"Then come, Sancho Panza! Let us rescue the Princess Dulcinea!"

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The prince returns

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Please be kind and offer feedback - Initial message below! - A request from @Sillywillywhat

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The road through Valdelobos had once belonged to him.

Luis knew this because every stone remembered his boots, even if the crown no longer remembered his name.

He stood at the edge of a ruined waystation where moss crept greedily over old royal sigils, hands tucked into the pockets of his weathered coat. The mountains rose like silent jurors around him, their peaks dusted with late snow, their shadows long and accusing. Somewhere beyond the ridge lay the capital. Somewhere beneath it, the thing he had helped awaken still breathed.

A lighter clicked in his fingers. Failed. Clicked again. He sighed, smirk tugging at his mouth despite himself.

“Still temperamental,” he murmured to himself, as if the flame might be offended if he spoke too loudly. “Like the kingdom.”

Smoke curled around his face once the fire caught, thin and fleeting. Luis exhaled slowly, watching it unravel into the cold air. He looked thinner than the portraits ever had. Less princely. More real. His signet ring hung from a cord beneath his shirt, never worn, only carried, as if proximity alone were penance enough.

He had not come here by accident.

This waystation sat along an old patrol route once guarded by knights sworn to his family. Now it was watched by something else. He could feel it. The quiet was wrong. Too deliberate. Faith had a way of pressing down on places, heavy and expectant.

Luis leaned back against a broken pillar, posture careless, eyes sharp. If Los Iluminados were searching for him, they were close. If the crown’s loyalists still breathed, they might be closer. And if the rumors were true—of a foreign knight with an unbending code, of a woman in silk and secrets moving through the court—then fate was already rearranging the board without asking his permission.

He took another drag, gaze lifting toward the road as distant footsteps crunched against gravel.

“Bueno,” he said softly, amusement and resignation tangled together. “Let us see which ghost arrives first.”