FL - Chapter 97: The Camp

The door swung open, and a boot crossed the threshold.

"Aaaaaaah!!"

Ian charged, bringing the hatchet down with all his remaining strength.

The blade never reached its target. The stranger caught Ian's wrist and tore the hatchet from his grasp with one hand.

Ian stared at him.

The man standing before him was not the bandit he'd imagined. He wore metal armor. On his chest was emblazoned a crimson sun.

"You're…"

Before Ian could process anything, the knight had already tossed the hatchet aside and strode toward the sleeping platform, toward the little girl curled up there. He frowned, pulled off a glove, and pressed a testing hand to Mia's forehead.

"High fever."

His even voice carried the weight of a verdict. Then he bent and lifted the girl into his arms.

"Wh-what are you doing? Put her down!" Ian lunged forward on instinct, but a hand stopped him.

The man's voice was firm. "I am a knight of Crimson Tide Territory. I'm here to save people. There's a medic nearby. Your child still has time."

He was already turning toward the door as he spoke.

Ian stood paralyzed.

Crimson Tide Territory? Save people? A medic?

He barely understood what the knight was saying. His mind was still a tangled mess. But he had heard those four words clearly: *She still has time.*

Those were the most beautiful words he had heard in months.

And so Ian released his grip on the knight's arm.

The knight said nothing more. He held the little girl close to his chest, strode out the door, mounted his horse, and sped off to the west.

Ian stood stunned before bursting barefoot through the door. He sprinted after the knight, frozen earth scraping his soles raw and opening bloody cuts. Within a few breaths, however, horse and rider had vanished into the trees.

"Mia!" he shouted, stumbling after her.

No answer came. Only the wail of the wind.

Ian knew only that he had to follow, if merely to prove the knight was real and preserve one reason to keep living.

So he ran in that one direction, and he didn't stop.

Every breath scraped his chest like rusted iron, and every step burned his wounded feet. He did not stop.

Nearly two hours later, something finally appeared before his eyes.

A camp.

Ian stood dumbstruck.

This place—he had been here before. Before the war, it had been a small village. He had come here as a carpenter to repair houses. Now the village was long gone. Collapsed huts. Charred beams. Axe scars and arrows still marking the blackened walls. It looked as though the Snowsworn had struck here, too.

But unlike his own village, this place had tents rising among the ruins. Clusters of campfires lit up the night. Cooking smoke drifted upward. Figures came and went.

He couldn't believe his eyes.

Warm gruel scented the air. People cradled bowls beside the fires while soldiers patrolled and children peeked from tent flaps. Bandaged survivors rested nearby, attended by medics in clean robes.

The tents weren't new, but they were sturdy. Dry. No stench of mold. The gruel was thin, coarse grain, but it was hot and fragrant. Enough to fill a belly. Compared to what he had endured these past days, this was heaven on earth.

Most striking of all was the banner flying high at the camp's center. A crimson-red flag, snapping in the wind. At its heart, a brilliant golden sun.

Ian found his daughter quickly.

Not because his sense of direction was particularly sharp, but because that spot had drawn too many people. The commotion was too loud. He ran toward it on pure instinct.

The largest tent had been pitched there. The door flap was half-drawn. A circle of refugees—just as ragged as him—stood crowded around it, their faces tight with anxiety. Some wept quietly. Some just pressed their lips together in silence. Inside, several figures in white robes rushed back and forth, their hands streaked with blood and the smell of medicinal herbs.

The patients were ragged refugees like him. Ian even recognized neighbors from his village among the bandaged limbs and wounded faces.

And then he saw his daughter.

Amid the herbs and curtained partitions, a small figure lay on a makeshift plank bed. Her face was pale. Her breathing was faint. Beside her, a medic was carefully pressing a poultice of herbal paste onto her forehead. The green ointment gave off a sharp, bitter smell, but carried something reassuring with it too.

Ian practically threw himself forward, dropping to his knees beside the medic. His voice came out rattling like a broken bellows. "Is she… can she still… be saved?"

The medic didn't lift his head, hands still in motion. "She can be saved. The fever hasn't gone too deep. It's already come down a little. The main thing now is whether she can hold on—but the odds are decent."

Those two sentences pulled Ian back from the brink.

His eyes burned hot. His body went slack. He dropped straight to his knees and pressed his forehead toward the ground, ready to kowtow—

But before his head could touch down, a hand grabbed him by the arm and roughly yanked him aside.

"Don't block the way. There's still a line behind you!" The voice wasn't harsh, but the impatience was plain.

Ian could only let himself be pulled back, but the words kept spilling from his mouth—"Thank you, thank you"—as tears streamed down his face.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried.

But in this moment, he finally dared to.

The hope that his daughter might live… it had truly arrived.

And so Ian stayed there, beside Mia, through the entire night.

He didn't take a single step out of that tent. He crouched at her bedside, eyes fixed unblinkingly on her face. Her complexion no longer seemed so deathly pale. The heat in her forehead had receded somewhat. She still lay unconscious, but her breathing had steadied.

His heart felt drawn back out of hell.

"Much better…" Ian murmured. He was saying it to himself.

Outside the tent, the first light of dawn was already seeping through. Someone came in—a boy carrying a wooden bowl, a red armband of Crimson Tide Territory on his sleeve. He saw that Ian hadn't moved all night. He didn't say anything. He just set the bowl of hot gruel down beside him.

"Just cooked. Get it while it's warm." The boy left those words and turned away to his next task.

Ian stared numbly at the bowl.

It was carved from wood. There was no meat in the gruel—just a few grains of rice, some nameless wild greens, a few pale, yellowed beans, and a faint shimmer of oil on the surface. But when he lifted the bowl and took a sip, the simple, clean fragrance flooded his nose and throat.

The hot gruel kindled a long-forgotten warmth in his stomach. Head bowed, Ian drank the thin, ordinary meal one mouthful at a time while tears fell from his cheeks into the bowl.