Chapter 525: The Lord’s Return (1)
Golden sunlight soaked the banners of the Guardians of the East as they fluttered wildly in the fresh, playful wind, as if the sky itself had decided to celebrate their return. Lyan rode at the front of the procession, his cloak trailing behind him like a second banner, its edges tugged and flared by the breeze, the silver sigil stamped on his back flashing with each sway of his horse’s stride. Beneath him, his steed’s steady gait hummed through the leather reins, the familiar rise and fall of each step grounding him in a rhythm he had marched to for years. Yet despite the steady beat, there was a strange lightness to the air. The war was over. The march wasn’t toward another battlefield—it was toward home.
Home.
The word still felt foreign on his tongue, like he was borrowing it from someone else’s story.
The army stretched behind him, a long river of steel and color, its current split into the orderly ranks of Astellian soldiers and the unpredictable bursts of his private troops. There was no sharp line separating them anymore. The mountain tribesmen wove through the march like drifting kites, some barefoot, some with makeshift whistles carved from river reeds, some carrying baskets of something they claimed was stew but Lyan suspected was just an elaborate dare. Their laughter leapt above the rhythmic stomp of boots, as if they alone had decided a military march was meant to sound like a village festival. Their drums didn’t match the marching cadence at all—off-beat, too fast, too playful—but no one seemed to mind.
At times, the soldiers would chant his name, their voices rising and falling in waves that washed over him. Sometimes the chants were sharp and disciplined, but just as often they were quickly interrupted by a tribesman tossing in his own version of the cheer, sometimes twisting Lyan’s name into something ridiculous, sometimes challenging the Astellian soldiers to see who could shout louder.
Lyan’s hand tightened slightly on the reins, though his posture stayed relaxed. He never thought he would lead a kingdom’s army. Even now, he didn’t know if he could wear that title properly. His eyes roamed the faces behind him—his people now, apparently. Soldiers who were far too formal when they thought he was watching, tribesmen who paraded through the march as if they had always belonged, children perched on wagon edges waving their little wooden swords like miniature knights, their grins too wide, their teeth missing in places where youth hadn’t quite caught up yet.
It was strange. Absurd. Wonderful. All of it at once.
His mind wandered briefly to the conversation with Erich, half-expecting the prince to call him an idiot for parading into the mountains and coming back with a second army. He could still picture Erich blinking at his report, pausing just long enough that Lyan thought, ah, here it comes—but instead, Erich had laughed, clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to rattle his ribs, and said, "Of course you subjugated them. You probably shared stew with them and called it a conquest."
Maybe it was the euphoria of victory. Maybe Erich was just too happy the war was done to argue. Either way, Lyan had walked away from that meeting with a grin and a scribbled document that made the mountain tribes officially his people.