"Was that you? Back at the Villa?" the guard at the gate asked Ludwig. Though he had a feeling that he didn't even need to hear the answer.
The man stood under the portal frame with that stiff posture imperial gate soldiers all seemed to share, half discipline and half fear of anything that might happen outside the boundaries of their authority.
The cold here had a way of biting into metal, making the air smell faintly of iron and warding residue. Behind Ludwig, the distant city still carried the aftertaste of panic and movement, the kind that followed a toppled house of power. The guard's eyes lingered on Ludwig's clothes, his hands, his lack of visible injuries, as if he was trying to reconcile the shaking they all felt with the calm figure standing in front of him.
"And what if it was?" Ludwig asked.
He didn't offer an explanation. He didn't deny. He just let the question hang where it belonged, between certainty and accusation.
"You killed him?"
