They left before the sun fully settled. No announcements. No ceremony. Just four people moving with purpose through the last stretch of road between them and the palace, each one carrying the weight of what they knew was waiting at the other end of it.
Alaric walked at the front. He had not said much since the message arrived and nobody had pushed him to. The closer they got to the palace the quieter he became, not out of fear but out of the particular focus that comes when a man is walking toward something he has been preparing for his whole life without knowing it.
