I Copy the Authorities of the Four Calamities-Chapter 180: The Iron Festival

The common room of the Inn was louder than a battlefield.

It smelled of roasted onions, hard cider, and unwashed wool. The fiddle player was standing on a sturdy oak table, stamping his foot in time with a frantic, joyous reel. The villagers of Mourn-Hold were not celebrating a harvest; they were celebrating survival. They drank with the desperate thirst of people who had spent weeks listening to things scratching at their doors.

Vane sat in a corner booth. His back was against the rough timber wall. He held a mug of cider in his hand, watching the room over the rim.

He was used to silence. He was used to the calculated quiet of the Academy or the tense stillness of a hunt. This noise was chaotic. It was messy. It made his danger sense itch.

But he stayed.

Isole sat across from him. She had lowered her hood. Her silver-white hair was loose, catching the warm light of the hearth. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat and the cider. She looked different tonight. The tension that usually held her shoulders tight was gone. She looked like a girl her age, not a walking vessel for a god or a grave.

"You are scowling," Isole said. She took a sip from her mug. "Alden went through a lot of trouble to find this cask. You could at least pretend to enjoy it."

"I am not scowling," Vane replied. "I am monitoring the perimeter."

"The perimeter is a room full of drunk farmers," Isole pointed out. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the sticky table. "Relax Vane. The Queen is dead. The eggs are ash. No one is going to attack us tonight."

Vane looked at her. She was smiling. It was a soft, genuine expression that reached her mismatched eyes. It made her look dangerous in a way he wasn’t prepared for.

"You seem comfortable," Vane noted. "For someone who hates noise."

"I hate the noise of suffering," Isole corrected gently. "This is the noise of life. It feels... warm. It pushes the cold away."

She looked around the room. Her gaze lingered on a young couple dancing near the fire.

"It reminds me of the Silver Wood," she said softly. "Before the exile. We used to have festivals when the moon turned full. The elders would light lanterns and we would dance until our feet bled."

Vane watched her. He saw the shadow of memory cross her face. He wanted to ask her about it. He wanted to know what had happened during the winter break to turn her eyes so dark.

But before he could speak, the door opened. A gust of cold wind cut through the heat of the room.

The noise became suffocating.

"Too loud," Vane murmured. He stood up. "I need air."

Isole stood up with him. "I’ll come with you."

They slipped out the side door onto the narrow wooden porch.

The silence outside was sudden and heavy. The fog had rolled in thick, obscuring the village square. The music from inside was muffled, reduced to a rhythmic thumping against the wall.

Vane walked to the railing. He leaned against a support post, breathing in the damp, cold air. It tasted of iron and wet earth.

Isole stood beside him. She pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. She looked out into the grey void.

"You and Valerica," Isole said suddenly.

Vane turned his head. "What about us?"

"You fight well together," Isole said. She didn’t look at him. She traced a pattern in the condensation on the railing. "Back at the Academy. And in the villa. She looks at you like you are part of her gravity."

Vane frowned. "Valerica is a partner. We survived the Groves. We survived Gareth. Shared trauma creates a bond."

"Is that all it is?" Isole asked. She looked up at him then. Her eyes were searching. "A tactical necessity?"

"Valerica is the sun," Vane said quietly. "She burns bright. She leads. I am just the person who makes sure she doesn’t burn herself out. We balance the equation. It isn’t romance Isole. It is survival."

Isole studied his face. She seemed to find the truth in his flat tone. Her shoulders relaxed slightly.

"She is terrifying," Isole admitted with a small laugh. "When she walks into a room the air gets heavier. I always feel like I have to apologize for existing near her."

"You don’t have to apologize to anyone," Vane said. "You are a Rank 4 Sentinel. You cleared a brood nest today. You have earned your space."

Isole looked down at her hands. The faint scars from her mana-burns were visible in the moonlight.

"I don’t feel like a Sentinel," she whispered. "I feel like a fraud. Everyone sees the Saintess. They see the light. They don’t see what I have to do to keep it burning."

Vane turned fully toward her.

"What happened in the winter break Isole?" Vane asked. His voice was low. "You came back different. Your eyes... there is a shadow in them that wasn’t there before."

Isole flinched. She pulled her hand back into her cloak. She looked away, staring into the fog.

"I went home," she said. Her voice was brittle. "My family... they wanted to see if the corruption had spread. They tested me."

She stopped. She shook her head.

"I can’t talk about it," she whispered. "If I say it out loud it becomes real again."

Vane watched her. He saw the wall she was building. It was a wall made of fear and shame. He knew that wall. He had built one just like it when he was six years old in the mud of Oakhaven.

He knew he couldn’t force his way in. He had to open the door from his side first.

"Do you want to know about the Iron Groves?" Vane asked.

Isole looked at him, surprised. "The official report said you were caught in a dungeon break. You saved Valerica."

"The report is a lie," Vane said.

He turned back to the fog. He stared into the grey nothingness.

"I didn’t go to the Groves to train," Vane said. "I went there to hunt. There was a man. Gareth. He was a Knight-Lieutenant of the Third Division."

Isole stayed silent. She sensed the weight of the confession.

"Before coming to the Academy ," Vane continued, his voice void of emotion, "Gareth came to my town. Oakhaven. He was looking for a fugitive. My mother... her name was Helena. She was in the way. He burned our house down with a Radiant Arc. He killed her because she was in the way."

Isole gasped softly. "Vane..."

"I went to the Academy to find him," Vane said. "To get strong enough to kill him. When I found out he was in the Groves I followed him. I didn’t save Valerica from a monster Isole. I was the monster. I hunted Gareth down. I broke his squad. And I put my spear through his heart."

He looked at his hands. They looked steady in the moonlight. But he could still feel the vibration of the spear shaft as it pierced the Knight’s armor.

"The Justiciars didn’t die fighting a construct," Vane said. "They died because they got in my way."

He turned to look at her. He waited for the judgment. He waited for the Saintess to recoil from the murderer.

Isole didn’t recoil.

She stepped closer. She reached out and took his hand. Her fingers were cold but her grip was firm.

"You loved her," Isole whispered.

"She was all I had," Vane said.

"Then it wasn’t murder," Isole said fiercely. Her mismatched eyes burned with a sudden intensity. "It was justice. The Empire calls it crime because they think they own the law. But they don’t own us."

She squeezed his hand.

"You aren’t a monster Vane," she said. "You are just a boy who misses his mother."

Vane felt a crack in the ice around his chest. It was a painful, sharp sensation. He looked at Isole. He saw the darkness in her eyes, but he also saw the light. She held both. Just as he held the memory of the mud and the reality of the spear.

"You have to trust yourself," Vane said softly. "Whatever happened in the Silver Wood... it made you strong. You don’t have to hide the shadow from me. I have plenty of my own."

Isole looked at him. For a moment, the air between them felt charged. It wasn’t the heavy gravity of Valerica. It was something quieter. Something fragile.

"Maybe one day," Isole whispered. "When I am brave enough."

"Take your time," Vane said. "We have a long night."

He didn’t pull his hand away. They stood there on the porch, listening to the muffled music and the wind in the fog.