Chương 228: 38. Those Who Stay, Those Who Leave 2

Lei Lian left with what remained of the able-bodied troops not long after Drake Tower came down.

"Not long," in practical terms, meant only a handful of breaths. The dust the collapse had thrown up hadn't fully settled; the air still carried that particular mixture of lime, charred wood, and spent powder, and my ears still rang faintly with an impact that had, for a moment, seemed to crack the entire night in half. But a battlefield never grants anyone the luxury of slowly gathering their wits.

The instant the tower fell, everyone was kicked straight out of whatever daze the blast had put them in, forced immediately to start thinking about the next thing that needed doing. Lei Lian stood before the ruins, one shoulder-plate still dusted grey, the ignition staff still in her hand. Her face showed nothing, as usual — as if what she'd just personally sent to its end wasn't a harbor watchtower, but a completed military report, ready to be filed and sealed.

Ignicia walked up to her and drew a wax-sealed letter from inside her coat. The seal was pressed deep and heavy, gleaming dark red under the firelight — like a drop of blood that had frozen mid-fall.

"Lei Lian," she said.

"Return to the capital directly. Report everything you witnessed here to my father, in person." Lei Lian didn't ask why. She didn't say I could still stay and fight. She simply took the letter, bowed her head, and answered.

"Understood." That was all. Watching from the side, I found myself thinking — not for the first time — that the people of this Dragon Kingdom had absolutely no sense of theater. In any other kingdom, a loyal general at a moment like this would have been practically obligated to deliver at least one round of This general begs to die at Your Highness's side rather than abandon this post — if only to give the onlookers something hot-blooded to feed on. But Lei Lian didn't offer it, and Ignicia clearly didn't want it.

One took the letter and left. The other handed it over and let go. Clean, immediate — as if the two of them hadn't just blown up a tower together, but were simply passing an umbrella back and forth in a courtyard. And that, precisely, was what made them terrifying. Because it meant they both understood: the most valuable thing right now wasn't emotion, it was time.

Not declarations of loyalty, but knowing exactly who needed to go where, who had to carry what, and who had to get the first-hand account of tonight back to the capital before anyone else did. As Lei Lian walked toward the blue dragon, she paused for the briefest instant as she passed me. She looked at me. I looked back. Honestly, I'd half-expected her to say something. Don't die, at minimum.

After all, her highest assessment of me over the past few hours had probably amounted to something like: hasn't fallen off the dragon yet — marginally functional. She said nothing of the sort. Just before swinging up into the saddle, she tossed back one flat line.

"You're harder to kill than I expected." I blinked, then shot back, "Thanks. I'll do my best to live up to such a staggeringly stingy compliment." She didn't look back. The blue dragon spread its wings and, trailing residual lightning and soot, launched into the night sky and vanished northward — fast, like an arrow drawn only a moment ago and already loosed toward some other battlefield. The instant Lei Lian was gone, it felt like another load-bearing pillar had been kicked out from under the entire situation.

Ignicia didn't pause even half a breath. She turned and began organizing the final wave of withdrawal. With Drake Tower destroyed, the harbor's defensive skeleton had been severed completely. Keeping anyone here now served no purpose beyond padding the enemy's body count.

So, batch by batch, she began releasing everyone still on-site — the remaining garrison troops, engineers, convoy escorts, couriers, laborers — ordering them, one group after another, to fall in with the northbound column and leave Isca Apubra behind. Firelight caught the side of her face, making her profile glow — and turning it colder at the same time.

"Your group follows the second wagon."

"Wounded from the west side fold into the rear column. No stragglers."

"Leave the last batch of equipment. Abandon it where it stands."

"Send word to the North Gate — the convoy doesn't stop. Anyone who falls behind climbs back up on their own." She issued each order in the same level voice, as if the ground beneath her hadn't spent the entire night on fire. Standing a little further back, I watched them pass her — soldiers just down from the tower, ash-covered engineers, clerks clutching ledgers and lockboxes, escorts supporting the wounded, one unit after another. And a strange feeling settled over me. She looked like she was seeing everyone off.

Not simply issuing a retreat order. But genuinely, one person at a time, putting everyone who could still leave alive onto the road out. By the time I put that thought into words, she had already lifted her eyes to me.

"Cedric." I stepped forward.

"Here."

"You're leaving too," she said. I blinked.

"... Just like that?"

"What else did you expect?" If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"I don't know — maybe a few kind words first? Something like, You worked hard tonight, Mr. Ambassador. You're honestly the most flight-incompetent person I've ever seen manage to come back alive off a dragon's back."

"I don't have that kind of time," she replied instantly, without even needing to think about it.

"Besides — you're Eckhaus's ambassador. There's no reason you need to stay with me to the bitter end." If she'd said that a few hours earlier, I probably would have been moved enough to grab my things on the spot, throw myself onto the first moving wagon, and offer up a prayer for her and eighteen generations of her ancestors while I was at it. Hearing it now, it just landed dry. Very dry. Like a mouthful of comfort you already know is fake, forced down anyway. So all I could manage was a dry laugh of my own.

"That line would have landed a lot better a few hours ago." She gave me a look, didn't take the bait, and simply said:"It's not too late now, either. Go." Did this woman have any idea that the calmer she sounded, the more wrong everything felt? But in the end, I didn't say anything more. Because the people around us were retreating, the convoy was moving, the fires were still burning, and the distant sounds of fighting and screaming hadn't fully stopped.

A battlefield isn't going to pause out of courtesy just because I wanted one more chance to ask, and what about you? I lowered my head and gathered what was left on me: the empty thunder-bomb pouch, the short knife, the log board, the ash-stained gloves, and an overall appearance that had drifted somewhere past "ambassador" and settled closer to "refugee moonlighting as a failed criminal." Then I walked toward the convoy. The harbor district had long since outgrown a word as simple as "chaotic."

If anything, it looked more like a pot that had already boiled over and been left on the fire anyway — messy, ruined, scorched, reeking, and liable to splash you in the face if you weren't careful. Looking around, there were really only three kinds of things still left in the harbor. The first kind: opportunists. Born with the instincts of cockroaches, these people crawled toward fire rather than away from it.

As long as there was a chance to pry something valuable from a dead man's fingers, they'd happily crouch in some corner rifling through crates while people were still being cut down out front and houses were still burning out back. The second kind: Yanxia Imperial soldiers. Some had scattered ashore from the vanguard transports; others had slipped in along the edges of the chaos.

They took whatever they found, cut down whoever they met, and carried out their looting and burning with far more skill than they'd ever shown at actual soldiering. To put it plainly — once a war reaches this stage, the only difference left between a man and a feral dog is whether or not he's wearing armor. As for the third kind— The dead. By far the most numerous. Slumped in street corners. Collapsed beside carts. Half-buried in rubble. Burned down to nothing but blackened shapes.

People who, just that morning, had still been arguing, haggling, wailing at the heavens — by now, most of them didn't even have the strength left for that. They simply lay there in silence, offering the harbor's most honest testimony as to what war actually is. I made my way through all of it and finally reached the northbound convoy. The instant Jessi spotted me, she leaned out from the side of the covered wagon.

"Young master, hurry up!" She waved at me.

"Any slower and the Yanxia troops will be boarding before you do."

"That won't do," I said, climbing up.

"I haven't sunk so low that I'm fighting invaders for a seat."

"Looking at you right now, 'sunk so low' is doing you a favor." I'd barely sat down before she shoved a dry cloth of unknown origin into my hands, telling me to wipe the soot and sweat off my face. Beside her, Alvira sat ramrod straight, staff laid across her knees, wearing the exact expression of someone who could watch the entire world burn down and still find the composure to complain that the flames lacked proper elegance.

Yozora sat further back, wrapped in her cloak, as quiet as a shadow that had wandered into the wagon without quite meaning to. The wagon lurched into motion, rolling toward the North Gate. The wheels ground over the paving stones with a low, heavy rumble. I leaned back against the wagon wall, thinking I might finally get a moment to breathe — and that was when Alvira spoke, out of nowhere.

"Is this really all right, though?" Her tone was light. As light as someone asking whether to close the window for the night. But I knew that wasn't what she meant. I turned to look at her. Alvira was watching the firelight sway outside, her profile cast cold in its glow.

"Leaving Ignicia there. Alone." I opened my mouth. Instinct beat my brain by half a step.

"Please," I said.

"She's the Fire Dragon Princess." The instant those words left my mouth, I wanted to laugh. No — not laugh. I wanted to reach up and strangle the mouth that had just said them. Because it was dry. Hollow. Thin as paper. Forget Alvira not buying it — I didn't even believe it myself. So what if she was a princess? So what if she was a fire dragon? So what if she was strong? Being strong doesn't mean you don't need to retreat.

Being a princess doesn't mean it's simply your job to clean up everyone else's mess at the very end, all on your own. Jessi didn't answer right away. She just tilted her head and looked at me. It wasn't a sharp look. Just an accurate one — accurate enough to show she'd already seen exactly how much unease was hiding underneath that hollow little line. The wheels kept turning. The North Gate drew closer, while the harbor's fires still burned in patches behind us.

Wind pushed through the wagon's curtain, carrying the mixed smell of smoke and blood inside. I stared at the swaying cloth, and something slow and nameless began rising in my chest. It wasn't hot-blooded resolve. It wasn't romance. It wasn't even the kind of noble sentiment you could describe to someone later and still come off sounding like a decent person. It felt more like a splinter. Barely noticeable at first.

But the moment you actually sit down and try to move on as if nothing happened, it starts working its way deeper into the flesh, bit by bit, until there's no way to sit that doesn't hurt somewhere. And then a thought struck me. Tonight, every single person had been sent off by Ignicia's own hand. Lei Lian — sent to the capital. The garrison — folded back to the next defensive line. The engineers, the wounded, the clerks, the delegation, the convoy — all of them, batch by batch, pushed onto the road out.

She had found somewhere for every one of them to go. Everyone except herself. The moment that thought finished forming, it felt like someone had shoved me square in the chest, right there inside the moving wagon.

"Jessi," I said suddenly. She frowned.

"What?"

"Keep going without me." The wagon went quiet for a beat.

"What?" Jessi stared at me. I was already gathering back up everything I'd just set down, the words coming out fast enough that even I could tell I sounded like someone inventing excuses for a decision that had already been made.

"Head straight for the capital. Alvira, Yozora — keep an eye on the delegation's crates in the back. Don't let some opportunist walk off with them halfway there." Alvira fixed her eyes on me.

"What are you going to do?" A very good question. Good enough that, for a moment, I honestly didn't have an answer. What was I going to do? I was going back. I was going to find the woman who had arranged an exit for absolutely everyone else, and left none for herself. I was about to do something almost certainly irrational, entirely unnecessary, and with essentially no chance of making a difference. So in the end, all I could offer, honestly, was:"Something even I think is completely ridiculous."

"Cedric." Jessi's voice dropped.

"You—" She didn't get to finish. I'd already thrown the curtain aside and jumped straight off the moving wagon. The impact sent a jolt up through my heels and into my knees, which very nearly buckled on the spot. I staggered forward two clumsy steps before I managed to catch my balance. Behind me, the driver swore in alarm, and Jessi tore the curtain back, her voice nearly shredded by the wind.

"You absolute idiot—!" Yeah. Damn it, Cedric. You really are an idiot. I cursed myself with zero mercy, then turned to face the firelight, the smoke, and the harbor district still in the process of falling apart, and started running back. The wind hit me head-on, carrying ash, heat, and the smell of blood — as if the entire Port of Isca Apubra had gathered up ahead just to watch what kind of fool I was about to make of myself. I ran. I gasped.

And some small, still-functioning part of my brain calmly noted that I had, in fact, lost my mind. I'd already been on the wagon. I could have just gone. All I'd needed to do was play a little dumber, be a little more selfish, and keep telling myself that hollow line — she's the Fire Dragon Princess — the one that hadn't even convinced me the first time I said it. If I'd managed that much, I'd be sitting safely in that wagon right now, rolling comfortably toward the capital. Instead, I'd jumped.

"Fine," I muttered through gritted teeth, at the wind clawing my face and at my own thoroughly unreasonable brain.

"Stupid it is." And then I ran faster.