Chapter 3: The Forgotten Bridge
Prince Vaelmont's study was both cold and grand. The great hearth on one side of the wall, carved from black marble veined with silver, was unlit. The chill of the stone seemed to creep outwards, filling the room with an oppressive silence. On the wall, a giant, faded tapestry hung limply. The image of a pouncing Vaelmont lion, woven with golden thread in an age of glory, now looked tired and dusty.
Commander Gregor Vance stood before the empty oak desk, his body rigid in full armor littered with the scratches and dents—the marks of countless battles. His face, chiseled by time and duty, radiated a profound exhaustion, yet his gray eyes burned with an urgency he could not hide.
He had been waiting for ten minutes. Ten minutes that felt like an hour.
In this same room, years ago, he had often stood before King Alaric. The King, with his fiery golden hair and a gaze as sharp as an eagle's, would pace before this very map, issuing commands with a speed and decisiveness that ignited the spirit. Gregor remembered King Alaric's face clearly at the Battle of the Shadow Gate, smeared with blood and soot, yet his eyes never lost their fire as he made the ultimate sacrifice to save them all.
Protect my son, an echo from the past whispered, a vow that now felt like a lead weight on his shoulders.
He glanced at the young man sitting silently across the desk. Prince Eldrin Vaelmont. The son of that lion. Yet, there was no fire in his eyes. Only a cold, fragile emptiness.
"Your Highness," Gregor's voice was hoarse, thick with a pressure he tried to contain. "The reports from the western border are worsening. These are no longer common bandit gangs."
Eldrin sat in the high-backed chair that seemed to swallow him whole. His hands were clenched tightly under the desk, knuckles white, trying to hide an uncontrollable tremor. He stared at the map before him—a web of unfamiliar lines and names. Willow Creek. Echo Bridge. The Kaelos Border. The words meant nothing to him. His mind was a blank, filled with the white noise of a logic-freezing panic.
"They move in military formation," Gregor continued, his tone growing more strained at the prince's passive response. He pointed to a spot on the map with his gauntleted finger. "Their equipment is far superior to our local militia's. They've attacked supply caravans, and last night, they attempted to seize Echo Bridge. We managed to push them back, but we lost six men."
Six men dead.
Those words managed to pierce through Eldrin's fog of panic, stabbing him with a familiar coldness. Guilt. Failure.
Gregor leaned forward, his hands pressing down on the map so hard the wood beneath it creaked. "I need an order, Your Highness. An order to deploy the rest of the Royal Guard. The soldiers are waiting for a command. They need hope."
The ensuing silence felt like a shackle. Eldrin didn't move. He didn't know what to say. Military strategy? Commands? In his old world, the toughest decision he made was choosing between two budget proposals. Here, his decisions involved lives.
I can't, a voice screamed in his mind. I'm not him. I'm not a king.
Gregor stared at him, his eyes narrowing. Same as always, he thought with a bitter taste in his mouth. Silence. Fear. He was close to losing his patience. He had come seeking a leader, at least a spark of courage, a flicker of King Alaric's fire. But all he found was a boy trapped in his own fear, frozen in the face of responsibility.
However, just as Gregor was about to open his mouth to press—or perhaps to plead—he noticed something different. Usually, Prince Eldrin's eyes would be restless, darting to the door, to the window, searching for any escape.
Now, those grayish-blue eyes were fixed on the map with a strange emptiness. Not a restless fear, but something... deeper. Colder.
Inside Eldrin's mind, panic finally gave birth to a sliver of clarity. Not strategy, not wisdom, but a random memory from Chronicles of the Shattered Throne.
Echo Bridge.
In the game, there were two bridges with that name. The first, to the south, was the main, heavily guarded route, an obvious military choke point. Everyone knew about it. But there was another. To the north, a forgotten old wooden bridge crossing the deep and treacherous Shadow Gorge. In the game, the bridge had no strategic value, save for a single, low-level smuggling quest. A rat's path. A perfect supply line for an enemy that wanted to move undetected.
Driven by an overwhelming, desperate desire to end this meeting, to stop Gregor's demanding stare, to banish the ghost of King Alaric from the room, Eldrin raised a slightly trembling hand.
His finger pointed to a spot on the north of the map, where a faint line marked the old bridge.
"Don't attack them," he murmured, his voice flat but strangely firm, a facade he was building over a chasm of panic. "Burn the northern Echo Bridge. It will sever their supply line."
The words just came out. A shortcut. A solution from a game guide, not from the mind of a prince. After saying them, he felt utterly drained of energy. He pulled his hand back and looked at Gregor with empty eyes, hoping the man would understand his unspoken message.
You may leave.
Gregor Vance was stunned.
He stared at the spot on the map, then back at the prince's face. The order was... so unexpected, so strange, that his brain took a few seconds to process it.
Burn the northern bridge?
His first thought was denial. Madness. That's the act of a coward destroying his own infrastructure.
Then, his mind, forged in dozens of battles, began to work. He analyzed. Common bandits didn't need complex supply lines. But an organized force? A force with equipment on par with Kaelos? Logistics were their lifeblood. A direct assault on their hideout would be costly in lives. Reinforcing defenses would only drain their limited resources.
But cutting off their supply line...
It would cripple them without a fight. It would force them out of hiding or leave them to starve in the woods. It was a maneuver focused on logistics, not on heroic, pointless bloodshed. A cold, calculating, brutally efficient move, and completely unexpected.
An echo of the past surfaced in his mind. King Alaric's "Shattered Moon" tactic in the War of the Broken Horns—sacrificing the center line to trap the enemy's cavalry. Unexpected. Cruel. Brilliant.
This command... it lacked the father's charisma. There was no rousing speech. Just a short sentence spoken in a flat tone. But behind it... was the same terrifyingly cold logic.
For the first time in years, Gregor did not see a frightened boy before him. He wasn't sure what he saw. Was this a hidden genius that had lain dormant beneath layers of trauma? Or... had he just witnessed the birth of something else entirely?
He bowed deeply, his mind a battlefield of confusion and a flicker of unsettling doubt.
"As you command, Your Highness."
Gregor turned and walked out of the room, the heavy echo of his armor reverberating down the corridor. His mind was racing, trying to reassemble his entire understanding of the young man who had just given him the strangest and most brilliant order he had ever heard.
The moment the study door closed, Eldrin's facade crumbled. He slumped in his large chair, his breath catching as if he had just run a marathon. Cold sweat beaded on his temples.
Did it work? He left? What did I just say?
He stared at the map before him, the ink lines now feeling like a spider's web ensnaring him. He had survived one crisis by relying on the echoes of a world that no longer existed.
But he knew, this was just the beginning. Vaelmont was dying, and somehow, he—Alfin Leontarde, now Eldrin Vaelmont—had just accidentally convinced the one man who mattered most that he might be its savior.
A misunderstanding that would likely get him killed.