The last echoes of laughter clung to the camp like ghosts.
Barbarian songs had quieted, replaced by the brittle hiss of cooling embers and the low murmur of distant guards trading hushed words. Smoke coiled lazily toward a sky drowned in heavy cloud, hiding the stars as if the heavens themselves refused to witness what the world below was becoming.
Landon sat alone at the edge of the outer ring of tents.
Barbarian hidecloths, stitched with bone and beast-fur, rose like hunched silhouettes around him. Torches burned low, their flames bending under the steady push of winter wind. Snow had not yet fallen, but the earth was hard beneath him—cold, stubborn, unyielding.
Just like him.
He exhaled slowly, watching his breath fade into the night.
He was dressed in simple travel-worn gear. A dark, sleeveless leather jerkin over a wool tunic, both patched at the shoulders and repaired where blade and branch had left their signatures. His forearms were wrapped in faded bandages, not because he was injured, but out of habit—grip, stability, control. His trousers were thick, boots reinforced with additional hide for long marches over rough terrain.
Nothing about his clothing cried "knight" or "noble guard."
He was content with that.
He did not want the world's eyes.
He only needed to see.
From where he sat, he could just make out Kel's form near a dying fire closer to the center of the camp. Not clearly—just a faint outline, slender and still, shoulders bowed as if the sky weighed upon them alone.
Young master…
Landon's jaw tightened, a muscle twitching near his cheek.
He did not dare call him that aloud anymore. Out here, Kel was Heral, a wandering poet. A frail traveler with an iron gaze. A boy trying to move like a man while his body, cursed and fragile, resisted each step.
But to Landon, he would always be—
The one I chose to follow.
He lowered his gaze to his hands.
They were large, calloused, the knuckles bruised from too many hours of training even when the others slept. Thick fingers curled and uncurled slowly, as if testing the memory of a sword hilt that was not currently in his grasp.
Around him, barbarian tents shook softly as wind brushed their sides. The smell of roasted meat still hung on the air, mingled with sweat, ale, and the faint metallic tang of sharpened steel. Somewhere, a baby fussed, then quieted. Somewhere else, an old man coughed with the stubbornness of someone too stubborn to die.
The camp felt alive. Raw. Brutally honest.
Everything here wore its nature openly.
Except the one he guarded.
Landon let his head tilt back, eyes following the shapes of smoke in the dark.
Kel's voice still lingered in his ears. The poem from earlier.
"Winter says 'Die quietly.'
You answer—
'We'll feast first.'"
Landon had not clapped, not shouted, not cheered like the others.
His chest had simply—tightened.
Not with pride, not exactly.
With something heavier.
Something like the weight of a mountain being asked to move.
He had always been the quiet one.
Even back in the Rosenfeld estate, when other trainee knights jostled for attention, clashing wooden swords with more noise than skill, Landon had stood at the back, listening. Watching. Learning where each foot fell, how each breath broke rhythm, how each swing carried fear or arrogance behind it.
He remembered the day the contest had been announced.
A chance to serve the House directly. A chance to earn a crafted sword, a secret technique, a potion—luxuries someone of his origin could have fought a dozen battles and still never see.
He hadn't joined for those.
He had joined because he had heard whispers.
The cursed heir. The doomed young master. The joke of the nobles.
And then he had seen Kel for the first time—thin, quiet, eyes like a winter sky weighed behind glass.
And he had thought:
That is not someone who will die on his knees.
Landon's fingers flexed again at the memory.
He had expected arrogance.
He had been given resolve instead.
In the training yard, when their swords had crossed, Landon remembered sensing it clearly, beneath the weakness and the pain—an intent sharper than any blade.
Kel had fought like a man who measured each motion against the cost of his own lifespan.
Not a wasted breath.
Not a wasted step.
It was the first time Landon had felt small standing in front of someone physically weaker than himself.
Now, watching Kel from afar as the barbarian camp slept, that feeling had only deepened.
Bootsteps crunched softly at his back.
Landon didn't turn immediately. He had already recognized the rhythm—measured, light, yet grounded. Reina.
She stopped beside him, then sat without asking, cloak flowing like a spill of night-stained snow. The white fur around her shoulders framed her face, highlighting the faint exhaustion in her eyes. Strands of hair had escaped her earlier tie, trailing along her cheek.
She did not look at him.
He did not look at her.
They shared silence like comrades sharing a fire.
"…You're still awake," she murmured at last.
Landon grunted in acknowledgment. Words were unnecessary.
She hugged her knees beneath her cloak, boots pulled close, shoulders curved inwards as if protecting some fragile decision in her chest.
Her gaze drifted toward the distant figure by the fire. Kel. There was something raw in her eyes now, something almost painful.
"Do you ever think," she whispered, "that he's walking somewhere we can't follow?"
Landon's jaw tightened again.
He didn't answer immediately. He followed her gaze, studying Kel's distant outline. Thin shoulders. The slight tilt of his head when listening to the wind. The way his hands rested, loose but never careless.
"…No," Landon said at last, voice low, deep. "He walks where he must."
Reina's lips tightened. "That's not an answer."
He shifted, turning his head toward her now. His eyes were dark, steady—like stone that had seen many storms and bent to none.
Her expression held challenge. Fear. Something like desperation buried beneath control.
"You heard his poem," she said. "He speaks like someone already—"
"—battling," Landon cut in simply.
She blinked. "Battling?"
He nodded once.
"With himself."
Reina's shoulders softened slightly, as if some tightly drawn string had eased. She looked down at her gloved hands, fingers twisting the edge of her cloak.
"…You trust him," she said quietly.
"I follow him," Landon corrected. "Trust is… included."
Her lips quirked despite the heaviness in the air. "That's a strange way to put it."
He glanced once more at Kel.
"He is weak," Landon said. There was no contempt in the word—only calm acknowledgment. "If he trips, his body might not recover. If he fights wrongly, he will break. If he pushes his limits for too long, he will fall."
Reina flinched faintly. "You don't have to say it like that."
"It is truth."
His gaze hardened.
"And yet… he keeps walking."
A slow breath left his lungs, misting faintly.
"I have seen knights with bodies forged by aura training hesitate when real battle came. I have seen men turn away at the thought of pain. He does not."
Landon closed his eyes for a heartbeat, recalling training sessions where Kel coughed blood into his hand, wiped it away, and simply tried again.
"You call that the walk of a man going somewhere we can't follow," he said quietly. "I call it the path I chose to walk behind."
Reina stared at him.
Her expression shifted—something in her relaxing, yet also steeling.
"…Behind?" she asked.
His lips twitched. Almost a smile. But not quite.
"I am a shield," Landon said simply. "A sword when needed. A mountain the enemy must climb in order to reach him."
He looked down at his hands again—broad, scarred, steady.
"…My place is behind. So he doesn't have to keep looking back."
Reina's throat worked as she swallowed.
She turned her gaze back toward Kel.
"…Then what is my place?" she asked softly.
Landon did not answer that.
He didn't need to.
The way Reina's fingers curled over her knee, the way her jaw clenched, the hint of iron in her eyes—
She was already deciding.
Time passed. Reina eventually stood, offered him a brief nod, and walked away—back toward her tent, back toward the thin illusion of sleep.
Landon remained.
The cold deepened as night crawled onward. The torches burned lower. The sounds of the camp dimmed to spread-out fragments: a snore, a crackle of firewood, the distant clink of a guard adjusting his spear.
Only then did Landon finally rise to his feet.
He walked toward the center of the camp.
Each step was firm, quiet, leaving prints in the hard ground. The cold bit at his cheeks, turned his ears numb, crawled down the back of his neck. His breath formed pale clouds before him, dissolving into the dark.
He approached Kel's fire—a low, tired glow, more ember than flame.
Kel sat where he had before, cloak drawn around his thin frame. His tunic's collar had loosened slightly in the front, revealing a hint of his collarbone—sharp, almost delicate. His hair fell unevenly over his forehead, strands swayed by wind.
He looked… smaller up close. More fragile.
Like glass with cracks only visible when you stepped near enough.
Kel's eyes shifted toward him as he approached, catching the ember glow.
"…Landon," he said quietly. His voice was soft, frayed by overuse from reciting poetry earlier. "You should rest."
Landon took a place slightly behind and to the side of him. Not facing him. Not beside him. Diagonal. Where one would stand if ready to act without crossing boundaries.
"I am resting," Landon answered.
Kel huffed. A faint, tired sound that might have been the ghost of a laugh.
The silence that followed was not uncomfortable.
It was weighty. Familiar.
"You watched the feast," Kel said after a while. "What did you think?"
Landon considered the question.
"The meat was tough," he replied. "But cooked with respect."
Kel's lips curved faintly. "I was asking about the people."
Landon shifted his gaze, looking out at the tents.
"Their eyes are sharp," he said. "Many of them have killed. Many of them are ready to again. Their movements… are honest."
"Honest?"
"They do not hide that they can be dangerous. I prefer that."
Kel hummed. "So do I."
His voice faded again.
Landon studied him from the corner of his eye. The slight rise and fall of Kel's chest. The almost imperceptible tremor in his fingers resting near the embers. The faint flush on his cheeks from the cold, contrasted with the pallor of fatigue.
"Your poem," Landon said suddenly.
Kel blinked, surprised.
"…Yes?"
"It was good."
Kel's head tilted a little. "That's… rare praise from you."
Landon shrugged one shoulder in a thoughtful manner. "I do not like many words. But yours felt… necessary."
Kel was quiet for a moment.
Then, softly:
"I didn't recite it for them."
"I know."
Kel's eyes turned sharply toward him.
Landon did not flinch.
"You recited it for yourself," Landon continued. "To confirm you still believe it."
Kel stared at him, and for a few breaths, the weight of that gaze was like frost pressing against stone.
Then he smiled—faint, tired, but real. The corners of his lips pulled upward in a fragile tilt, his eyes softening with something like resignation mixed with amusement.
"You see too much," Kel murmured.
"That is my role," Landon replied. "To see what you will not say. And act when you cannot."
Kel's fingers tensed slightly.
"…And if one day," he asked, voice low, "…the path I walk demands that you fall with me?"
Landon did not hesitate.
"I will hope," he said, "that I am heavy enough to make the path regret demanding it."
Kel's breath caught.
Then… he laughed.
A quiet, breathless sound. But this time, it was not broken.
More like ice cracking in spring.
"You talk like a mountain," Kel said.
Landon inclined his head. "Then I am as I should be."
Kel looked back at the embers, his shoulders easing—just a fraction. The tension that usually hid beneath his calm, the invisible armor he wore even when alone, seemed to loosen.
"…Reina," Kel said after a pause. "She spoke to you?"
"Yes."
"She worries."
"Yes."
His brows drew together faintly. "About me?"
Landon's answer was simple.
"Yes."
Kel exhaled. His breath came out with a faint shudder.
"I am not… someone worth—"
"Wrong," Landon interrupted.
Kel's head turned again, eyes narrowing slightly.
"You are someone I chose," Landon said, voice steady. "That is enough. For me. For her… she will decide what is enough."
Kel held his gaze a moment longer.
Then looked away first.
"…You are infuriating, sometimes," he murmured.
"So I have been told."
Landon's lips tugged slightly upward. It wasn't quite a smile. But it was an acknowledgement.
The fire dimmed further, orange fading to deep red. The wind grew sharper, threading its fingers through cloth and hair.
"Sleep," Landon said at last. "I will keep watch."
Kel hesitated. "The barbarians have their own guards."
"I know."
"Then—"
"I will keep watch."
There was no argument in his tone. Only an immovable calm.
Kel stared at him a heartbeat longer… and this time, he yielded.
He shifted, drawing his cloak closer, adjusting his seated position into something more like a half-recline. His eyelids drooped, still resisting, still fighting the habit of staying awake until others slept.
"You won't… stay behind forever," Kel muttered, words slurring slightly. "You'll surpass me, you know."
Landon's eyes softened faintly.
"That is not my goal."
"…Then what is?"
The answer came without hesitation.
"To be there," Landon said, voice quiet yet firm, "when you fall."
Kel's hand twitched weakly, as if wanting to protest.
Sleep took him before he could.
His breath smoothed, deepened. The tension in his shoulders gradually unwound. His head tilted slightly to the side, hair spilling over his brow. In sleep, without control, he looked painfully young.
Landon watched him.
The camp around them shifted, sighed, dreamed.
The barbarian guards glanced their way once or twice, noted the silent giant standing behind the sleeping boy, and decided, wordlessly, to trust the mountain to guard his chosen summit.
Landon placed one hand lightly upon the hilt of the sword at his side.
The weight of it was familiar.
The weight of his decision even more so.
I am not fast like Reina, he thought. Not sharp like the young master. Not cursed like the barbarian chief.
I am heavy. Steady. Slow to move—but impossible to stop once I do.
He lifted his gaze to where the clouds parted for a brief moment, revealing a cluster of faint, distant stars.
He had once dreamed of awakening a constellation like Mountain.
Now, he understood something else.
Even without a star burning in his soul, he could live as if one did.
Silent. Immovable. Watching.
Protecting.
The clouds drifted back, swallowing the stars again.
Landon did not move.
He stood as the night deepened, as the fires died, as the world dimmed.
A single figure behind Kel.
A mountain behind a boy who defied winter.
And in that stillness, with the curse of his young master sleeping only an arm's reach away, Landon made a vow he did not voice:
If your path leads to the edge of the world… then my duty is simple.
I will be the last thing that falls.