He led me outside and onto a waiting carriage.
I’d expected a tour of the town, but he brought me instead to the forested foothills of the mountain range looming over the horizon.
"This is the Yudaina Mountain Range," Ragna said, his arms spread wide as I stood there, panting with exhaustion. "It’s a place beyond human control."
He marched steadily up overgrown animal trails, and it was all I could do to keep pace.
I wiped the sweat from my brow. Despite dressing for the occasion, my clothes were damp and clung uncomfortably to my skin. Even so, it was a far cry better than those final days in the Royal Capital.
"When you suggested a walk, I assumed you meant through town," I said, pausing to catch my breath. "I thought you’d show me the shops, or maybe some local products..."
He let out a boisterous laugh. "Hahaha! We don’t have anything like that here."
"You don't...?"
There was something about that grin of his that was positively vexing.
"Besides, the rough-and-tumble sorts around here wouldn’t know what to do with a decorated town. And if we make the place look too appealing, we’ll only attract more enemies. More trouble than it's worth, right?"
His words rang true. Looking out the carriage window earlier, I hadn’t seen a single trace of glamour. Like the House Brave manor, the town was the definition of austere. It was jarring to realize the entire settlement was built with the grim expectation that it might be leveled at any moment.
I’d seen exactly what he described: residents bearing the physical tolls of this life. People were missing fingers, or even entire limbs. It made the scar on my face feel trivial by comparison.
This was the Abandoned Land. Yet, despite the hardship, people were rooted here. I saw children laughing without a care, playing at being Adventurers—the local heroes they clearly admired. For someone born and raised in the Royal Capital, whose only travels had been to curated noble resorts, this was truly a different world.
"Oh, but betting on who lives and dies is a popular pastime," he added.
"Is... is that so?"
"Someone actually made a fortune last month betting that my old man wouldn't make it back from the front."
I was speechless. It was a horrific thing to gamble on. Was this what became of people when they were starved of entertainment? I knew his father and brothers had fallen in battle just last month. Yet here he was, entertaining me with a smile on his face. He must be a truly kind man.
"Probably not the best conversation for a lady. My mistake."
"No... it’s fine. If that is the norm here..."
I tried to wrap my head around it. Even if my parents had cast me out, I don't think I could ever laugh about their deaths.
"Actually, I wouldn't recommend getting too used to our 'normal,'" he said.
"What?! After I’ve put so much effort into trying to accept this place!"
"It’s not the kind of place you can just 'accept' and be done with. Hahaha!"
"Wh-What are you... Sigh..."
I leaned against a nearby tree. On second thought, maybe my desire to "accept" this place was nothing more than my own ego. Was it disrespectful to the people living in the Brave Territory? Maybe I shouldn't use that word so lightly.
"I haven't even accepted it myself," Ragna said as I caught my breath. "If I did, I’d probably die. But knowing it deeply? That’s essential."
"Knowing it deeply..."
Beneath the crude jokes and blunt behavior, he would occasionally drop these observations that felt like they were peeling back my very soul. It was as if he already knew of my shame—the irreversible failure I had no intention of ever sharing.
"Enemies and allies are both just people living on the same dirt. Don't underestimate them, and don't trust them blindly. Know both deeply, and be prepared. That’s how you survive."
He added that even the most unbearable land becomes manageable if you know it deeply. His words pierced my heart, mirroring my own failures with painful accuracy.
"Everyone here fights with that knowledge in mind," he continued. "They make their own choices."
"I see... Looking at the people here today, I realized it’s nothing like the rumors I heard."
"The people here don't laugh at someone who’s agonized over a decision."
Then they would surely laugh at me, I thought. I hadn't made a single choice for myself.
"Getting gloomy again, are we? Just laugh it off. This is a land where we gamble with our lives; we have to be able to joke about it."
He scratched his head, looking every bit his age. And yet, when he spoke those cutting truths, he seemed far more mature than any of the nobles back at the Academy—more so even than His Highness.
"One moment you tell me to laugh, the next you say they won't laugh... It makes no sense."
"I guess it just means we're living for the moment?"
He was such a bundle of contradictions. A truly mysterious man.
Then he made me climb a cliff, repeating "nearly there" over and over. "You're just not used to it," he offered by way of support as I gasped for air. I had no desire to ever get used to it. As I hung suspended over the drop, held only by his grip, I felt a surge of genuine resentment. I resolved right then and there never to trust him again.
But then—
"Oh..."
The moment I reached the top and saw the view, every petty complaint vanished instantly.
"It's my favorite spot," he said.
He kept talking, but I didn't hear a word of it. The Abandoned Land was so vast that everything I had been agonizing over—everything I had lost—suddenly felt like the trivial bickering of a birdcage called the Royal Capital.
"So small..." I whispered.
Ragna started muttering about something unrelated, and I told him that wasn't what I meant. Watching him look dejected was actually quite satisfying—a little payback for the dangerous mountain trek and for leaving me dangling off a cliff.
The factional strife, the annulment... facing this grandeur, it all felt so insignificant. I almost let go of it all, but I checked myself. My life in the House of the Duke and my feelings for His Highness had been real. It felt wrong to simply cast them aside as if they meant nothing.
I’m still lost. I don't know what I should have done or where I should go from here. But as I looked at the man standing beside me, I decided to ask.
"Lord Ragna, I have a question."
"Just 'Ragna' is fine. Nobody calls me 'Lord' around here. It feels weird."
The man was utterly incapable of reading a room. I told him we should both drop the formalities, then tried again.
"Listen, Ragna. If you spent a long time agonizing over a choice, and you resolved to live with the consequences... but then you ended up with a regret you could never take back... what would you do?"