Legos was still arguing when the King and Queen reached the edge of the battlefield.
"In a real battle there is collateral damage!"
"What matters is how many targets I destroyed — and how fast!"
"This trial is flawed!"
"Victory is what counts. The victor stands. That is what decides war!"
The judges stood rigid and pale.
No one wanted to rule against a prince.
They were simply enforcing the rules.
The King stopped a few steps away.
He had heard enough.
"Is that what you believe?" he asked calmly.
The tone was worse than shouting.
"Do the lives of your fellow warriors mean nothing to you?"
Legos' voice faltered.
"Is victory above all else," the King continued, "everything I have taught you?"
Silence fell across the field.
Even the crowd quieted.
Legos had rarely heard his father correct him.
Rarely heard him praise him either.
But this—
This was public.
The King exhaled slowly.
His voice lowered.
"This… is on me."
The Queen stepped beside him.
Her hand touched his arm.
"This is on us."
The King's gaze did not leave his son.
"I am disappointed," he said evenly. Then corrected himself. "We are disappointed. Not because you lost. But because you believe your allies are expendable."
The words hit harder than any weapon.
Legos felt smaller than he ever had.
He had wanted to be the best.
The hero.
The warrior everyone admired.
He had never wanted to be feared.
Never wanted to be seen as someone who would sacrifice his own soldiers.
But the murmurs in the crowd began.
"I wouldn't follow him into battle."
"He'd spend us like arrows."
"He only cares about winning."
That was not who he thought he was.
But that was what they saw.
And suddenly—
He understood.
Heiron had always trained to be King.
Firstborn.
Disciplined.
Measured.
Legos had been the second son.
The spare.
The general.
The blade.
Never the crown.
He had embraced it.
If he could not rule, he would dominate the battlefield.
He would be the strongest.
The most feared.
The most impressive.
And somewhere along the way—
He stopped thinking about the men behind him.
The King stepped forward.
Placed a firm hand on his son's shoulder.
"This is my failing," he said quietly. "I never showed you that strength is not domination."
The Queen's voice trembled, though she held her composure.
"You were shaped by expectation. By tradition."
Her eyes shone with restrained tears.
"We never asked you what you wanted to become."
That broke him.
Not the loss.
Not the crowd.
That.
Legos dropped to his knees.
Not in defiance.
Not in rage.
But in shame.
He had never seen his mother look at him like that.
Not angry.
Regretful.
The King knelt as well, lowering himself to eye level.
"Tradition can guide," he said. "But it can also blind."
Then softer—
"Perhaps it is not too late."
Legos looked up, confusion cutting through the weight.
The King's hand tightened on his shoulder.
"Come hunting with me."
A simple offer.
One he had never made before.
The King had become King too soon.
Duty had replaced fatherhood.
Legos swallowed hard.
"I… would like that."
The King helped him stand.
The Queen stepped in, steadying his other side.
They walked him from the field.
Not as rulers escorting a defeated prince.
But as parents supporting a son.
From the stands, the crowd misunderstood.
They thought it humiliation.
A political reprimand.
They did not see what had truly happened.
Behind them, someone rushed forward.
His fiancée.
She threw her arms around him without hesitation.
He had expected distance.
Embarrassment.
Instead, she held him firmly.
As if nothing else mattered.
And for the first time—
He held her back.
Not out of obligation.
Not out of arrangement.
But because he needed her.
They had not chosen each other.
Their marriage had been strategic.
Political.
Convenient.
But as he stood there, humiliated and stripped of pride—
She had chosen him.
And perhaps—
He could choose her too.
Above them, the banners of Etherevalis stirred in the wind.
Tradition had shaped him.
But it did not have to define him.
And to the side of the battlefield, Llandra watched quietly.
The trials had ended.
But something far more important had begun.