Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king - Chapter 532

Chapter 532: A new prince(1)
Sorza , the eldest son of Shameliek, passed through the vaulted halls of his father’s court, every step of his boots swallowed by the vast silence.

The scent of incense still lingered in the air—thick, cloying, ceremonial—but the usual sounds were gone. No heralds. No courtiers. No advisors rushing forward to whisper updates or bow low.

He walked with the stiff posture of a prince, but inside, Sorza was simply tired. Tired of the road, of the blood, of the silence.

The last three days had been a blur of hooves and dust and sleepless dread. Ever since the order to return to the capital had been shouted in his ear like a curse when he has sighted his father falling with his horse, he had ridden day and night.

No time to rest, no time to think. Just a rush southward, from battlefield to border, chased by rumors and the shadows of defeat.

It wasn’t until they crossed into a friendly city that the madness paused.

The governor there, a stout man with silver eyebrows and shaking hands, had received him like a simple governor would with the heir to the princedom.

He offered what was due: a real bed with a feather mattress, food that wasn’t salt-hard rations, hot water for bathing, and fresh linen that didn’t smell like horse sweat. Most importantly, he gave him a new horse and fifty well-armored guards to escort him the rest of the way.

The governor had said little, just bowed and kept looking at Sorza as if expecting him to break.

Perhaps he would have—if he hadn’t already grown used to doing that silently.

They were supposed to return together, the nobles who had fled with him. For a time, they had. But one by one, they peeled away.

Each lord breaking off from the main road like leaves drifting from a dying tree. Some returned to their holdings to “prepare for future war.” Others gave vague excuses—”the roads must be watched,” “the people must be reassured.” The truth was clearer than glass: none of them wanted to arrive in the capital like beaten dogs, with nothing to show but their shame.

So now, Sorza rode alone.

No brothers. No father. No lords at his side. Just the steel-hearted company of men sworn to protect him, and the gnawing question he could not ask:

Is my father well?Is he even still alive?

But deep in his gut, like a sickness he’d swallowed and could not cough up, Sorza began to understand:

This hall might soon be his.

Whether he wanted it or not.

For a brief, strange moment, he stood in the middle of the hall like a man who had forgotten why he walked into a room. He simply… didn’t know what to do.

The courtiers were absent. No summons had come. His return to the capital had been one in deliberate silence until he got his act together, he wasn’t to meet anyone.

He didn’t resent that, he liked the silence.

From time to time servants would appear , but they would without meeting his gaze bow to them. Apparently, some whispers had already started to appear. After all, a prince returning home without his father in the middle of a campaign would spell the worst of things, which unfortunately had become true.

Eventually, he turned away from the hallways and made for the west wing.

A place where no one expected him to speak or decide or carry a nation’s weight on his back.

He sent a passing servant to inform his mother that he wished her in his room

The boy bowed awkwardly and ran off down the corridor, leaving Sorza to walk alone through halls that seemed smaller now, almost claustrophobic in their silence.

His room was just as he remembered it.

He closed the door behind him, sat on the edge of his bed, and exhaled—long, slow, like letting out air he’d been holding for weeks.

Then… nothing.

No movement. No words.

He just sat there.

His eyes wandered across the stone wall before him, stopping on a single crack that ran from one corner of a stone to the next. The wedge of which was barely visible. But it might as well have been a canyon. For in that crack, in its quiet crookedness, Sorza saw a mirror of the last month of his life.

One moment he had been sharpening his sword, full of purpose. The Low Prince would taste his vengeance, and Sorza would reclaim his name. It was supposed to be glorious, his chance to avenge his humiliation in having become a prisoner

But glory had been replaced with chaos.

First came the death of his cousin. A quiet death,gloryless without blood in his sword or armor, without ceremony, like a candle blown out in a dark room.

Then the night attack. The screams, the fire, the frenzied retreat through the roads and nameless woods. The blood.

And then his father.

He didn’t even know what had happened. One minute, the great Prince of Oizen had been at his side, shouting orders, red-faced with fury. The next… gone. Thrown from his horse, lost in the dark.

He clenched his jaw, not out of anger, but out of weariness. The kind that seeps into your bones and makes the future feel like a distant shore you’re too tired to swim toward.

And through that crack, like some shape just out of reach, came the image of him.

The prince of Yarzat. The mud-born bastard with a silver tongue and the eyes of a man who had seen every death twice. Sorza hated that name. Not because it was ugly, but because it came with a weight he couldn’t lift.

Alpheo had been his captor, once.

There was no malice in the man. That was the cruel part. Just calculation, wrapped in calm. It was like staring at a river that had decided your drowning was inevitable. Sometimes he would make fun of you, but he hadn’t seen any real malice or cruelty in him, just boredom.

He feared how Alpheo could inspire loyalty in men who should have hated him, he was a common born and yet he had managed to have nobles serve under him.

He hated how he could twist tragedy into theater. How even in retreat, when Sorza thought he had regained some pride, he could still hear that voice in the back of his mind, quiet and patient: Is that all you are?

That question stung more than any sword wound.

And perhaps that was what haunted Sorza most—not just the fear of Alpheo the man, but of what he made Sorza feel about himself.

Like a boy still playing at war.

And now… what?

If his father lived, then he was a prisoner and had to be ransomed

If he didn’t…

The boy who played war would not just be in the court. He would be the court.

He swallowed hard. The thought tasted bitter.

But there was no one to ask. No one to tell him what came next.

So he sat, alone in the silence of his boyhood chamber, staring at a crack in the wall and realizing, slowly, quietly, that his carefree life had ended somewhere on that long road home.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and pressed his hands against his face.

The silence in the chamber pressed harder now. Not peaceful, but suffocating. A quiet so thick it made him want to scream, just to hear a sound that wasn’t the echo of his own thoughts.

And gods, those thoughts.

He rolled it over in his mind like a puzzle whose pieces no longer fit. How had it all unraveled so quickly?

And then… the absurdity of it struck him.

This entire bloody mess—this spiral into chaos—had all started over some miserable little border towns.

He scoffed into his palms, the sound hollow, bitter.

Not even a trade artery—just a forgettable cluster of stone walls and barley fields that had the misfortune of sitting in the no-man’s-land between his father’s banners and the Low Prince’s reach.

Less than twenty thousand souls, put together

And yet it had been enough. Enough to spark a war. Enough to pull and drag Sorza and his kin across fire and blood, to leave his cousin dead and his father… vanished.

He lowered his hands and stared at the stone floor beneath him, blinking as if he’d only just begun to see it.

All of it—for that? A bump on the map? A patch of land not even worth a name in court?

He could feel it now. The whispers that would come when word reached the capital. The vultures circling not just over what was lost, but over what might now be gained.

Ugly times were coming. That much he was certain of.

He rubbed his temples, as if he might press the growing headache out of his skull. As if he could hold the oncoming storm at bay with just his hands.

But no storm had ever cared for the wishes of a tired man.

And this one… this one was going to be long. And loud. And ruthless.

The latch on the door gave a soft click, barely more than a whisper, but Sorza looked up at once. Some part of him, buried deep and still alert, had known who it would be.

His mother stepped through the doorway, her robes trailing behind her like a shadow too long for the room. The light from the corridor caught her just enough to outline the tiredness etched in her face—the same tiredness she had worn on the day she was told he was paraded through the streets of Yarzat in chains.

For a heartbeat, they simply stared at one another.

Then she crossed the room in silence and knelt before him, gathering her son into her arms as though he were still a boy who had scraped his knees on the marble floors.

Sorza didn’t hesitate. He leaned into her, letting her pull his head to her shoulder, letting the scent of home—the familiar perfume she never changed—wrap around him. Her fingers threaded gently into his hair. She whispered nothing, just held him.

He closed his eyes.

It hurt, more than he thought it would. His chest ached under the weight of it—not her embrace, but the knowledge of what he would have to say. What he would have to explain. The lies he would have to twist and the truths he would have to bleed. He wished he could hold the silence forever.

But silence had never held back reality.

Still, for now—for this one instant—he allowed himself to remain there. The future could wait. The walls didn’t need to speak yet. Politics could sleep, war could hush, and grief could hide in the shadow of her arms.

He knew moments like this would not come again—not often, perhaps not ever. Not once duty hardened the softness in him. Not once titles and thrones replaced the small kindnesses a son shared with his mother.

So he breathed it in.

And quietly, painfully, he held on.