Dawn had not yet come.
Only the night had grown thin.
The imperial encampment outside the walls breathed with low lights alone.
Torches were not held high,
and even the footsteps moving between tents had been deliberately muffled.
The lights were low,
and so the shadows were longer.
The smell of wet earth mixed with the smell of oil,
as if the entire encampment had been wrapped in a thin film.
Someone bent a torch wick to kill the flame further,
and someone pressed a hand over the buckle of his armor to swallow its click.
For the night to grow thin
meant that sound traveled farther.
And so everyone
was hiding their own sounds first.
Inside the command tent, Adel was looking down at the map.
Just because it was dark outside did not mean the conclusion had to be dark as well.
The entrance flap lifted.
“Sir Adel.”
Cedric Belhardt entered.
His armor was neat, and weariness lay over his face, but he was not disheveled.
Even that fatigue looked like a formality.
Without raising his gaze, Adel said,
“The formation.”
Cedric answered a beat late.
“Yes. It is ready. Sixty men. Divided into squads.”
“Three reconnaissance, two blocking, one reserve. One priest has been assigned at my side.”
Only then did Adel lift his eyes.
The word priest grated on his ears.
Adel rolled the word on the tip of his tongue.
“Priest.”
The thinnest trust on a battlefield.
And the thickest excuse.
In the end, that irritation reached himself.
What displeased him was not the priest,
but the moment he had to admit that one was necessary.
Adel pressed down on the map again.
He wondered if, by putting strength into his fingertips,
his thoughts might be pressed down along with it.
Even if he could not hide that irritation,
today, irritation alone would change nothing.
“Good.”
Adel pressed a point on the map with his fingertip.
“The first search begins here.”
Cedric’s gaze followed to that point.
“What kind of place is it?”
Adel gave a short nod.
“There is an abandoned house there.”
“It is a place where we once picked up traces before.”
So that the end of his words would not grow heavy, he deliberately added in a plain tone,
“It is less than half a day from Arku. If we want an early result, that will be the fastest.”
Cedric bowed his head.
“Understood.”
He did not ask further.
The moment he asked, it would become a “why.”
And right now, the empire was moving with a face that disliked “why.”
A beat later, Adel said,
“Do not push too deep.”
Cedric paused for a moment.
Adel’s voice was low, but firm.
“The ones in hiding are the Silver Moon Order.”
“And what I want is not the Silver Moon Order, but what they have hidden.”
Adel did not let the words “sacred relic” leave his mouth.
Instead, he cast out a clearer marker.
“A black-haired girl.”
“A girl carrying a distinctive longsword… Find her.”
Cedric’s expression stiffened ever so slightly.
He must now have understood more clearly
that this nameless target was no ordinary search.
Adel continued.
“Pick up the trail first.”
“Do not create unnecessary commotion. A search is a search.”
Cedric bowed his head.
“Yes, Sir Adel.”
Adel said no more.
The more he spoke, the more it felt as if the things he knew would leak out through the cracks.
Cedric turned away.
As the tent flap lifted and closed, the air outside seeped in for a moment.
It was cold.
Cold air made people strangely clear-headed.
Adel hated that clarity.
Because when his mind grew clear, his displeasure became sharper as well.
Outside the tent, the feet were already splitting apart.
The search party divided into several squads
and slipped out of the encampment, each keeping a different distance from the others.
The forward reconnaissance squad opened the path first,
while the blocking squad remained behind and secured the route back.
The reserve squad stayed neither too far nor too close.
Cedric moved at the center of it all.
The priest walked one step behind, and escorts wrapped thinly around the two of them.
Cedric gestured.
“Pick up the pace.”
“Do not step on the traces.”
The soldiers scattered quietly.
Briefly, precisely.
And quickly.
Even the way they scattered had rules.
Not words, but gestures.
And when even gestures were not needed,
one tilt of the shoulder,
one lowering of the head was enough.
The soles of their boots did not “step” on the earth.
They moved as if sliding.
Even the sound of a twig breaking vanished in advance beneath someone’s toes.
That speed was not impatience.
It was the speed of people who had already done this many times.
Before he knew it, Adel was standing in front of the tent, watching their backs.
The abandoned house where the Silver Moon Order had stayed.
It was a place he had touched once before.
A memory that remained longer because he had failed to seize it completely.
And that memory made a person bold.
Adel slowly clenched his fingers.
His glove creaked faintly.
“This time…”
The words did not come out to the end.
Then someone quietly approached from behind.
It was a member of the army command.
“Sir Paladin. The search party has finished departing.”
Adel nodded.
“Have the returning reports brought to me first.”
“Yes.”
The military commander withdrew.
Adel looked again at the forest where the darkness had lifted.
The city did not matter.
Nor did the people’s opinion, or the expressions of the council.
What he saw was one thing.
The Silver Moon Order.
And the sacred relic hidden within it.
And—
the black-haired girl.
Adel slowly exhaled.
The moment the search party vanished into the forest,
the imperial encampment grew quiet once more.
That quiet was closer to a beginning than to stability.
—
The sounds of dawn reached the reconnaissance outpost late.
Inside the outpost where light was entering,
Rangnan was already awake.
His was not the face of someone who had failed to sleep,
but the face of someone who had no need to sleep.
The door opened, and a scout entered.
His breathing was ragged.
“They moved.”
That single sentence was enough.
Rangnan asked,
“Where.”
“Toward the abandoned house up ahead. They split into several squads.”
“One squad took the road, another pushed inward…”
Rangnan nodded.
“As planned.”
Before those words had ended, Miryeong was already on her feet.
Muryeong also quietly touched the haft of his axe.
Rangnan said,
“Do not pursue too deeply.”
“Leave no traces.”
Then, in a very low voice, he drove the point home.
“We are not leaving fear behind. We are leaving pressure.”
The air of the outpost tightened once more.
From here on, it was no longer waiting, but calculation.
The chill hours of dawn were short.
Once the sun rose, movement would become faster.
Rangnan pointed to the map.
“The search party has come outside.”
“Now… we fight outside as well.”
With those words, the outpost’s quiet bustle began again.
—
Miryeong’s squad stopped moving at the edge of the forest, in a position where the abandoned house was visible.
They found a gap where the view opened between the trees and lowered their bodies.
Muryeong’s squad was spread farther out.
They did not go near the abandoned house.
After the search party combed through it, where they would spread, which path they would take back—
Muryeong was watching that “outside.”
Miryeong divided her breath shallowly.
Even in this deep forest, there were moments when the wind changed direction.
At each of those moments, the scent of metal brushed past.
They had come.
No sooner had that certainty arisen
than the air around the abandoned house changed.
The imperial search party did not come in one mass.
First, the steps of two or three.
Then, at intervals behind them, more footsteps.
And then another stop.
Miryeong buried herself deeper in the shadows of the trees.
And through them, she looked toward the abandoned house.
The search party had spread out near the abandoned house.
One squad made a wide circle around the outside and took up a perimeter,
while another approached, checking the windows and the rear.
Someone swept the ground with his palm, searching for footprints.
Their movements were not fast.
Instead, they were precise.
Watching them, Miryeong was weighing the situation in her mind.
She closed her eyes once, then opened them.
The wind had not stopped;
it had merely thinned for a moment, as if catching its breath.
The air around the abandoned house was damp.
The smell of rotting wood and wet earth,
and—
metal.
Not armor, but the smell of metal that arose when people were preparing.
The feet of the search party were not uneven.
Each time they stopped,
their next step had already been decided.
That orderliness was what made it all the more chilling.
Miryeong clenched her fingertips.
This was not a knot that could be loosened by pulling on the wind,
but a moment when she had to keep it from becoming a knot in the first place.
Then, the door of the abandoned house opened.
Silver armor took one step out of the darkness.
An orderly gait.
A gaze sweeping the surroundings.
Miryeong knew instinctively.
A knight.
The silver stood out even more in the darkness.
Not as light,
but as a color whose shape revealed itself first.
Miryeong could tell simply by the way he stood.
He was not someone who “placed” his feet on the ground,
but someone who established a “standard” upon it.
His armor brushed ever so faintly.
It was less the sound of metal
than the sound left behind by ordered movement.
At that moment, Cedric turned his head very slightly.
His gaze brushed the shadows of the forest—
and Miryeong felt the nape of her neck grow cold.
Precisely where she was.
Holding her breath, Miryeong immediately lowered her body.
Without being late, she drew back by the smallest amount.
A movement meant to leave no trace.
But it was already too late.
The corners of Cedric’s mouth rose ever so faintly.
Too thin to be called a smile, an expression of certainty.
Without a word, he raised his hand.
One short gesture.
The two search squads spread around the abandoned house
began to part and move quietly in the same direction.
In that instant, Miryeong realized.
The fight had not yet begun,
but the net was already being cast.