Snow drifted in lazy spirals across the field outside Trillien.
The bell at Winter's Edge stood silent, but its echo still lived in the hearts of those who had heard it. By morning, the crowd had grown.
They came without arms.
Without orders.
Just to watch the boy who never spoke.
Some knelt.
Some stood in quiet wonder.
One soldier from the Southern Highguard placed his helmet at Frido's feet and whispered, "No one ever stopped me from fighting — until you refused to."
Frido didn't react.
But inside, he felt the tremble of something deeper than wind.
The beginning of belief.
---
Far behind the gathering, among the trees, Kirin Vane knelt in the snow.
He sharpened his blade not with stone, but against a piece of black steel — broken from the ruins of the Temple of Flame, where once he'd sworn his oath to justice and become a shadow instead.
The men beside him — outlaws, fallen captains, and mercenaries — watched in silence.
Kirin did not speak often.
But when he did, they listened.
"This boy," Kirin said, "has done more damage to war than any sword. He's turned our blades into questions."
He stood.
"So now we answer."
---
At the edge of the gathering, Teren arrived.
Dusty, ragged, wrapped in travel-worn leather.
He had ridden through the night from the east, wordless and determined, barely resting since Frido left Hevenmark.
He saw the crowd.
The bell.
And there — his friend.
Still, as if carved from snow and vow.
Teren pushed through gently and knelt beside Frido, eyes red.
"You stubborn bastard," he whispered. "You really did it."
Frido looked at him and smiled.
Not with lips — but with the soft tension in his eyes, the slight tilt of his brow.
They didn't need words anymore.
---
Mirea stood on a balcony in Murigar, far to the west, reading a courier's letter again and again.
> He's alive. He rang the bell. People follow him now. Even the Queen.
She touched the necklace Frido once returned to her — the one her brother gave her before the border fell.
"I should have gone with him," she murmured.
Then, to no one but the wind, she said what she had never dared say before:
"I love you, Frido."
But no messenger could carry those words fast enough.
---
That night, the sky blackened early.
Clouds rolled in, unnatural and low.
The crowd at the bell thinned. Many lit candles. Others stood vigil.
Frido remained.
But something in his posture shifted.
Teren noticed it first.
"What is it?" he asked.
Frido pointed — not to the sky, but to the tree line.
Teren narrowed his eyes.
There, just beyond visibility, something moved.
Multiple shadows.
Too still to be animals.
Too silent to be hunters.
"Assassins," Teren said grimly. "Or worse."
Frido stood.
Not to flee.
But to meet them.
---
At midnight, the attack came.
Silent.
Precise.
Six figures in black descended from the woods, slipping through snow like phantoms. Their blades gleamed with poison meant for kings.
They didn't rush the crowd.
They went straight for Frido.
But Teren was already moving.
He caught the first with a spinning strike, blade-on-blade, sparks showering across the bell's base.
The crowd screamed.
But Frido remained still.
One of the attackers circled behind.
A throwing knife cut the air.
And stopped.
Not in Frido — but in the hand of a man standing in its path.
Loras.
General no more. Just a man with armor half-worn and eyes full of fire.
He blocked the blow and growled, "Not tonight."
---
Chaos erupted.
But not panic.
The soldiers around the bell did not draw blades to kill — they shielded civilians, closed ranks around the innocent.
Teren fought two at once.
Loras led a defense, calling no orders — only gestures, movements, stances of unity.
And Frido…
He did not move to strike.
He moved to stop.
He stepped between attacker and defender.
He took the blade aimed for Teren's back — caught it in his palm, blood pooling, but did not strike back.
He looked into the assassin's eyes and held up one hand.
Peace.
The assassin hesitated.
Something in that gaze — not courage, not fearlessness — but conviction — cracked the killer's resolve.
He turned and ran.
---
Four of the six were driven off.
One was captured.
One lay dead.
The snow was trampled.
But the bell remained untouched.
And Frido, though wounded, still stood.
Bleeding.
But not broken.
---
Loras approached, panting, armor cracked.
"You should have hidden," he said.
Frido wrote:
> "Then they would forget what I stood for."
Loras sighed.
Then smiled.
"I would follow you to death, if I didn't think you were leading us out of it."
---
Later, as dawn broke, Mirea's carriage raced across the final ridge toward Trillien.
She did not sleep.
She carried no army.
Only a letter — one she had written and rewritten a hundred times.
But still, she didn't know if she'd be in time.
Because snow never warns before it falls.
But sometimes… it softens the ground before something new can grow.
---
End of Chapter 48