By evening, the castle had become too large. The corridors echoed even when no one spoke. Doors closed with a resonance that lingered longer than usual. Torches burned in the niches, but their light did not quite reach the corners. There, shadows gathered like dust. Alina walked slowly through the northern wing. Only that morning, there had still been movement here. Men had collected their final bundles, tightened straps, checked water flasks, and called things to one another that had not been important and had sounded so alive for exactly that reason. Now doors stood open. In some chambers, scraps of straw lay on the floor, as if someone had left in haste. A cup had fallen over, its rim still dark with the last sip. Alina picked it up and placed it back on the table. It was a small gesture. Perhaps an unimportant one. But she did not want it to look as if they had fled. The armory lay at the end of the corridor. When she entered, it smelled of metal and oil. Swords still hung on the walls, those that had not been taken. Too heavy for old hands. Too large for young ones. A few spears stood in the corner, their points duller than the rest. Most of the places were empty. Where rows of steel had once gleamed, gaps now opened. Hooks without weight. Boards without burden. Alina ran her fingers over an empty rack. War did not make itself known only on the battlefield. It left marks in wood. Behind her, the door creaked. An old guard stepped in. His back was slightly bent, his shoulders narrow, yet he still wore the ring of keys at his belt as naturally as if he had never done anything else. He had spent his whole life here, between armor and blade, and perhaps he was one of those people who stood in one place for so long that others forgot he, too, could grow tired. “Your Highness,” he said, bowing shallowly. “You are on duty?” Alina asked. “Double,” he replied calmly. “There are only three of us left.” Only three. There had once been ten. “Will you manage?” He nodded. “I have time.” It did not sound like a joke. And yet there was something bitter in the sentence, because time had suddenly become the thing the old possessed in abundance, while the young were gone. Alina looked at him. There was no complaint in his eyes. Only habit. “If anything is missing, tell me.” The old guard gave a faint smile. “What is missing cannot be carried, Your Highness.” Alina understood. The kitchen was fuller than usual. Not because more food was being cooked, but because no one wanted to eat alone. Women stood close together, cutting vegetables, stirring pots, exchanging whispered news that was not news at all. “They cannot be far yet,” one said. “Perhaps they have reached the first camp.” “Perhaps it is raining.” No one knew anything. And still they had to speak, because silence took up too much space in times like these, and everything no one dared to say gathered there. Alina sat down at the long table. The conversations fell silent for a moment. Not out of respect. Out of uncertainty. “There will be an assignment for the Southern Fields tomorrow,” she said calmly. “We will need every hand.” A young woman raised her eyes. “Even us?” “Especially you.” A few glances passed between them. There was skepticism in them. Defiance too. And exhaustion. “The grain will not grow more slowly because the men are gone,” Alina added. The murmur that passed through the room after that did not sound like rejection. It sounded thoughtful, as if the women were beginning to understand that no one would ask whether they could do it. Only whether they would. At last, one of the older cooks nodded. “Then we start early.” Alina returned the nod. It had not sounded like an order. More like a beginning that quietly settled into the room and suddenly weighed more than any grand promise. Later, in the West Tower, she stood once more by the window. The valley lay quiet. The Arden River drew a silver line through the darkness. In the Southern Fields, the young grain moved in the wind, slowly at first, then wild again. For two years, those fields had carried nothing. Now they were green. And still, it did not feel like safety. Alina thought of her father. Arvid was not a man who signed lightly. If he had said it had been necessary, then he had probably believed it. Perhaps he had even known it. And yet, in his eyes at the moment of farewell, she had seen something beyond duty. Not weakness. Doubt. The kind of doubt that only shows itself when one truly understands the price. Behind her, the door opened. Seraphina entered without knocking. “You are counting steps,” she said. “I am not counting.” “Yes,” Seraphina replied quietly. “You are counting how far they might be.” Alina did not turn around. “The castle sounds different,” she said instead. “Because it is quieter.” “It sounds hollow.” Seraphina stepped beside her at the window. Her reflection lay faintly in the glass. “Hollow is not empty,” she said. “Hollow means there is room.” Alina looked at her. “For what?” Seraphina did not hesitate. “For decision.” The silence between them was not uncertainty this time. It was preparation. That night, no changing of the guard could be heard. Only wind moving along the walls. Alina lay awake. Not from fear. Not only that. She lay awake because, for the first time, she understood that Ardenthal did not only need to be defended. It needed to be led. And leadership did not begin with a sword. It began with what remained. Morning came without trumpets. No call from the training yard, no rhythmic stamping of boots. Instead, there were roosters crowing too early and the clatter of buckets in the inner courtyard. Sounds that once would have disappeared beneath everything else. Alina was on her feet before sunrise. Sleep had been shallow, woven through with half-waking moments in which she believed she heard steps in the corridor. Each time, it had only been the wind. In the courtyard, several women were already standing together. They were not organized. Not assigned. They were only waiting. The waiting had begun before anyone had named it. Seraphina emerged from the southern wing, accompanied by an old steward carrying a bundle of parchments beneath his arm. No court. No retinue. Only necessity. “The Southern Fields first,” she said calmly. “The grain is still low. It needs tending.” The steward nodded and unrolled one of the sheets. Names stood upon it. Only this time, they were not men’s names. The parchment was full of women’s names. A murmur passed through the group. “I have never plowed,” said a young woman with crossed arms. “Neither have I,” another replied. Seraphina looked at them. “Then you will learn.” She did not say it harshly or threateningly, but with a firmness that was not seeking contradiction, only movement. Alina stepped forward. “We will divide the work. No one will stand alone in a field.” She looked into their faces. Fear was there. But something else too. Defiance. “We know how to sow,” said an older woman. “We know how to weed. The men guided the plow, yes. But we stood beside them.” “Then you guide it now,” Alina said. A few of them laughed quietly. Not mockingly. More like an exhale. Slowly, groups began to form. At the edge of the courtyard stood an old man who had once assigned the guards. His hands trembled slightly as he lifted a spear leaning against the wall. “You do not have to do that,” Alina said. “Yes,” he answered. “I do. If the men are gone, it is my turn again.” He placed himself at the gate. The spear was too heavy for him. That was plain to see. But he held it upright. The sight did not truly reassure anyone. But it showed that those who remained were not hiding either. They stood where they could, as well as they could. Later, Alina went down into the town. Not with soldiers. Only with a lady of the court who had not asked for permission to follow her. The streets seemed wider than usual. Merchants stood at their stalls, but conversations were quieter. No one spoke loudly of war. But everyone spoke of it. “Your Majesty,” said a baker as she passed. “Princess,” Alina corrected gently. He nodded. “The men are gone.” “Yes.” “And if they do not come back?” It was not an accusation. Only a question hanging in the air. Alina looked at him. “Then we remain.” The baker held her gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded again and turned back to his oven. The answer was small and narrow. But it was honest. Perhaps that was the only thing one could truly give on a day like this. At the riverbank, two boys stood throwing stones into the water, as if testing how far they might go. “You should be helping in the yard,” Alina said as she approached. One of them looked up. “We cannot fight.” “No.” “Then we are useless.” Alina shook her head. “No one is useless. Not now.” She pointed toward the boats on the shore. “The nets need checking. The barrels need repairing. Who should do that?” The boys looked at one another. “We should?” “If you want to.” She did not wait for another answer. She walked on. Sometimes it was enough to show someone a place. People did not always need courage. Sometimes they only needed a task to pull them back from the feeling of uselessness. In the afternoon, Alina returned to the castle. A small group had gathered in the great hall. Two members of the council, the master of stores, and a priest. Seraphina stood at the head of the table. “The supplies will last four months,” said the master of stores. “If we ration strictly.” “The grain is growing,” Seraphina replied. “Yes. But without the men, the harvest will be slower.” A glance moved toward Alina. Not hostile. Only assessing. “Then we harvest more slowly,” Alina said. “But we harvest.” The priest cleared his throat. “It is not customary for women to…” Seraphina raised her hand. “It is also not customary to lose two harvests in succession,” she said calmly. “We adapted then. We will do so again.” The words were factual. And yet threads of steel lay beneath them. The council members nodded. Not from conviction, but because there was no alternative at the moment. That was enough. When the hall emptied, Alina remained behind. “You spoke,” Seraphina said. “Too much?” “Just enough.” Alina stepped to the window of the hall. The courtyard no longer looked as it had in the morning. It was not empty. It was filled differently. With women carrying baskets. With old people giving instructions. With children trying to appear stronger than they were. “They look to you,” Seraphina said. Alina did not answer. “Not because you demand it,” the queen added. “Because you remain.” It did not sound like praise. That was precisely why it struck Alina so deeply. It was responsibility, placed on her shoulders without ceremony. By evening, another sound lay over Ardenthal. The scraping of rakes. The knocking of wood. The murmur of voices arranging themselves anew. Alina stood once more at the window of the West Tower. The valley was still green, and yet now she knew that green alone was not enough. It needed hands to hold it. Minds that refused to look away. People who continued even when no one had asked whether they were ready. She would make sure they were there. The first letter did not arrive on a special day. It was not a feast day, not a market day, not even a morning with clear air and lighter thoughts. It came on an afternoon when the sun lay warm upon the walls and the courtyard smelled of hay. Alina was sitting in the writing room when the messenger entered. He was not the royal courier who usually carried sealed parchments and looked as if words were made of gold. This man carried dust on his shoulders and weariness in his face. His cloak smelled of road, and his boots had brought the dirt of the east into the castle, whether Ardenthal wanted it here or not. “For the writing room,” he said, holding up a bundle tied with string. Alina did not take it at once. First she looked at the string and at the stains of wax drawn across the paper. Each stain meant a hand had hesitated, then pressed down anyway. “How many?” she asked. The messenger shrugged. “Ten today. Tomorrow perhaps more. Or fewer.” That was the whole truth, spoken the way truth always sounds in war. Alina loosened the string. The rustling sounded too loud in the silent room. The other scribes looked up briefly, then lowered their heads again, as if trying to protect themselves from the contents. She sorted the letters by village, as she always did. Dorfhain. Southern Fields. Western Woods. Riverbank. Names stood on the envelopes in hands that were not taught here at court, because they had not been formed by practice, but by need. The first letter was addressed to a woman Alina knew. She had twisted her cloth in this room until her fingers had gone white. Alina hesitated before opening the envelope. Not because she was not allowed to. But because she knew that, once opened, something would begin that could not be folded away again. She broke the seal. The letter was short, and the handwriting uneven, as if someone had written it while seated and waiting for the next command. Alina read quietly, only to herself. He wrote of rain. Of a camp that smelled of wet wool. Of bread that was hard, but at least there. He wrote that they had not yet reached the front, that they were marching, that their legs hurt, that at night they lay close together to keep warm. He wrote that he was well, and that she should greet the little one. And at the very end, as if he had only dared it in the final moment, he wrote that he missed the courtyard, though he had hated it at times. Alina blinked. She set the letter aside, called one of the ladies, and handed her the envelope. “To Frau Linde of the Southern Fields,” she said. “Please read it to her.” The lady nodded and took the letter carefully. That was how it began. With the rustling of paper. By evening, the first people came to the writing room not to dictate, but to hear. A man, older than most, sat down on the bench and rubbed his hands as if they had suddenly become unfamiliar to him. “For my daughter,” he said. Alina found the letter. She recognized the name on the envelope because she had written it herself. She placed the parchment before her, took one breath, and began to read. The daughter was not in the room. She was working in the field, the man said, and he meant to bring it to her later. He only wanted to know whether the words were good, so that he could carry them properly. Alina read. The letter told of comrades singing marching songs no one here knew. It told of an officer who was stern but fair, and of a river wider than the Arden River. It told, too, of a village they had passed through, where the people looked at them as though they were already part of a war no one could end anymore. When Alina finished, the man sat still. “And?” she asked carefully. He nodded slowly. “They are good words.” Then he looked at her. “Are they truly hers?” Alina held his gaze. “As much as possible.” The man fell silent, as if weighing whether that was enough. “Then it will have to be enough,” he said at last and stood. Over the following days, writing became again what it had been before the departure. Only now, it was doubled. Letters went out, letters came back, they had to be read, and answers had to be written. The writing room became the heartbeat of Ardenthal, because it was the only place where the voices of those who were gone still arrived. Alina worked longer than she noticed. Sometimes she stood and only then felt how heavy her legs had become. Sometimes she took up the quill and realized that her fingertips were sore from the pressure. It was the same for all the scribes. But no one complained. No one had time for it. Seraphina came in from time to time without announcement and stood for a moment, as if checking whether the room still held its order. “How many?” she asked once. “Eighteen today,” Alina replied. “And five answers.” Seraphina nodded. “There will be more.” Alina already knew. On the fourth day, there was a letter in the stack that Alina did not touch at once. The envelope was neatly addressed, the hand of a camp scribe, calm and even. In the upper left stood the sender. Matthis, son of Edrin. Her gaze rested on the name a moment too long. The letter was not addressed to her. It was for Jakob from the stables, one of the few men in the village who could read. Alina took the letter without anyone in the room noticing. There was nothing special about it. Only one among many. She broke the seal. The writing inside was not his. It was cleanly shaped, with space between the lines, as camp scribes were taught to write. Matthis had dictated it. That much was clear. The sentences were short, without ornament, without any attempt to sound cleverer than he was. He wrote that they were still marching and that the roads were longer than they had seemed from Ardenthal. He wrote that the king was with them and did not ride apart, and that this gave courage to some. He wrote of horses poorly shod, and that he had taken care of it. Then came the sentence that let her breathe more calmly. He hoped the foals would remain healthy in spring and that someone in the west would remember to repair the gate to the southern pasture in time. No one but a stable boy would mention such a thing. No one but Matthis would write, between duty and march, of a gate he himself had closed so many times. Alina read the letter to the end. Then she placed it back on the stack and turned to the next envelope, as if nothing had happened. But the name remained in her sight, even when she was no longer looking at it. Some time later, a woman sat across from her whom she did not know. Her hands were full of earth, her nails broken, as if she had learned in recent days what labor meant without anyone having taught her. “He rarely writes,” the woman said. “But he said he would.” Alina nodded and searched. When she found the letter and broke the seal, she noticed that the wax had not been pressed cleanly. As if the scribe had trembled, or had not had time to do it properly. She began to read. The letter opened with a sentence much too heavy for a simple man, and Alina understood at once that he had not written it alone. Somewhere in the camp, there was someone better at ordering words. And yet the voice within it was unmistakable. He wrote of a comrade who had twisted his foot and kept walking anyway, because no one could be left behind. He wrote of an officer who walked through the rows at night and looked at every man as if he wanted to memorize their faces. He wrote that the king was with them, and that this gave courage to some, because at least then one knew they were not merely sending farmers’ blood. Alina faltered for a moment at that sentence. The woman across from her held her breath. Alina read on. The letter did not end with love or with grand promises. It ended with a list of things to be done at home, because war did not consist only of battles, but also of someone mucking out the stable and watering the grain. When Alina finished, the woman wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Soil remained on her skin. “He lives,” she said, as if that were already everything. Alina nodded. “He lives.” The afternoon had grown late, and the light lay low in the room. It spread broad across the tables and made visible the dust motes drifting in the warm air. The scribes had been working for hours, and their hands had grown slower without anyone saying it aloud. The door opened. A woman entered. Earth clung to her fingers, her nails were torn, the skin across her knuckles cracked. She held a letter in both hands as if she needed it to keep herself upright. “He has written,” she said softly. Alina took the envelope. The wax was unevenly pressed and had run in one place. In the upper left stood the sender’s name, and she remembered it from the list in the courtyard. She broke the seal and unfolded the parchment. “Father,” the letter began. The woman slowly sat down on the bench opposite her. Alina read. He wrote of his father’s hands, which had turned the earth every year, and that he now understood what it meant to be tired and go on anyway. He wrote of his mother’s brow and of how she had shared bread even when there had barely been enough. He remembered his sister with grass stains on her dress and the flowers she had slipped into his pocket on the day of farewell. He mentioned his brother and his attempt to seem strong, though he knew that he too lay awake at night. The letter told of rain in the camp, of the smell of wet wool and of hard bread. He wrote that they were still marching and that he was well. Between those sentences stood other words, set more densely. He wrote that he was afraid. He wrote it without embellishment. Every step eastward was necessary, but every thought of home held him back. He asked them to leave his place at the table empty. Not out of hope for luck, but so that he would know he was still thought of there. Toward the end, the writing grew tighter. If he did not return, they should place the spade beside his leg and plant a row of grain for him. They should say his name in the evening. Not loudly, but clearly. Alina read to the final word and laid the parchment on the table. The room had grown silent. The scribes were no longer working. The woman across from her lifted a hand to her mouth. Her breathing shook, and earth remained on her skin. A quiet sob could be heard. Not loud. Not long. But it was enough. Alina kept her eyes on the parchment. For a moment, the letters blurred, until she closed her lids and opened them again. Her hands lay still on the table, but her fingers were cold. The woman stood, thanked her softly, and left the room. No one spoke after her. One by one, the others rose as well. Chairs scraped over stone, parchments were stacked, sand was emptied from small bowls. The door opened and closed several times, until only Alina remained at the table. Outside, darkness had fallen. In the window, the faint light of the last candle was reflected. Tomorrow, more letters would come. Alina knew it. She also knew that she would open them. One after another. Not because she was strong enough. Because someone had to. She brushed the back of her hand across her cheek. The movement was small and quick. Then she stood, extinguished the flame, and left the room behind her. The corridor was cool. The castle still echoed. But it no longer sounded empty. It sounded as if it were listening.