"Your Highness, with your permission, I will continue as commander of the Greil Mercenaries. Our contract has not changed."

"Thank you, Lady Titania. Then, I will entrust my fate and the fate of my country to you."

Soren looked up in time to catch Princess Elincia's eyes, made brighter by unshed tears, just before she left.

Ike, promising to protect the princess, just some strange woman that he had never met before –

The heron princess' babble sounded very charming. That didn't make it any more understandable.

He looked pointedly at her brother for a translation.

"She would like to express her condolences for your commander's death," Reyson explained, eyes veering towards Soren and then away uncomfortably. His pale clothes could have cast him in the role of a holy man, despite all the violence and bloodshed that seemed to gather around the supposedly pure herons. "Though Leanne knows that there is no way she can even begin to make up for your loss, she offers to sing at the funeral."

Leanne nodded fervently. In another time – another life – Soren might have pointed out her ability to comprehend the common tongue as just another one of royalty's habit of hiding information but he didn't even want to look at her, for all her loveliness.

Held in his arms, she had been protected as a priceless valuable and Ike had tried to protect her even when hampered by her weight and only one arm –

"What would he say if he saw you like this?"

Soren placed his book down precisely, though in truth he hadn't turned the page in perhaps an hour, perhaps longer. He favored their green knight with a chilly gaze.

Oscar sighed. "Soren, this isn't healthy. At least join us and eat something."

"Is it so easy for you to transfer your loyalty from one commander to another?" Soren finally spoke. "What an exemplary mercenary."

"That's not true, Soren, and you know it. Ike was like a brother to me, but the rest of the Greil Mercenaries are my family, too. I can't just abandon them to grieve over Ike."

That memory of Ike welcoming Soren, allowing him to be his friend, was all that Soren could see.

A head poked into Soren's tent. Long crimson hair fixed in a loose braid swung behind her, making Titania look like the war goddess some bandits referred to her as.

"Soren, we need your strategies. Ike wouldn't have wanted this. He'd have wanted you to help us make Crimea free again."

"As if any country could be free under the oppression of the ruling elite."

"Soren! Stop acting like a petulant child."

He got up. Couldn't he have some peace in his own tent?

"Soren, wait! Where are you going?"

That back, walking away from him every night in his dreams –

He held the knife up parallel to the length of his arm. Volke might have known what he planned to do with it when he bought it from the thief. It didn't matter.

He pressed it into his skin, finding the edge unexpectedly sharp.

Then, with a wordless snarl of frustration, he threw it away from himself.

Why was it that he clung to life even when he had nothing left to live for?

And this was yet another bitter irony, that the one who had landed a fatal blow had been a faceless soldier, with nothing noteworthy about him at all; if only he had been allowed to kill the man a dozen times over –

He ran from the campsite with the stolen medallion wrapped in a cloth.

Lehran's Medallion had been mentioned in a few old books, but even if it was just a legend, he would take any chance, however slim.

I will kill for you, sow chaos for you, he swore, not knowing if the fire emblem's dark god was capable of hearing. As long as you bring Ike back, I don't care if the entire world is destroyed.

Those of dragon blood have a specific affinity with the goddess.