The stew had gone lukewarm by the time Kel spoke again.
Around them, the inn remained alive in its own tired way—mugs clinking, boots scraping, the occasional rough laugh followed by a muttered curse. Lamps burned low, oil nearly spent, casting the room in a dull amber gloom that softened edges but sharpened shadows.
Their corner remained one of the dimmest places in the hall.
Kel's fingers rested loosely around his cup, thumb tracing the chipped rim with absent precision. He hadn't eaten much—only enough to satisfy expectation. His eyes, darkened by the unsteady light, were fixed not on the food—
but on Sera.
She sat across from him, cloak resting open just enough to show the pale blue of her noble cloth beneath. Her hands were folded neatly, almost too neatly, as if the only way to keep them from shaking was to keep them still.
Her story still hovered between them.
A childhood shattered by "friendly" training.
Legs broken.
Guards maimed.
A curse poured into her veins.
Running.
Kel watched her in the silence that followed that confession.
Then, in a quiet voice that barely rose above the murmur of the room, he asked:
"…What about your father?"
Sera blinked.
Kel held her gaze.
"Did he not stop you," he asked, "when you ran?"
Reina's spoon stilled midway to her mouth.
Landon lowered his cup, setting it silently on the rough table surface.
Sera's shoulders faintly tightened.
She looked down, her lashes casting thin shadows over her eyes. For a moment, she said nothing, as if weighing which memory to let surface and which to drown.
Then she drew in a breath.
And let it out as words.
"My father…" she began quietly, "was in shock."
Her voice carried the brittle edges of old glass—thinned by time, but still capable of cutting.
"When I broke her legs," Sera said, "the entire arena went quiet. The guards moved. The viscount stood up, shouting. My uncle's eyes… were bright. Alert. As if he'd just seen proof of a theory."
Her lips twisted faintly in something that wasn't quite a smile.
"But my father," she continued, "sat frozen."
Her fingers slowly unclasped on the table.
"He didn't move from his seat at first. He just stared. At me. At the girl on the ground. At the guards whose bones I was already breaking without understanding how."
She swallowed.
"It took him too long to stand. By the time he did… I was already running."
Her eyes flicked to the side.
She wasn't looking at the inn anymore.
She was seeing corridors.
Stone floors.
Blood.
"My feet moved," she said. "I don't remember deciding to. One moment I was in the arena. The next, I was in the hallway. Servants shouted. No one tried to grab me. Maybe they were afraid. Maybe they thought I'd be stopped outside."
Her hands curled into fists, then loosened.
"Father called my name."
The words dropped gently.
But they hit hard.
Her gaze lowered.
"Again and again," she whispered. "A plea. Not a command. Not as a lord. As a father asking his child to turn around."
Reina's eyes softened, jaw tight.
Landon's gaze shifted down, a shadow passing across his features.
Kel's face remained composed.
But his fingers stilled on the cup.
Sera's lips pressed together briefly.
"He told me," she went on, "that he would speak to his friend. That he would explain it as an accident. A mistake. A potion error. That it was not my fault."
Her eyes glimmered—not with tears, but with something older. The kind of heaviness that had long since dried grief into iron.
"He kept calling," she said. "My name echoing down the hall. His voice… cracking."
The inn's noise dimmed again in her mind.
Cold stone under bare feet.
Wind slamming into her as she burst past the gates.
Snow swallowing her breath.
"I didn't listen," Sera said.
Kel tilted his head.
"Why?" he asked.
Not as accusation.
As understanding sought.
Sera looked at him—really looked.
Her voice was steady when she answered.
"Because I knew," she said, "that if I returned, my father would bear everything in my place."
Kel's eyes narrowed slightly.
She continued.
"Every broken bone."
"Every ruined alliance."
"Every whisper about our house 'breeding monsters.'"
Her fingers made small dents in the table's edge.
"If I went back," she murmured, "he would stand before them all and say the fault was his. That he mismanaged me. That he failed as a parent. That it was his burden, not mine."
She shook her head faintly.
"He would kneel," she said. "And let them put the weight on him."
The hollow lamplight made hollow shadows of her expression.
"At least if I ran," she whispered, "all the blame would come to me. Not to him. Not to the house. Vanhart would lose a daughter… but not its spine."
Reina's brows lowered.
"You were nine," she said quietly. "You should not have had to think like that."
Sera gave a brittle, humorless smile.
"What age," she asked, "is appropriate for watching your actions break more than bones?"
No one answered.
The inn around them buzzed on, oblivious.
Landon shifted, the chair creaking faintly beneath his weight. His eyes were on Sera now—not as a chieftain, not as a noble—
As someone who had carried expectations too heavy for their age.
Kel's gaze didn't leave her.
"You chose," he said, "to become the villain so that your father didn't have to."
She flinched—a small, almost imperceptible movement.
"Villain," she repeated softly.
The word lingered.
Got comfortable.
"Tell me I was wrong," she said.
Kel didn't.
He didn't say she was right either.
He simply spoke with the same calm clarity that had disarmed monsters and nobles alike.
"You judged the future," he murmured, "with the mind of a child forced to act as an adult."
His thumb resumed its slow circle against the cup's rim.
"You ran so that the story they wrote would cut you first."
"So that it wouldn't reach him."
Sera's nails dug into the wood beneath her fingers.
"…Yes."
Her eyes closed briefly.
"Yes."
She took another breath.
"When I crossed the border," she said slowly, "I told myself I was going to die. Either quickly, to the cold, or later, to whoever found me."
Her hand drifted unconsciously to her chest, over the place her curse once fed.
"Instead," she said, "the barbarians found me. And for the first time…"
Her gaze turned distant.
"They did not ask who my father was. They asked how strong I was."
Reina's eyes darkened.
"Strength," Sera said, "was simpler than innocence."
Simpler than guilt.
Simpler than family.
"I could understand that currency. Swing. Hit. Stand. Bleed. Endure. No politics. No apologies."
Kel's lashes lowered.
No one asking if you regret.
Only if you survive.
Her voice dipped.
"I told myself Father would be fine," she continued. "That he would grieve in private, then protect what he still had—his lands, his people, his name."
Soft laughter escaped her.
It sounded tired.
"Years later," she said, "I realized something."
Kel's eyes lifted.
"What?"
Sera stared down at her own reflection in the surface of her untouched tea—a faint, distorted shape.
"That the pain of a child breaking herself," she murmured, "also falls on the parent who cannot chase fast enough."
Her throat moved around the words.
"He did not run after me," she said. "But it was not because he didn't want to."
Her voice roughened, barely.
"It was because he was a count, in front of his peers. Caught between… being a father and being a lord."
The silence that followed was heavy, but not suffocating.
Kel leaned back slightly, the chair creaking.
Sairen's presence stirred faintly at the edge of his mind, silent but attentive.
He knew the type of moment this was.
The game called it:
"Emotional Breakpoint: Character Route Deepening."
Here, it was simply a girl laying bare the wound that shaped her.
He let the quiet settle, then asked one more question.
"Do you resent him," he said, "for not catching you?"
The question fell between them like a blade.
Reina looked at Sera sharply.
Landon's gaze grew intent.
Sera's eyes trembled almost imperceptibly.
"…I resented him once," she admitted. "For not choosing me over reputation, over title, over standing."
Her fingers loosened.
"But that was before…" She exhaled. "…Before I became chief."
Kel raised a brow, just slightly.
She continued.
"Leading a tribe," she said, "is not just eating first and fighting most. It is bearing every death. Every shortage. Every scarcity of food. Every winter that comes harsher than the last."
Her eyes flicked toward Kel.
"You understand that," she said softly. "Even if you pretend you do not."
Kel's lips curved almost imperceptibly.
"Debatable," he replied.
Her stare held his for a second longer before drifting away.
"When I became responsible for lives," she said, "I realized what it means to stand in front of others while the world judges you."
Her voice turned distant.
"And I understood," she whispered, "that Father did not stand because he was frozen… but because he was already bracing for what would hit him if he did."
She shook her head.
"I still hate what happened," she said. "And I will never forgive my uncle."
The word uncle left her lips like venom.
"But Father…"
She hesitated.
"I don't know yet," she admitted. "Whether I resent him. Whether I pity him. Or whether I simply… miss him."
The honesty was heavier than any curse.
Kel studied her across the table.
"Then," he said quietly, "go and find out."
Sera blinked.
He went on, voice slow, precise.
"You were nine when you ran," he murmured. "He was an adult who watched his daughter crumble under something he did not understand. You have seen who you became."
His gaze sharpened.
"Now see who he became," Kel said. "After losing you."
Sera's breath caught.
Reina looked down, lashes shadowing her eyes.
Landon's jaw flexed once.
The candle on their table flickered.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Sera nodded.
Once.
Tightly.
"…I will," she said.
Her hand stilled over the table.
Kel finally lifted his cup.
Took a slow sip.
The tea was barely warm anymore.
It didn't matter.
He let the heat, weak as it was, sit on his tongue for a moment.
"You were not wrong," he said suddenly.
Sera frowned slightly.
"What?"
"To run."
His voice was matter-of-fact.
"You were a cursed child who had just realized she could break more than bones without intending to. You didn't know where to place yourself in that story. So you removed yourself."
His gaze held hers.
"It was a flawed choice," he said, "but not a cowardly one."
Her eyes widened.
Color rose faintly to her pale cheeks.
She looked away.
"…You speak as though you've seen enough children trying to justify their own survival," she muttered.
Kel's lips twitched in something that might have been a smile.
"I've seen worse," he replied.
In twenty runs, he thought.
Sairen's presence brushed the edge of his awareness again.
You protect her not with lies, came the quiet impression, but with a clearer mirror.
Kel did not answer.
He didn't need to.
The innkeeper shouted something to a drunk mercenary.
Someone started a low song by the hearth.
A door upstairs slammed shut as a guest stumbled into their room.
The night outside thickened, stars smothered by hanging cloud.
Inside their dim corner, the four of them finally lifted their spoons, beginning to eat in long, measured bites. The food was mediocre, the tea almost flavorless.
Yet something in the air had shifted.
Not peace.
Not absolution.
But a small, fragile acceptance:
That tomorrow, they would walk into Vanhart territory not as strangers to Sera's past—
but as witnesses.
And if her father had become something else since that day…
They would see it.
Together.
Kel finished half his stew.
Set the spoon down.
His eyes drifted once more to Sera.
I'm not the only one rewriting a death flag, he thought.
Then he leaned back, letting the chair balance on its rear legs for a moment.
"Rest," he said softly. "We leave at first light."
Outside, winter pressed its quiet weight against the inn walls.
Inside, at a corner table, four lives leaned slightly closer to one another—
the first cracks in their secrets now visible beneath the lamplight.