Night lay heavy outside. A breeze tapped against the window, while only a faint candle flame lit the study.
Duke Calvin sat alone in a high-backed chair, his fingertips turning through a thick stack of urgent military merit reports from the Privy Council in the Imperial Capital.
Scorch marks left by rapid transmission still lingered along the parchment's edges, a sign of how urgently it had been delivered.
His gaze swept calmly over the postwar summary, but his fingers paused slightly when he reached one particular piece of intelligence.
"Gaius Calvin sustained severe injuries in the battle against the Doom Brood Hive. His battle aura was exhausted, his nervous system collapsed, and he fell into a prolonged coma... He is currently in a vegetative state and cannot regain consciousness."
For a long while, only the wall clock ticked.
Duke Calvin lowered his head, his long fingers lightly rubbing the words "deep coma" and "divine sense sealing"...
His brow twitched faintly, but he showed no loss of composure.
He was not an old man who would weep bitterly in his study. He was one of the Eight Pillars of the Empire, the patriarch of the Calvin Family.
Yet his fingertips had unconsciously tightened, pressing a sharp crease into the edge of the letter.
He closed his eyes and murmured, "...Gaius."
His eldest son-Gaius, the pillar of the family who had been sent to the Imperial Capital as a hostage from childhood and had steadily weathered the storms of the battlefield.
Gentle, steady, neither arrogant nor impatient.
He was also a Peak Knight, the deputy commander of the Empire's Dragonblood Legion.
He had believed this son would be the Calvin Family's surest heir.
Now, however, he had fallen in the Northern Frontier.
The candle flame flickered softly, as though stirred by a