The study had long gone quiet.
The ink on the parchments dried, the sealing wax hardened, and the orders had now passed beyond his hands to the estate machinery—a machinery that would, without hesitation, transform his carefully crafted lie into rigid daily regulation.
Kel is in seclusion.
The Duke has ordered it.
Approach not. Inquire not.
The house would obey.
Sleep would settle over the manor before dawn.
But the Duke did not leave his study.
Arcturus von Rosenfeld remained seated behind his desk, the lamplight reduced now to a dim, weary flicker. Outside, the snow fell steadily, drifting past the obsidian glass window like pale ash, burying the courtyard and the distant training grounds in cold quiet.
Within the study, only two things stirred—
The faint curl of heat above the dying lamp flame.
And the man who finally, after so many years, allowed himself to think like a father.
Not a Duke.
Not a strategist.
Not a guardian of lineage.
Just… a father.
It was new.
It was strange.
It was uncomfortable.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the desk, hands clasped loosely, eyes sunk in shadow.
Only the sound of his breath filled the room.
Slow.
Measured.
Not quite steady.
One Decision
One decision, he thought, and the world around me shifts.
It had been easier to send armies into battle than to agree to let Kel walk beyond the estate walls.
Troops obeyed orders.
Steel cut where commanded.
Blood spilled where necessary.
But Kel…
Kel had simply stood before him with calm eyes and asked to live on his own terms.
It is an ordinary enough request—if one forgets who Kel was.
If one forgets what expectations had caged him.
Arcturus's gaze drifted to the parchment stack—the official order declaring Kel's "seclusion".
A lie.
But a necessary one.
He exhaled sharply.
Not quite a sigh.
For everyone… I am at the Rosenfeld estate doing indoor training. But only you will know that I am outside, roaming the world.
Kel had spoken those words with such quiet conviction that Arcturus had heard, in them, an echo of things he once felt himself.
And now… now that echo rattled inside his chest like unopened grief.
Letting Kel go was not difficult as a Duke.
It was inconvenient. Risky. Strategically unsound.
But it was within his authority.
Letting Kel go was difficult as a father.
Because only a father would understand what it meant to let a child walk toward pain knowingly.
The Burden Shifts
Arcturus lifted a hand to his face and pressed his thumb slowly across the bridge of his nose.
No battle map lay on the table.
No enemy was advancing.
No war horn sounded beyond these walls.
Yet his mind raced.
He found himself calculating the future reactions of every person in the estate:
Helena, whose silence had always been more piercing than any shout.
His brothers, who watched his decisions with their own quiet agendas.
The vassals, who served faithfully but measured every shift in his expression for meaning.
He had lied to them all.
Not in malice.
In protection.
But deception breeds a weight.
And even Arcturus von Rosenfeld—whose will had held territories intact for years—now felt that weight prick beneath his armor.
He stared down at his hands, the veins along his knuckles visible beneath the skin.
War hands.
Not soft enough for comfort.
Not gentle enough for fatherhood.
"Does this," he whispered to the room, "feel like this for ordinary men too?"
His voice was quiet.
Rough, not from weakness.
From disuse.
He let the question linger.
"Do normal fathers… feel this way," he continued, "when their child asks something… and they choose to grant it?"
He almost expected the walls to answer.
The ancient shelves. The cold map. The sword on the stand.
None did.
They had stood with him through campaigns, diplomacy, assassinations dismissed as accidents. But those were tasks he understood.
This was new terrain.
As unfamiliar as the roads Kel would walk.
Memory of a Younger Arcturus
Unbidden, a memory surfaced.
A much younger Arcturus, long before the title of Duke weighed against his shoulders, had stood before his own father—requesting the right to ride out to war instead of remaining in tactical command from the estate.
He remembered the way his father had looked at him then—stern, silent, head slightly lowered as though studying a weapon for flaws.
He had thought, then, that the man his father saw him merely as a tool.
It took years to realize the truth:
He had been looking at him as a father.
Weighing blood against steel.
He had allowed it.
Arcturus had bled.
Had won.
Had lost.
Had become what he was now.
A man who did not bend, even to winter.
And now—
Now I understand why father look at me that way.
He lowered his hand from his face.
A shadow passed across his eyes—not grief, not fear, but something very close to both.
"Normal fathers…" he murmured, "would never wish to send their child down a road marked with risk."
His lips pulled into a thin expression—not quite a smile, not quite a grimace.
"And yet they do. Because to refuse growth in the name of safety is another kind of death."
He sat back in the chair, the leather cradling him like cold memory.
One decision.
One boy.
One road.
And the estate… would wake tomorrow unaware that the ghost had already begun walking.
Handling the Estate
His mind resumed its storm.
How long before Helena asked?
How long before Samuel, the sword instructor, noticed absence from dawn training?
Would the servants begin to whisper after the third day? After the seventh?
Would the physicians trace the missing logs?
He could control much.
But control was not invincibility.
He needed measures.
He will need supplies taken without notice.
He will need clothing under another name.
He will need documentation forged where it cannot be traced back.
Not by family law.
Not by noble channels.
Silently.
Through the cracks of controls only the Duke could access.
Simply forging approval would not suffice.
If traced, that too could become a flaw.
No—
Arcturus would need to create enough movement within estate resources to bury Kel's preparation under the noise.
Three training schedules altered.
Two budgets slightly shifted.
One summon sent to a distant ironworks to justify lack of metal availability.
All before morning.
He breathed deeply.
Even in his absence, I must maintain his presence.
He did not resent it.
But he did not relish it, either.
This was the burden no one had taught him.
One his father had never spoken aloud.
He finally understood why.
A Father's Quiet War
He closed his eyes and let his thoughts settle.
For years, he had ruled without hesitation.
He'd crushed dissent without flinching.
He'd rejected sentiment when sentiment risked legacy.
He'd chosen what was necessary over what was easy—
Every time.
Tonight… was no different.
Except, perhaps, in the way his chest felt.
Not softer.
Just… louder.
Alive.
He did not regret agreeing.
Kel needed this.
The world needed someone like him.
Quiet, forged by resistance, willing to walk through darkness without assuming he would survive.
But still walking.
"To be father…" Arcturus whispered, "is to accept risk on behalf of another. To carry what they cannot admit."
His gaze drifted again to the door.
"Perhaps normal fathers do feel this," he said softly, "when they let their children do something that may break them."
He paused.
Then exhaled.
"The difference is only that I must do it knowing the world will also try to break him."
His voice lowered further.
"And I must trust he will break the world first."
Resolve
He stood at last.
The movement was smooth, silent.
He approached the window, hands behind his back, posture erect even in solitude. The snow outside had intensified, a slow descent of white over darkness.
He watched it for a long moment.
Then spoke—not to Kel, not to Helena, not to the estate.
Just to the night.
"If my decision was correct… he will walk two years and return standing."
A breath.
"If I was wrong…"
The faintest, rarest flicker of pain crossed his eyes.
"…I will lose a son. Not an heir. Not a tool. A son."
He let the silence swallow the words.
A distant candle flickered in the corridor beyond the door.
The snow fell.
His hand lifted, resting against the cold glass.
"Walk well, Kel," he said quietly. "And let the world learn how foolish it is to dismiss what grows in shadow."
He turned from the window, extinguished the study lamp.
The room plunged into quiet dark.
He left without looking back.
The door shut softly.
And for the first time in many years—
Duke Arcturus von Rosenfeld felt something unfamiliar at the edge of his resolve.
Not fear.
Not uncertainty.
The quiet ache of someone who has just waged war…
…and is only now realizing that the battlefield was his own heart.