The man seated on his throne finally spoke, his voice wavering between irony and skepticism:
"Very well. I imagine you wish to speak with me. Now, could you please explain to me exactly what the hell is going through the empire's mind to send a teacher and two brats to my battlefield?"
The weight of his words filled the tent as if they had shattered the air into splinters. Hans turned pale, feeling cold sweat run down his neck. Frida widened her eyes, offended, incredulous that someone would dare speak to her in such a way.
But before Hans could attempt any justification, an unexpected voice cut through the silence.
"Bread and water."
The short, almost absurd phrase made the general frown in disbelief.
"What the hell are you talking about, girl?"
Hans choked, trying to intervene, but his throat seized up. That was not the kind of topic he dared introduce. And that was when Lena, her heart pounding like war drums, found confidence in her own voice.
"Nearly ninety years ago, General Vex — commander of the empire's first advance squad under Otto I — marched through the northern desert against one of the most formidable enemies on this continent: the desert wanderers."
"Her eyes gleamed like blades."
"They weren't stronger than us, but they knew the sands as if they were part of them. There was no easy victory — nor without countless deaths."
Until one officer suggested something unthinkable.
Silence hung heavy, until Wilhelm, to everyone's surprise, murmured along with her:
"Bread and water."
Lena nodded, her voice firm, almost solemn:
"That's right. Bread was their ancestral delicacy, the essence of their culture. Water, more precious than gold amid the dunes. Vex offered both. Not steel, not blood. Bread and water. And so he won without losing a single man."
Wilhelm's gaze narrowed. There was no contempt — there was something more dangerous: a glimmer of genuine respect. The girl had conviction. She had fire.
"Sir Wilhelm"
Lena concluded, holding the general's gaze,
"we believe it can be the same with the North. They don't need more blades. Nor more blood. They need bread and water."
A sharp, almost cruel smile tore across Wilhelm's face. He stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor like muffled thunder. He walked with heavy steps to the table and grabbed an apple. He bit into it violently, the crunch echoing inside the tent. He spoke while chewing, the pulp breaking between his teeth:
"Well… very well. It's been a while since I've seen someone with such a silver tongue."
Wilhelm raised the fruit like a cheap trophy, chewing with his mouth open.
"But I must correct your sweet idealization, little girl. It's always easy to tell when someone isn't from the nobility. Commoners… they carry that mark. A fascinating… and grotesque innocence."
He slowly turned to Hans, his gaze as sharp as a blade polished by disdain. The next bite into the apple echoed like mockery.
"Perhaps you, Hans, as a teacher, would like to complete your pupil's fable."
he said in a singsong tone, as if telling a joke.
"Tell her about the so-called "bread and water" the desert wanderers received. About how we poisoned their wells while feeding them speeches about peace and alliance."
Wilhelm tilted his head, his sarcastic smile widening.
"And of course, about how we sold the lie that all of it was simply… a congenital disease of their race."
The air froze inside the tent.
Lena felt her stomach turn, as if each bite from the general was a stone being crushed inside her.
Hans, rigid, remained silent for a few moments. But Wilhelm gave him no respite.
"Oh, professor… don't tell me you're going to fall silent now?"
he mocked, the words dripping with venom.
"Or are you going to let this little girl keep believing in fairy tales about "honor and diplomacy"?"
Hans took a deep breath. His chest rose and fell quickly, not only from the cold in the tent, but from the weight of the dark truth the empire carried. Part of him wanted to remain silent, to hide the truth behind the layers of veils the Empire had woven for centuries. But another part — the part that saw Lena's wide eyes, struggling to understand the world and the new truths that seemed to bloom and transform with every passing minute — would no longer allow silence.
He stepped forward. The cold snow beneath his boots. His voice, when it came out, was not that of a timid academic, but of a man who accepted the burden of a bitter truth:
"With all due respect, General… I've studied the people of the North for as long as you've faced them in battle."
Wilhelm raised an eyebrow, his gaze icy and ironic.
Hans did not back down.
"And I believe there is still room for something different. Perhaps not submission, of course… but concessions. There is always a first step, even between enemies. And that's all we came to seek: the first step."
Silence fell upon the tent. Wilhelm still nibbled on the apple in his hand, like a bored judge listening to a lawyer too young to be in that room.
But it wasn't Hans who kept the fire burning — it was Lena.
She, who had been confident and then crestfallen, now raised her face once more. Her eyes now gleamed with the flame the professor had kindled. When she spoke, her voice did not sound like that of a frightened commoner, but of someone who dared to dream of breaking the cycle.
"One step may seem small… but it's enough to open a path. Even if what you said is true… someone had to make them believe the water was clean."
The simple sentence echoed with disproportionate weight and an ingenuity beyond the ordinary.
Even Wilhelm stopped chewing, if only for a moment, as though that small flame of conviction had dared to light up his night of cynicism.
Wilhelm's eyes narrowed. He looked sideways at the flag covering the fruit table and toward where the North should be. The silence was dense, expectant.
"Very well."
he growled at last.
"I still think this is madness. Madness that will, sooner or later, end with your heads stuck on barbarian spears, raised proudly to mock the Empire."
He bit the apple again, spitting the core onto the ground.
"But… if those lunatics allowed it, I won't be the one to stand in the way. Just don't expect me to waste elite soldiers escorting your illusions."
Hans didn't back down. On the contrary, his confidence seemed to swell, fueled by the moment.
"We don't need them, sir. We won't need your soldiers."
The general raised an eyebrow. For a moment, he seemed to weigh the weight of those words. First, suspicion. Then, a flicker of pity — even regret. Like someone watching lambs surrender themselves to slaughter. When he spoke, his voice came out deeper, almost grim, dragging each syllable like one pulls red-hot iron from their throat.
"If that's the case… at least allow me to brief you on the situation."
Hans, buoyed by his own confidence, took a step forward:
"If you're talking about Heinrich and Friedrich, we're already aware of the situation."
The response was immediate: a dry, humorless laugh that cracked the air in the tent like a whip. Wilhelm leaned forward, spitting out the words with disdain.
"Those two halfwits?"
his mouth twisted into a cruel half-smile.
"Of course not."
He dropped the half-eaten apple onto the table, the juice dripping like blood over the yellowed map. The silence that followed was suffocating. Even the banners swaying in the cold wind seemed to stop and listen.
The general raised his eyes, black and deep, and continued:
"What you need to know… is what happened after."
________________________________
The shrill scream of the Northern soldiers tore Sofia Durova from her stupor, slicing through the air like a blade.
Her eyes, still fixed on the monumental scene before her, refused to blink: the winged beast spat green venom that melted the snow into smoking craters, while its rider's whip hissed like a living serpent, cutting through the air and into Pavel's flesh.
Sofia's heart pounded wildly, each beat like a hammer blow against her chest. Her black bear growled at her side, bristling, muscles taut, as if daring to face those titanic creatures alone — too large, almost like living houses of scales and hatred.
Minutes dragged on like centuries. Every roar, every clash of steel against scale, every spray of blood against the white snow was another hammer strike to the girl's chest. The violence unfolded before her like a nightmare too vivid to ignore. When, at last, Pavel raised his halberd and, with a devastating blow, split the enemy in two, the entire field seemed to tremble.
Young Durova let out a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. The sob that followed carried a bitter, almost guilty relief.
"Look how he… how he cut that man in half…"
she murmured, her voice trembling, as her fingers instinctively found her mouth. Her teeth dug into her nails. A small but unprecedented gesture, exposing the nervousness gnawing at her soul.
There, before that carnage, there was no room for modesty or composure. It was naked, raw death, without veils.
In the brief pause between the first and second battles, Sofia instinctively turned to share her reaction. She expected to find in the boy beside her the same fascination, the same awe burning in her own chest. But what she saw froze the words on her lips.
The boy was not thrilled.
He wasn't smiling.
He didn't even seem to be breathing faster.
He stood motionless — so lost in thought that the brutal scene before him didn't seem to graze him at all.
The gray bear lying at his feet licked its paws with the calm of one watching something utterly banal.
Sofia felt her stomach twist.
What the hell is happening?
"Nikolai… are you okay?"
her voice sounded tenser than she would have liked.
He lifted his heterochromatic eyes to her, still clouded.
"Yes, I'm fine."
"Fine? But how can you be? Look at the size of that thing!"
"Yes, it's big."
his voice was calm, almost casual.
"But I've seen a bigger one."
Sofia blinked, incredulous.
"Bigger… how much bigger…?"
The answer came without hesitation:
"At least five times bigger."
"Stop lying!"
she snapped back, almost laughing nervously. That was impossible. Even Wyverns never reached that scale. Five times? Not even in the academy's worst nightmares would anyone dare suggest such a thing.
She was about to insist when a burst of light exploded above them. White, searing. Sofia and her bear shut their eyes, gasping.
"Urghhh… what is that?!"
she cried, shielding her face.
In the middle of the glare, a calm voice cut through the whirlwind:
"Some white bears have healing abilities. Some, more basic… but the strongest ones are exceptional. Stribog, for instance, has one of the highest healing affinities in the past fifty years — second only to the one my…"
The boy cut the sentence short.
Sofia, however, didn't even notice the abrupt pause. To her, all of it was new — and far too fascinating to catch such subtle details.
All the girl could do was widen her eyes, even with blurred vision. Everything was unknown. Everything was mesmerizing.
"How… how do you know that?"
she asked, incredulous, as the light dimmed and the bodies of Pavel and his bear healed before their eyes.
Nikolai looked at her, his expression calm.
"I've seen someone use a similar power."
The second battle drew jeers and howls from the Northerners, as if each drop of blood were an ancient chant. The firelight reflected in the soldiers' wild eyes, and even the snow seemed to burn beneath their feet.
But when Pavel, in an insane act, hurled himself toward certain death — not fleeing, but to strike down the beast's master — the field fell silent. For a moment, time stopped. Then, shock gave way to an eruption of pride.
To the North, this wasn't madness. It was honor. The sacrifice of oneself to crush the enemy's heart wasn't just courage — it was legacy. The kind of gesture that sets a people's soul on fire and carves a man's name into future generations.
This time, even Ivan, always impassive, let something slip. His eyes didn't show surprise, but recognition. As if that act had awakened echoes of a past only he remembered. As if he'd seen that same flame before, in another time, on another field. Then, Pavel called to him.
Nikolai watched from afar. Blood ran across the snow like rivers of red, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from what passed between the two veterans. Ivan rose slowly, his shadow cast across the snow, and all knew, without a word being spoken: Pavel Morozov, border general, feared for half a century, was gone.
The reason was clear. Pavel's ursal had lost its color. From the dying body of the creature, a light began to emerge. Faint at first, then intense, until it rose into the snowy afternoon sky. Like a star pulling away from the earth, it climbed to the clouds — and in a final flash, descended once more, disappearing into the horizon from which it came: Vybor.
Silence was absolute. No wind, no scream, no flame dared break that moment.
"What was that…?"
murmured one of the students, voice trembling.
Sofia looked around, confused, until she heard a whisper that didn't seem meant for anyone.
Nikolai, eyes fixed on the sky, said softly, almost reverently:
"He's going home."