Chapter 389 - 388. Summons And Shadows (1)
As I expected, the Queen had finally begun to make her moves.
She played her game as I knew she would—whispers planted in tea parlors, subtle remarks exchanged at evening banquets, a slow and calculated attempt to taint reputations through the social web she’d carefully spun over the years. But her methods, though once effective, had grown outdated in the face of what we’d built. This time, her efforts unraveled before they could take root.
I had already posted people in every circle that mattered—eyes that watched, ears that listened, and mouths that silenced every rumor before it could catch flame. Her words were no match for the truth that had already been set in motion.
The newspapers, serving as both voice and vision of the kingdom’s people, carried the truth that no idle gossip could bury.
The Kingdom’s new heroes—unexpected, unpolished, but undeniably brilliant—had already claimed their place in the hearts of both nobles and commoners alike.
Eric, the Shadow Prince, once seen as nothing more than a curse-bearing orphan of the royal house, had shed the chains of his past. With each battle, each decision made on the field and in process of attaining the peace, he had carved a new name for himself. He had risen—not as a shadow—but as a light, blazing steady and sure, the future sun of the kingdom.
Then there was the boy they once pitied—the child who was said to be nothing without parents, fragile, dismissed, forgotten. He now bore the name "God of War." Not as a title born of fear, but of reverence. His strength had been hard-won, his resolve ironclad. He stood not just as a warrior, but as a symbol—of endurance, of pain turned into power.
And finally, my brother, the one they believed would inherit only his father’s softness and none of his mother’s steel. They couldn’t have been more wrong. That soft boy had grown into a blade—sharp, cold, and merciless where it mattered. They called him the Prince of Frost now, and it was his ice that had impaled the kingdom’s enemies on the battlefield beside the blazing sun.
The three of them—fire, frost, and fury—had rewritten their stories in the blood and honor of war.
I couldn’t be prouder.
I folded the newspaper with a slow breath, my fingers lingering for a moment on the inky print. The front page was dedicated to the return of the knights—those who had finally reached home after a long, bitter campaign. Though Eric and the others were still in Denril, wrapping up the final formalities, their knights had already begun their journey back nearly a month ago, and now, one by one, they were arriving.