Across the clearing, the Baerum side had lost its will completely. They hoisted their fallen comrade between them and trudged away with heads lowered. This duel was a total defeat—there was no excuse to hide behind.

  One of them slowed, unable to resist looking back. He stared at that small figure surrounded by friends—so slight, so fragile—yet somehow able to endure to the very end.

  It was just luck… some forced themselves to think.

  But the moment the thought formed, it sounded less like truth and more like a cover.

  Humiliation and resentment tangled together, yet beneath them a thin needle of awe pricked the heart—an uneasy question that wasn’t quite respect for a victor, but something darker:

  Was there something on that child?

  “How is he that hard to put down?” Viggo muttered. “A rune-shield…?”

  He jogged to the center of the dueling ground and picked up the fan-shaped shield Ga had used. A few youths followed behind, holding their breath to see what it was.

  Synvar—master of the forge and workshops—didn’t come over right away. His attention drifted instead to the abandoned smithing tools at the edge of the clearing: broken tongs, warped anvils, rust-seized molds. He crouched, listened—like he was checking for an old fault that used to haunt metal.

  Viggo found no runes on the shield. No holy glow. No miracle sheen. He waved Synvar over anyway, wanting an opinion.

  Synvar stood and took a single step closer—

  CRACK.

  In Viggo’s hands, the shield collapsed, breaking apart into a scatter of rotten, ancient wood.

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  Almost at the same time, a strange cool wind brushed through the clearing.

  The youths behind them went wide-eyed, throats tight as if they’d swallowed their voices. A few Baerum men who hadn’t yet gone far enough also saw it—faces tightening, unable to look away.

  Synvar looked down at the fragments and gave a small hum through his nose—surprised, yet not entirely surprised.

  “Not runes,” he said. “A biomimetic shield.”

  Viggo’s hands stayed frozen in midair. “Huh? What’s a biomimetic shield? Another kind of magic?”

  “For you, it’s magic,” Synvar replied. “For me, it’s something learnable.” Then, hands on hips, he added with deliberate mockery, “Though now it’s completely ruined.”

  Viggo pouted faintly, wearing the most innocent face he could manage.

  Synvar laughed and slapped Viggo’s shoulder. Viggo stiffened even harder, as if afraid some soul might fall out of his palms and shatter.

  “The point is,” Synvar said, the humor falling away, “this thing should’ve blown apart in the duel.”

  He held Viggo’s gaze for a beat.

  “But it didn’t. It held on with the little white rabbit to the very last moment.”

  Synvar crouched and sifted through the debris, selecting a few pieces and slipping them into his pouch.

  Viggo muttered under his breath, “What a damn freak of a rabbit… so—can I move now?”

  Synvar glanced up. “Do whatever you want. No one told you not to move.”

  “You could’ve said that earlier!” Viggo snapped, rolling his eyes as he finally shook the dust from his hands.

  After the crowd fully dispersed, a crow spiraled down from the sky and landed where the shield had shattered.

  It didn’t peck like an ordinary bird—quick and careless.

  It searched.

  Like Synvar, it seemed to choose.

  Among all the pieces, it lifted only one.

  Then it hopped and flew to the old cooling trough nearby.

  By all common sense, if a fragment was dropped into a pool, it would sink—an ancient rule repeated by the world without question.

  But when the crow released the piece, there was only a dry little sound—

  pat.

  The trough was empty.

  Not a single drop of water remained.

  The crow seemed to pause, black eye gleaming strangely. It stared into the dead basin as if confirming something that should have been there—something that was now gone.

  In that instant, it felt as though a road that had always been fixed had been rewritten—

  What was meant to be buried beneath water

  was being forced to remain in the world.

  The crow lowered its head and took the fragment again.

  This time it spread its wings and rose, crossing forest, distant hills, and open sky—

  carrying away a misplaced remnant of fate,

  delivering it to a future no one could name.

  Now—

  you believe you can hold.

  You will learn what a shield truly is:

  something broken, remade, and forced to stand.

  We are not here to spare you.

  We are here for what happens next.