away. He turned to go, his hand moving to his sword hilt. "I need to-"

"Wait," Jasmine called out.

She stepped forward, the distance between them closing until he could feel the warmth of her breath. "I... I cannot let you go like this. Not...like that. I’ve spent so much..... But looking at you now, I don’t want the last thing you remember of me to be my silence. I’m sorry, I—"

She fumbled for the words, her eyes searching his for a path through the bitterness they had shared. Alpheo felt a profound sense of relief wash over him, a weight lifting from his chest that he hadn’t realized was suffocating him. He smiled, a soft, weary thing, watching her struggle to bridge the gap.

Before she could find the correct sentence to mend half a year of hurt, he reached out, his hands gently framing her face. He leaned in, placing his forehead firmly against hers, closing his eyes to shut out the rest of the world.

"There is no need for apologies" he whispered, his voice vibrating between them. "I am already happy. I am satisfied.’’

He truly was.

"Let us continue this talk after all of this... yes?"

Jasmine slowly set their daughter down onto the sun-warmed stone, her fingers lingering on the girl’s shoulder for strength before she reached out. She pressed her palm against Alpheo’s hand, the skin of his knuckles cold from the morning air and the proximity of his steel plate. As she did, her eyes caught on a small, weathered detail she hadn’t noticed in the dim light of their recent, colder months.

There, tucked into a deliberate notch-hole near the gorget of his breastplate, was a tiny, hand-carved wooden rose.

"You still have it?" she asked, her voice breathless. It had been thirteen years since she had given him that clumsy token, back when they were nothing but a girl and a man who promised her the world.

It was organic when she last had seen it, now it was all of wood.

"I have never left without it," Alpheo replied, his gaze intensifying. "As I said... we will speak more when the dust settles."

"Will you be well?" The question was laid trembling between them.

Alpheo looked at her, and for a fleeting second, the "Fox" vanished. He could have told her the truth, that he was walking into a storm of four crowns and more than ten thousand spears. He could have told her what?The truth?

He did once...and looked where it got him.

Instead, he straightened his shoulders, the obsidian-black armor catching the light like a predator’s mane that was proud on his domain. "They are coming to burn our home, Jasmine. Do not fear for me. Pity them, for it is not I who shall bear the weight of a father’s wrath." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

He didn’t wait for a reply. He leaned in and kissed her then and there, a fierce, desperate claim in the presence of his army.

Behind them, the tension that had held his commanders in a respectful, pained silence finally snapped. The Legates of Yarzat let out a cacophony of jeers and raucous cheers. In the midst of it, there was even a stray boot that sailed through the air, tumbling end-over-end before landing with a dull thud a few meters from the couple.

Alpheo broke the kiss, turning to find Asag hopping clumsily on one foot toward the discarded footwear. The man looked up, offering a wink that said ’About time’ before continuing his awkward skip to recover his gear.

The absurdity of it broke the spell of the looming war.

Rosalind was the first to let out a bright, ringing laugh for his uncle, followed quickly by Jasmine’s breathless giggle, and finally by Alpheo himself.

They laughed together in the golden light of the courtyard. They laughed and laughed, because they knew the sweetness of this summer was a fleeting gift. They laughed because they knew the snow was coming, and when it fell, it would be stained red.