A mont passed.
Then—
"Right, boys!"
The manor shook with Gavric’s return.
His voice didn’t just carry—it filled space. Like it belonged in the walls. Like the beams themselves had been waiting to hear it again.
"Ti to show you how it’s done!"
He strode in, the doors swinging wide behind him. Twin axes slung high across his back caught the lamplight, steel edges catching gold where the spirit gems above flickered.
His leather armor was cracked, creaking with every step. Dried mud crusted the crest on his shoulder—the twin moons of House Kaelithar barely visible beneath the grit. A terrace defender’s uniform. Practical. Heavy. Earned.
Torren whooped like a soldier spotting reinforcents. He dropped his wooden sword and dashed across the room without waiting for permission.
Eldrian didn’t move as fast.
He was too busy trying to lift Jitter by the tail.
The feraline hissed and twisted, escaping under a nearby bench with a blur of fur and claws. Eldrian giggled and followed, only to be intercepted mid-step as Gavric scooped him into one thick arm.
Seraphine sighed.
The kind of sigh that had been practiced for years.
She set her ledger aside, rubbing at her temple where ink had smudged across her fingers.
"Don’t drag them through the mud, Gavric."
Her voice held just enough edge to be heard—but not enough to expect it would matter.
Gavric only grinned wider.
"Mud’s good for ’em!" he said, already shifting Veyren into a wide leather sling across his chest. "Builds character!"
The sling creaked as he adjusted it, the inside lined with worn fur. Veyren’s body settled into it automatically, caught between the swaying rhythm of his father’s stride and the weight pressing cold into his shoulder.
Torren followed at full speed, chest puffed out, sword now tucked under one arm like a ceremonial lance.
He marched as if there were a crowd watching.
Veyren didn’t move.
But he felt it.
The warmth of the sling. The scent of sweat and leather. The closeness.
And beneath it, the shard’s pulse again. Colder than before. As if reminding him that outside these walls, the answers waited.
Or the threats.
The outskirts of Kenosha Shibuya opened wide beneath the pale morning sky.
Bonewood groves lined the terraces—bleached, brittle things with branches like fingers stripped of flesh. They creaked in the wind, dry limbs scraping against one another as if trying to rember what it ant to grow.
Clay dust hung low.
The Anacraids had stirred it again. Deep furrows cut into the soil where their dig teams had passed, the land carved into uneven mounds and ridges. Blue-face machines crouched in the distance, unmanned for now but still humming faintly with residual charge. The scars they left behind didn’t fade. They just layered, season by season, beneath the illusion of harvests and rooftops.
Sixty-five years since arrival.
Forty-five since the hero fell.
The stories still circled in taverns—nas slurred, endings debated. But the evidence remained here, in clay mounds and fractured roots. In the way the wind hesitated over cleared soil.
Gavric moved through the grove like he owned it.
Axes strapped to his back. Wind curling from the gem embedded at his wrist, a pale green haze twisting around the hafts. The edges glead unnaturally—spirit-sharpened steel, singing low as they swayed against his shoulders.
"Terrace Wardens’ task today," he called over his shoulder, voice loud enough to shake the bonewood branches.
His sons followed in his wake. So did three other hunters—older n with sweat-stained tunics and blades slung at their hips, expressions flat and wary.
"Cull the wildthorn boars," Gavric continued. "Keep the terraces clean. Fifty coins a hide."
Torren marched just behind him, small boots crunching grit. His sword looked too long for his arm, but he held it tight. Eyes forward. Jaw locked. He didn’t speak—just nodded, wide-eyed.
Eldrian sat higher, still balanced on Gavric’s shoulder like it was a throne.
He clutched a broken stick, then flung it into the grass with a delighted squeal. Jitter pounced after it, her tufted ears twitching as she vanished into the brush. Eldrian clapped once, completely detached from the talk of danger.
Then the first boar ca.
No warning.
Just a snarl and the sudden crash of undergrowth breaking. Its body launched forward—low to the ground, tusks gleaming like curved daggers. The creature’s hide shimred with ridged bone plating, muscles coiled like spring steel.
Gavric didn’t slow.
One axe spun free in a blur. The Wind gem flared, and the air itself twisted around the strike. The blade hit with a sound too clean for at—cutting through armor, through bone, through everything.
The boar collapsed mid-lunge. Blood sprayed across the clay.
"Kaelithars hunt for the Wardens!" Gavric roared, pulling the second axe without stopping.
Torren’s eyes shone. He lunged forward, sword swinging sideways. His strike hit—but barely. A grazing blow, blade scraping the flank without piercing. The boar yelped, but kept running.
"I’ll get one!" he shouted, cheeks burning as he turned to chase.
His gem stayed dim.
No spark. No resonance.
Eldrian, still perched on a half-rotted stump now, laughed as another boar sprinted past, his stick already back in hand. He threw it again, missing everything. Jitter bolted after the scent trail, tail flicking.
Veyren stayed quiet.
He didn’t have a choice.
But the shard in his shoulder pulsed again, cold and deliberate.
It responded to Gavric’s gem. To the energy rippling through the axes. To the surge of spirit around every weapon tied to the network.
He felt it.
A hum beneath the surface—threaded through the n, the weapons, the land. The network whispering quietly through every motion.
Then one of the hunters raised his axe.
His blade slamd down against a charging boar, but it didn’t bite. It bent. A dull clang rang out as the weapon rebounded, the man staggering back with a curse.
He swung again, this ti harder.
The beast finally dropped—but sweat rolled down his brow, his movents slower now. Shaky.
Veyren watched it all, expression unreadable.
No tech, he thought.
Not here.
Cube X’s plasma was a ghost now—sharp-edged, perfect, unhesitating. Its mory flickered like a mirage just beyond the grove.
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