The bell had rung.
And still, Frido waited.
He did not climb down to speak. He did not step into the court to negotiate. He simply sat at the base of the tower, cloak drawn tight, eyes on the horizon.
It was not stubbornness.
It was the vow.
He would not speak.
Because some truths must be witnessed, not explained.
---
Inside Trillien's great hall, Queen Yllara listened to the reports.
They poured in like floodwaters: emissaries from the southern provinces, letters from generals, merchants whispering tales of the mute boy whose silence had brought an army to its knees.
Her fingers drummed softly on the throne's edge.
"He does not demand audience," her seneschal said.
"He will not enter," added the high priest.
"Then what does he want?" asked Lord Veit, her chief war advisor.
"He wants them to look," Yllara said. "To look at him. To see what we've become."
Veit scowled. "Peace bought through emotion is peace that breaks at first frost."
But Yllara rose, voice quiet. "And war bought through pride is war that never ends."
She descended the steps of her dais.
"I will see this boy."
---
At dusk, she rode out with no crown, no entourage — only a hooded cloak and two silent guards.
She found him beneath the bell, carving into the snow with a stick.
He didn't rise. Didn't bow.
She approached slowly.
"You wear no crest," she said.
He nodded.
"You fight for no king."
He nodded again.
"Why, then, do I feel as if I've already lost to you?"
Frido wrote on the parchment he carried at his side.
"Because you remember who you were before you forgot."
Yllara stared at the words for a long time.
"I had a sister," she said softly. "She drowned in a war none of us understood. I never wept. I wore the mask of the throne too quickly."
Frido looked up.
And gently held out Mirea's ribbon.
Yllara did not touch it.
But she wept — for the first time in decades.
---
That night, the stars were sharp in the sky.
But across the forest to the east, someone else watched.
From the woods near the broken temple of Vaeth, a man stood beneath dead branches, wrapped in fur and shadow.
His name was Kirin Vane.
Once a knight of the Iron Flame.
Once a man of faith.
Now, a ghost made of bone and vengeance.
He had once seen Frido as a boy — years ago — sobbing at the grave of a brother fallen not in noble battle, but in a petty border skirmish. Kirin had led that raid. He'd forgotten the boy's face.
But not the eyes.
When word came of a silent pilgrim bringing war to its knees, Kirin remembered those eyes.
And now, he watched from the trees.
"Little flame," he whispered, voice cracked and low. "You think silence saves. But silence is what let them kill in the first place."
He turned to the shadows behind him.
Dozens of cloaked figures emerged — scarred, exiled, seething with hatred for both crown and cause.
"The world listens to him now. So we will make it stop."
---
At the bell tower, Frido did not sleep.
He knew the cold well. He welcomed it.
It sharpened his resolve.
But his heart was not numb.
He still remembered the weight of Mirea's gaze. The warmth of Teren's laughter. The sound of his own voice in dreams — the voice he had given up.
As he rested, eyes half-closed, he felt a shift in the wind.
Not danger. Not yet.
But a warning.
---
In the early dawn, a girl approached.
Barely sixteen. Wrapped in threadbare wool. Eyes red from tears.
She carried a wooden doll with one arm missing.
"I… I lost my brother last week," she whispered. "He died for the border. They said it was honorable."
Frido looked up.
She hesitated, then knelt and placed the doll in his lap.
"He said… if someone ever came who really meant peace, I should give them this."
Frido touched her hand — gently, like a promise.
Then wrote:
"Your brother gave something more powerful than breath. He gave belief."
The girl cried softly.
Frido handed her the ribbon.
"You'll need this more than me," he wrote.
She shook her head and tucked it into his cloak.
"You still have something to carry."
---
By the time the queen's procession returned, more people had gathered.
Not to shout.
Not to cheer.
Just to see.
Farmers. Priests. Soldiers. Children. Nobles.
And in the distant woods, Kirin watched.
His hand touched the dagger at his belt.
"Soon," he murmured.
---
But for now, the bell at Winter's Edge stood quiet.
And beneath it, Frido sat.
Not to wait.
But to endure.
Because peace is not made in a moment.
It is suffered into being.
---
End of Chapter 47