The snowstorm broke much earlier than the outpost watchers had predicted. Beyond the windows, a wild northern wind roared and howled, hurling handfuls of biting snow against the glass.

Adrian, sitting at the desk in his office, suddenly heard a desperate female shriek echo from the corridor. Casting his quill aside, he rushed out, not yet grasping what had transpired.

An elderly lady was shaking the shoulders of an outpost guard in sheer horror as he lay unconscious and helpless upon the floor. Adrian felt the blood in his veins freeze in an instant.

“Adel...” he whispered, an icy dread gripping his chest.

Breaking into a run, Fornweir bolted down the corridor toward the small archives room where his daughter was supposed to be transcribing papers. He yanked hard on the heavy oak door - it yielded easily and swung wide open.

The room was empty. Only an overturned chair lay on the floor, while a thick black blot bloomed across the white sheets of paper from a shattered inkwell.

Adrian had not expected it to begin so quickly. Or rather, in the depths of his soul, he had hoped to the very last that Vogel would not resort to such a vile and low act. After all, it was Vogel who, six months ago, upon becoming the head of the garrison, had offered Adrian a steady job when he was barely making ends meet trying to feed his family. It was Vogel who had smilingly supported the idea of bringing Adelissa on as an assistant...

Clenching his fists until his knuckles cracked, Adrian ran at full speed toward the garrison commander’s office.

Throwing the heavy door open, he froze on the threshold.

“What do you care about that damned trinket?! There’s only one lousy gemstone in it!” Vogel rasped, his sword blade scraping as he struggled to hold back the furious onslaught of his attacker.

With icy contempt in his eyes, Grant sent the outpost commander crashing against the stone wall with a single powerful kick, knocking the breath from his lungs. Without even turning around, he parried an unexpected attack from Vogel’s assistant leaping from behind with a fluid, precise strike.

“Who gave you permission to take what isn’t yours?!” the mercenary roared, the steel of his former command in the Royal Knights piercing through his hoarse voice.

Gasping for air and wiping a trickle of blood from his split lip, Vogel bellowed like a wounded beast. Realizing that reasoning with the mad mercenary was impossible, the garrison commander raised his heavy broadsword and charged into the attack. Vogel was no novice either - years of service in the harsh north and skirmishes with wild tribes had rendered his movements swift, hard, and merciless.

A true dance of blades unfolded within the cramped confines of the office. Steel struck steel with a harsh scrape and showers of sparks. Vogel’s assistant, seizing his moment, attempted to slip behind Grant’s back to deliver a treacherous thrust beneath his shoulder blade.

Yet Isaac moved as though he had foreseen the strike. The former knight moved with unbelievable, almost unnatural grace. Despite the years washed down with alcohol and the morning hangover, his body remembered the heat of deadly combat.

Grant was clearly not aiming to kill. Had he wished, he could have slit both their throats within the first seconds of the fight. Instead, he conducted the match with quiet calculation: deflecting lethal thrusts with the flat of his blade, delivering disorienting strikes to the jaw with his pommel, and planting his boot firmly against his opponents’ knees to methodically neutralize them one by one.

A strike! Isaac spun on his heel, sweeping the assistant’s legs out from under him, and slammed the back of the man’s head hard into an oak cabinet. The man slid to the floor like a sack of grain, unconscious.

Vogel was left alone. Delivering a wide, sweeping cross-cut, the outpost commander left himself open for a fraction of a second. That was all Isaac needed. With lightning speed, he side-stepped to the left, striking first with the flat of his blade before slicing through Vogel’s thigh with the tip.

Blood splattered across the carpet. The garrison commander let out a muffled cry and, losing his balance, sank heavily onto one knee, leaning helplessly with both hands on the hilt of his sword pinned against the floor.

Adrian stood by the door, frozen like a statue. The blood thundered deafeningly in his ears.

“Adel...” he whispered softly, with a searing pain.

Everything blurred before his eyes. The image of the sullen, disheveled mercenary before him dissolved for a moment, giving way to a terrifying phantom of the past. A memory flashed in Adrian’s mind with fierce intensity: this very same man, Sir Isaac Grant in shining armor, ruthlessly severing his father’s head with a single stroke of his blade.

An arctic terror gripped his vitals, but thoughts of his missing daughter proved stronger than the old trauma. Conquering his paralysis, Adrian covered the distance between them in three quick strides, grabbed the wounded Vogel by the lapels of his uniform, and shook him with wild force.

“Adel!” Adrian roared, the desperation of a father with nothing left to lose breaking through his voice. “Where is Adelissa?!”

Adrian’s gaze involuntarily fell upon the heavy medallion that had skittered across the wooden floor during the brawl. Its silver cover had broken off upon impact, exposing its interior. Inside, beneath a cracked pane of glass, lay a dried, forever-frozen flower. A simple field daisy.

Time suddenly seemed to slow down. Forgetting everything for a fraction of a second, Fornweir scooped the broken medallion into his palm.

In that same instant, Vogel took advantage of the distraction, slipping a narrow stiletto from his boot shaft and raising it for a fatal strike into Adrian’s exposed side. But Isaac reacted faster. Lurching forward like a shadow, the mercenary pinned Vogel to the stone wall with a heavy, sickening crunch, driving his broadsword straight through the commander's shoulder.

Adrian barely had time to comprehend what had happened - he only saw the dagger drop with a chime from the garrison commander’s weakening fingers, as Vogel grunted heavily and helplessly from the agony.

Isaac’s heart hammered frantically and deafeningly in his ears. He stood motionless, his grip unyielding on the hilt of his sword, frantically trying to process whether he had just heard the right name from this man’s lips... Adelissa?..

And in that very instant, he saw what he had seen only in his worst nightmares and sweetest dreams for the past fifteen years.

A girl ran into the office, breathing heavily. Hair as white as fresh northern snow and clear blue eyes, pure and transparent as a spring sky, looking straight into his hardened, damned soul.

“Father!” she cried out, her voice tight with terror. “Are you alright?! Are you hurt?!”

Adelissa hovered anxiously around Adrian, carefully checking his shoulders and searching for injuries.

The outpost guards bursting in behind her instantly drew their weapons, forming a tight ring around Grant, who still stood frozen in place, unable to tear his eyes away from the girl while pinning the bloody Vogel to the wall with his blade.