The courtyard hadn’t moved.

  Same stone. Same walls. Same thin morning light stretching itself across the ground.

  Only the noise had changed.

  Where there had been sharp cracks of wood and loud, unbothered laughter, there was now the soft scrape of Anastasia’s boot against stone as she nudged her fallen sword closer with her toe.

  “Oww…” she muttered again, fingers still on the sore spot on her head.

  Elaine had straightened after her explanation and given them space to think. She stood a short distance away now with her staff resting against her shoulder, eyes half-lidded, attention turned upward as if listening to something only she could hear.

  Roland hadn’t moved much either.

  He stood where he’d been during the explanation, wooden sword held loosely at his side, gaze trained on the ground where Anastasia’s sword lay. His cheek still showed faint redness from earlier, but he didn’t seem to notice it.

  Soliana remained on the bench.

  Her hands were still folded in her lap, fingers linked tight without squeezing. She watched them all in turns — Elaine, Anastasia, Roland — as if trying to fit them into some shape she understood.

  The wind slipped into the courtyard and left again without comment.

  Anastasia was the first to break the quiet.

  “Alright!” she said suddenly, springing up to her feet.

  Roland flinched, just a fraction.

  Anastasia grabbed her wooden sword with her free hand and pointed it straight at Elaine.

  “Rematch!”

  Elaine lowered her eyes from the sky.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “Adventuring,” Anastasia declared, as if it were the only duel that mattered.

  “Adventuring,” Elaine repeated, slower.

  “Mm-hmm.” Anastasia nodded proudly. “Reina is the Land of Adventure! I’ll win.”

  Roland’s grip tightened slightly around his own sword.

  Elaine studied her for a moment — not the words, but the way they came out of her, bright and certain and unbreakably hers.

  “No,” Elaine said.

  Anastasia blinked. “What? Why not?”

  Elaine walked closer, brushing the wooden blade gently aside.

  “I picked food because you like it,” she said. “But if you doubted it forever, you’d still be you.”

  “And?”

  “And adventuring doesn’t sound like that for you.”

  Anastasia glanced away, as though caught without knowing why she was caught.

  “There are beliefs you stand with,” Elaine said softly. “And beliefs you stand on.”

  Anastasia frowned. “So?”

  “So don’t argue the second kind. Winning those hurts more than it proves.”

  Anastasia looked bothered, but not beaten. The argument simmered in her as Roland finally stepped away, crossing the courtyard quietly.

  The bench dipped beside Soliana before she realized he’d sat.

  She glanced, startled, then looked forward again as though copying his posture might reveal why he’d chosen it.

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  Wood rested across Roland’s knees. His hands curled around it without force.

  “…Um,” Soliana tried, “Roland?”

  He blinked back into the courtyard. “Hm?”

  She hesitated, then: “Can I ask you something?”

  Roland considered that, then nodded once. “Alright.”

  Soliana swallowed.

  “What is Inferna to you?” she asked.

  It wasn’t the question she’d meant, but it was the one that arrived.

  Roland stared ahead, not at her.

  “It’s…” His brow creased faintly. “Cruel.”

  Soliana’s fingers curled. “…Cruel?”

  “It hurts people,” Roland said almost absently. “It takes them. It asks for too much.”

  His voice didn’t dramatize it. It offered the facts the way one offered the weather.

  “But it has to exist,” he added.

  Soliana frowned. “Why?”

  “So the undead don’t walk past our gates and keep walking.” His shoulders tensed. “Through other kingdoms. Through yours. Through everywhere.”

  The sword’s edge glinted faintly in the sunlight as he shifted.

  “Inferna stands there so the rest don’t have to,” he murmured. “Or so fewer people have to.”

  Soliana watched him, unsure if that was pride, hatred, or both.

  “…Do you like living here?” she asked.

  Roland let out a sound that might have been a laugh if it had more room to breathe.

  “It doesn’t matter if I like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m the Prince.”

  He said it without grandeur. Without ownership. As if reciting the solution to a math problem.

  “I have to talk instead of fight. Make sure we don’t scare people too much. Make sure they need us just enough.”

  He pressed his thumb into the wood grain of his sword.

  “I don’t get to decide if Inferna should be here. I just have to be useful to it.”

  Soliana stared down at her knees.

  Her voice dropped. “You sound older than us.”

  Roland blinked, as if noticing that for the first time, then shook his head.

  “I’m not,” he said.

  He looked down at his hands.

  “I’m nine.”

  The words landed oddly — too simple to be profound, too true to be ignored.

  Soliana opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again. “Then why do you talk like that? About kingdoms and duty and people dying?”

  Roland sat with that question for a moment.

  Across the courtyard, Anastasia had dragged Elaine into another argument — this one about the exact age she’d be when she became “the greatest adventurer in Arcadia.” Anastasia waved her arms as she talked, nearly tripping over her own feet, laughing every time she did. Elaine caught her elbow once without thinking, then let go just as quickly.

  Roland’s eyes drifted toward them.

  Anastasia’s smile was wide, careless, absolutely certain the future would listen to her.

  He watched her for a heartbeat too long.

  When he looked away, his grip on the sword had changed.

  “Because I thought I had to,” he said quietly. “If I didn’t think about it, no one would. And then it would be my fault later.”

  Soliana stared.

  He didn’t sound guilty. He sounded… confused by his own reasoning.

  “I already got a second chance,” Roland said, softer.

  Soliana’s breath caught. “Second… chance?”

  Roland froze as if realizing he’d said something he meant to keep inside. He didn’t explain it. He didn’t correct it. He didn’t apologize for it.

  He just looked back out at the courtyard.

  Anastasia nearly collided with Elaine, laughed, recovered, and kept talking like nothing in the world could stop her from going where she wanted.

  “They’re still kids,” Soliana whispered.

  “So are we,” Roland said.

  He said it like a realization — not a complaint.

  His gaze lingered on Anastasia’s grin, on the way she threw herself at the future without checking its edges first.

  Then he looked down at his own hands again.

  “I wanted to fix everything now,” he said. “Stop the cruelty. Stop Inferna from being what it is. Stop the undead. Stop everything.”

  The list sounded wrong even to him as he said it aloud.

  He shook his head once.

  “But I can’t. Not yet.”

  His fingers tightened briefly around the worn wood.

  “I’m just a kid.”

  The words didn’t shrink him.

  They stripped the armor off the way he was speaking — all the too-heavy phrasing, all the adult weight he’d been trying to wear. They left him exactly his size, with all the same responsibilities waiting in the distance, but not on his shoulders this second.

  Soliana stared at him as if the courtyard had tilted.

  He hadn’t excused anything.

  He had just said the one thing no one else had remembered to say.

  Roland lifted the sword off his knees and stood.

  “I’ll still train,” he said. “And learn. And be useful later.”

  He glanced toward Anastasia and Elaine — toward the girl who had dragged him into a dance, toward the woman who refused to break children on purpose.

  “But I’m also going to live now.”

  As he said it, the courtyard sounded different — louder, lighter, younger. Anastasia’s laughter seemed closer. Elaine’s sighs sounded less like resignation and more like tolerance.

  Soliana swallowed.

  “…I don’t understand you,” she admitted.

  Roland almost formed a smile. “I don’t understand myself either.”

  He paused, just for a moment, before he finally let that smile go.

  “And I think— I think that’s okay.”

  Before she could decide how she felt about that, Anastasia dropped in upside-down over the bench.

  “What are you two plotting?” she demanded.

  “We’re not plotting,” Roland muttered.

  “Suspicious,” Anastasia said, flipping over the backrest into the center with the grace of someone who’d never been told not to climb furniture. She landed between them and sprawled across the bench like she owned it.

  Elaine followed at a normal pace, staff tapping against stone.

  “Princess Anastasia,” she sighed, “please don’t break Inferna before lunch.”

  “It’s fine,” Roland said reflexively.

  Soliana hid a laugh behind her hands.

  The heaviness that had settled in her chest earlier hadn’t disappeared.

  But it had changed shape.

  Inferna remained what it was.

  Cruel. Necessary. Heavy.

  But for one morning, the people meant to inherit it were allowed to sit in the sun and argue about nonsense.