CHAPTER 50: STAY TOGETHER

Reichardt moved like a weapon that had long forgotten the need for hesitation, absolute, merciless, beautiful in its efficiency. His sword cleaved through the air in arcs of silver fire, each motion deliberate, economical, born from a lifetime drawn in blood and discipline. The forest light caught the blade’s edges, turning every strike into a fragment of lightning.

Ahce fired beside him, rifle kicking against her shoulder with controlled fury. Bang. Reload. Bang. Beasts fell, cracked earth blooming beneath their collapsing weight, but for every body that dropped, two more rose snarling from shadow and smoke.

They were endless.

Unnatural.

Wrong.

"Fall back!" Reichardt barked, voice sharp as a snapped wire.

A beast lunged mid-air. Reichardt grabbed Ahce’s reins and wrenched her horse sharply aside, the creature’s claws carving the wind where her throat had been a heartbeat before. They tore across the forest floor together, earth splintering under pounding hooves, monstrous snarls clawing at their backs.

When distance birthed a fragile safety, Reichardt pulled her behind the armored shelter of a colossal fallen tree. Moss and roots towered above them like nature’s barricade, and only then did Ahce exhale, breath ragged, pulse frantic in her throat.

"Hybrids shouldn’t exist anymore," she said between breaths, hands shaking as she refilled the rifle chamber. "They were wiped out. Years ago..."

"Not all of them."

But they look like tainted blood rather than hybrids to me.

The words were stones dropped into dark water.

She turned toward him, and the sight of his face stole her next breath, not from fear, but recognition. His expression was not that of a noble cornered in a hunt. It was ancient, somber, bruised by recollection and war. Something far deeper than danger looked back at her.

Before she could demand more, a final beast exploded from the mist.

Reichardt moved before she even inhaled, no thought, no wasted breath, no pause. He lunged, body curving around hers with the instinct of a man shielding something precious. The sword impaled the creature cleanly, the force reverberating up his arms. The creature shuddered, collapsing in a pool of violent silence.

For a long moment, the world forgot to breathe. Blood dripped from the blade. Steam rose from the corpse. The forest held its breath in reverence. Reichardt hovered close, the warmth of his exhale brushing the shell of Ahce’s ear, his voice low enough to vanish like prayer into the night.

"You shouldn’t have come here, Ahce."

Her heart ruptured in her chest, cold shock bleeding through her veins. The nickname, the cadence, the timbre, raw, familiar, forbidden.

"Richard," she whispered.

His entire body locked. A flinch so small, most would have missed it. But Ahce had memorized this man once in heartbeats and silences. He stepped back and shuttered himself again, steel walls rebuilding brick by brick.

"I don’t know who that is," he said, too evenly, too rehearsed. His sword vanished into its sheath with finality. "We return. Before questions arise."

But when he turned, Ahce saw it. His hand trembled.

A haunted tremor. One belonging to someone resurrected before they ever healed. And in that moment, Ahce understood with chilling clarity.

The dead had not stayed silent in their grave. They had learned to walk again. The ride back was a funeral procession in disguise.

Word of the hunting incident raced through the empire faster than fire in the dry season. Nobles whispered, servants speculated, and posting ravens took flight before sunset. When the pair arrived at Pentecase, the estate was transformed, no longer warm, no longer serene. The walls felt like a fortress under siege by invisible enemies.

The Emperor summoned Duke Piel Pentecase, the patriarch, the unmoved mountain of the family, at once.

"Stay here, Ahce," her great-grandfather commanded before departing. The aged gold of his eyes held storms he could not speak aloud. "The empire’s stability teeters. You and Duke Razalo will remain under Pentecase protection. No excursions beyond the border. Not until I return."

Unstable.

A word too small for the shadow crouched beneath it.

Night swallowed the Duchy whole.

The mansion hummed with fortified quiet surveillance drones patrolling the halls in silent loops, their mechanical wings whispering through the corridors like metallic specters. Security grids webbed the windows. The fog outside clung stubbornly to the gardens, thick and sentient, as though listening.

Reichardt’s room was placed directly beside hers.

Convenient. Tactical. Cruel.

A reminder that the man she lost now slept a breath away, a door between life and memory.

Ahce’s mind refused rest. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw...

Red eyes glowing in mist.

The swing of his sword

And the way he said her name, like it was a wound and a prayer

Past midnight, she surrendered.

Bare feet on cold stone, silk robe trailing behind her, she drifted to the kitchen like a ghost looking for proof of life. The lights flickered awake above polished steel counters. She poured wine, dark, bitter, honest, and stared at her reflection rippling in the glass.

"Maybe I really am losing it," she murmured to herself. "Chasing ghosts I already buried..."

The air behind her shifted.

"You know," she said without turning, swirling the wine, "following a lady after midnight is terrible etiquette for a duke."

A low voice answered, familiar in all the ways he tried to disguise. "Wandering alone at night isn’t proper etiquette either."

She turned.

There he was.

Reichardt Razalo, less iron, more man. Shirt loose, collar undone, sleeves rolled as though armor had grown tired of protecting him. Dark hair fell into disobedience over his brow. The overhead lights made him look carved from shadow and confession.

His eyes dropped to her glass. "Drinking alone?"

"Old habit," she replied. "Helps me think."

He stepped closer, soundlessly, like fate drafting itself nearer. "About what?"

"You," she said without flinching. "Who are you really..."

For a fraction of a second, the fortress cracked. His shoulders stiffened, microscopic and involuntary.

"Ahce..."

"Don’t," she warned, voice sharpening softly. "Not unless you remember why you say it like that."

Silence pressed down, fragile but electric. The mansion held its breath with them.

She continued.

"You knew about the hybrids. You saw that trap before it happened. You fight like war forged you, not diplomacy. And you..." her voice splintered, but she held his eyes, "...said my name like it mattered."

The flicker came again.

Helpless. Raw. Human.

Gone before it could live.

"You’re mistaken," he said.

She stepped in, closing the distance until truth had no place left to hide. "Then look at me, Reichardt Razalo, and tell me you don’t remember Richard Jing."

He did.

And that was answer enough.

Because beneath the cold noble mask was a storm she once held in her palms, chaotic, restrained, familiar as her own pulse.

But his reply was not surrender.

It was ruin.

"Richard Jing," he murmured, voice unbearably brittle, "is dead."

A seismic crack split the silence.

"Then who are you?" she asked.

A beat.

Then, softly, with a resignation that sounded like a gravestone’s sigh.

"Someone who shouldn’t have come back."

The air sparked between them, tension electric, unsayable, alive. Outside, unnoticed, the fog thickened. Gates hummed. Perimeter sensors flickered red. And beyond Pentecase borders, in the shivering quiet of the ancient forest.

Eyes opened.

Dozens.

Patient as prophecy.

And hungry as remembrance.