Lyon remembered kneeling beside his father's bed, clutching that hand already gone cold, crying like a child. His mother had entered without a word, merely standing silently behind him and placing a hand on his shoulder. That night, snow fell heavily over Fran City, as though it meant to bury the whole world.
Lyon had grown up in that atmosphere—his father's regrets, his mother's tears, his clansmen's expectations, and that weighty promise of "going back."
From childhood, he had known that his life was destined to be spent fighting to return to his homeland.
He remembered how, late at night, his mother would often sit alone by the window, gazing blankly at the northern stars. He knew she missed home—missed the castle where she had spent most of her life, missed the family and friends left behind in the Northern Territory.
With his fiercely loyal personal guards, he joined the ranks of the then-obscure Lord Karl.
At the time, Karl was merely a minor border lord with scant territory and thin forces. No one thought highly of him, and no one believed he could accomplish anything great.
Lyon had not held much hope for Karl either. He simply needed an opportunity—an opportunity to die on the battlefield and fulfill his father's last words with his death. He had thought that, like his father, he would eventually bleed out his final drop of blood on the road of counterattack, then sleep forever in foreign soil with regrets in his heart.
He had never imagined that one day, he would truly fight his way back.
Now, standing within the castle that had once belonged to his family, looking at his father's portrait and the furnishings that were both familiar and strange, countless emotions surged through him.
Anything that had belonged to the