??Katar and I sparred in the dark.

  The only light came from the distant campfire glow bleeding through the low foliage and the faint shimmer of stars above. In theory, I should have had the advantage: spear over sword in reach, and above all, Stormshark’s Whisper. With my Perception Soulbook active, the world dissolved into threads of electric-blue lightning-work. Katar’s nervous system glowed like a luminous puppet rig: spine, hands, fingers, twitching muscle bundles, and even the subtle micro-flinches before he shifted his weight.

  And yet, the younger boy was still schooling me.

  “Again,” he said, without waiting for me to answer.

  His Messar blade darted forward, a silver flicker in the dark. I swept my spear to intercept, metal kissing metal, sparks cracking between us. My reach advantage forced him to back-step or be gutted, but Katar moved with an efficiency that made me feel like I was sparring a veteran twice his age instead of a boy in his late teens. Every time I thought I had him pinned, my predictive read failed, or rather, he simply didn’t go where his body suggested he would.

  The bastard was feinting at the neural level. Who even does that?

  He slipped inside my guard faster than I could reposition. My spearpoint stabbed at empty air as he angled his sword and smacked the haft down. The impact jolted my wrist and drove my weapon into the ground point-first. Before I could yank it free, he slapped me across the face with the flat of his blade.

  Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to humiliate.

  “You hesitated far too much,” Katar said, voice calm and maddeningly unmocking.

  I gritted my teeth and pulled the spear loose with a crunch of dirt. “You’re the one who insisted we fight with live weapons.”

  “As if you could do me real harm.” He shifted his stance, blade lowered but ready. The arrogant phrasing should have infuriated me, but he wasn’t wrong, and we both knew it.

  The cold night air curled between us, smelling faintly of wet grass and woodsmoke from the campfire. Somewhere out in the dark, an owl hooted, the sound sharp and deep.

  “It’s like your soft, comfortable life has dampened your killer instinct,” Katar continued.

  “More like killed it entirely,” I sighed.

  “Nope. It’s in there. Waiting to come out.” He gave me that unreadable look. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be wasting my time sparring with you.”

  In his way, I think he was reassuring me that I was doing fine for someone new to fighting.

  I tightened my grip on the spear. My hands were slick with sweat despite the cold, my arms shaking a little from the effort of controlling reach and leverage. Every nerve in his body glowed like a diagram, yet somehow I was the one being dissected.

  “Again?” Katar asked.

  There was no mockery in it… just expectation.

  I nodded.

  This time, I lunged first.

  This was our second night camping out, and the weather was considerably colder, probably because we were climbing in altitude. We were heading toward a mountain village that had reported troll sightings. Our route had taken us meandering along the southern outskirts of Hano, doing three extermination jobs per day. And by “day,” I meant the full forty-two-hour cycle of the Contested Realm, not Earth days.

  To Ja’a’s chagrin, we stopped sleeping in inns after the first night. It wasn’t a money issue; it was a time issue. We didn’t want to waste daylight resting under a roof when most exterminations took less than a few hours. We would arrive at a village, get the report, locate the beast, slay it, and move on. Most of our time was spent on the road between things rather than doing the things.

  At night, we took turns to be on watch. Since tonight, Katar was using his new Sleepless Night Soulbook, I decided to spar with him during my shift. I knew it was reckless, but we were camped in a clearing with decent sightlines, and nothing should have been able to sneak up on us, especially since I had Stormshark’s Whisper active, humming through the world like a radar.

  Our camp was simple but organized. Four tents in a loose semicircle around the firepit, with our gear stacked in the wagon bed in case the weather shifted. Katar and Raik shared one tent; Vena and Kan shared another; Calr and Shingo had the third; Ja’a and I took the last. I had originally considered rooming with Vena, but with Ja’a’s chaise lounger, the optics of “princess in fancy bed vs. warrior on floor” would not have been great for morale.

  So I volunteered to bunk with her.

  Yes, I definitely did that out of altruism and group cohesion. Not at all because I also had a similarly fancy bed that I wanted to use without feeling guilty. Totally selfless. Could not possibly be anything else.

  The chaises themselves looked absurd inside the tent, but at least we were comfortable, and our decadence was out of everyone else’s sight while they slept on bedrolls and blankets.

  The clearing we used for camp was surrounded by tall pine and cedar, their silhouettes black against a sky full of sharp stars. The ground was uneven, half grass and half rock, with patches of dry moss that smelled faintly of cold earth and conifer resin. Our burdrasses were tethered to a feeding post, Calr and Shingo improvised from fallen branches; the beasts snorted occasionally, steaming breath rising in pale clouds.

  I was tending the fire after being humbled by Katar’s training. I had taken one month of lessons under Edmond and thought I was battle-ready. Well, I guess I could probably handle myself against the average freelancer recruit, but Katar was born with a sword in his hand, so I shouldn’t feel too bad. I watched the smoke curl lazily up into the thin air, carrying the faint smell of roasted grains and rabbit stew from dinner.

  Farther out, the forest felt more alive in a way Earth forests didn’t. This world was ninety percent wilderness, and the ecosystem was still thriving. People here were just one predator among many and hadn’t yet become absolute apex predators. At first, I was apprehensive about “clearing” beasts, thinking about how humanity had corrupted Earth’s natural order, but after walking through these lands, it was clear this world was far from that stage.

  We were on the outskirts of the largest city on the planet, yet nature was vivid: small predators competed over prey, plant diversity was astonishing, the human footprint felt minimal, and even when we slew a beast, nothing was wasted. That Drake we killed, Raik had Shingo carry it to the nearest farm, the one most afflicted by its encroachment. In a matter of minutes, the drake was skinned for leather, the meat collected for food, and the bones ground for fertilizer. The farmer was grateful and offered to pay us for the corpse, but we refused. We only took the heart and liver because Kindred people could sometimes gain benefits from eating monsters they slew. I shared it with Shingo that night, with him eating the lion’s share.

  Being on watch was boring. If not for Stormshark’s Whisper still being unfamiliar enough to practice with, I probably would have fallen asleep on guard duty. The Soulbook lit the world in electric outlines, every beetle, moth, and pine-needle twitch flickering in little bursts of bioelectric motion. It was interesting… for a while.

  I briefly considered using my phone for music, or worse, whipping out my telescope and stargazing, but that would have been a terrible idea, basically begging for something to sneak up on me and slit my throat while I was contemplating constellations. Dying because I got excited about astronomy would be extremely on brand for me, but not in a flattering way.

  Occasionally, the burdrasses snorted or shifted their weight, and the forest answered with distant rustles and soft predator calls. My brain oscillated between hypervigilance and boredom, which was probably the intended emotional state of night watch across all worlds.

  Eventually, Vena relieved me, her hair braided for sleep, claymore resting casually against her shoulder. She looked annoyingly alert for someone who’d been unconscious minutes earlier. I muttered a thank-you and handed off a cloak I used for warmth on night-shifts.

  I was finally allowed to sprawl on my decadent bed.

  For a brief moment, I questioned whether this level of luxury counted as moral weakness. Then I stopped questioning and let my spine melt into comfort.

  We arrived at the village four hours after dawn. Once inside the main square, we split up. Raik went with Katar to inquire about troll sightings; Vena headed off to do healing rounds with Kan and Shingo in tow; and Calr, Ja’a, and I formed the “observation party,” which in practice meant Ja’a catalogued soul strength while I tried not to look like an overly curious anthropologist conducting field research.

  The village was a Damada-worshipper conclave, with most of the locals originating from the Mythic Realm. Unlike Vena, they didn’t worship an abstract flow of power called “The Holy.” Their devotion centered on Damada, a goddess of fertility, more in the agricultural and livestock sense than the sexual sense. Sex belonged to Shana’s domain, though I remembered a Damada priestess casting contraceptive blessings in a brothel once, so maybe those aspects were never entirely separate.

  The architecture here reflected that practicality. Houses were built from stacked logs, not processed lumber. The wood was untreated and resin-scented, with gaps filled by a clay-and-straw mixture that reminded me of medieval wattle-and-daub solutions. Roofs were pitched sharply to shed snowmelt, shingled with hand-cut cedar. Fences were everywhere, half-formed grids defining gardens, orchards, and animal enclosures. It all felt primitive in the honest, unpejorative sense: functional, local, and adapted to terrain.

  People worked. That was the immediate impression. Smoke curled from open sheds where villagers dried herbs or smoked meat. Wool shears clicked as a pair of men trimmed sheep with expert precision; they collected the fleece in loose baskets while sorting it by texture. Women spun coarse wool into yarn on spindle wheels, while children twisted braid-cord for future weaving. The cloth here was scratchy, dyed in muted vegetable hues: rust-orange, thyme-green, and soot-grey, nothing like the bright dyes in Hano’s merchant district.

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  Fire-root grew in raised beds behind the houses. The villagers called it “sweet-fire,” and the smell was dry, sweet, and faintly sulfuric, like onions mixed with chili. I’d grown used to eating it because Louis kept adding it to her pizzas. Apparently, this village was Hano’s number one supplier of fire-root; the vegetable preferred a colder climate to grow.

  Some fields were also dotted with hardy cabbages, mountain barley, and clusters of gourds. Sheep grazed in the lower pastures while cows worked the plows. This was agriculture backed by magic, but not dependent on it; labor still mattered here.

  Ja’a murmured soul readings under her breath as people walked past. “Eight… ten… nine… eleven… nine again… six.” The average seemed to hover around nine SB, higher than the other villages we’d passed. I hypothesized that since ascension required faith while evolution required life-or-death struggle, it was always easier to produce the latter than the former.

  Still, hierarchy was hierarchy. Lower classes always received weaker blessings. A Worshiper of Damada could petition for minor fertility boons: healthier soil, better seed germination, and more resilient livestock, but they couldn’t force growth. A Damada Acolyte, on the other hand, could make barley sprout in a handful of minutes and coax fruit from a sapling months ahead of season. It reminded me of the difference between the Faithful of the Holy and actual Clerics; the former prayed while the latter performed miracles.

  It made me wonder if this structure was by design, that weaker classes collected faith-power like spiritual tax revenue for stronger classes to spend. A passing thought, half-formed and lacking actual data. I mentally filed it under “things to research before calling it a theory” and kept walking.

  Villagers paused in their tasks to observe us as politely as they could. Outsiders in armor were not their usual morning aesthetic, and Ja’a, sometimes floating a handspan off the ground to get better soul readings, didn’t exactly scream “normal traveler.” Still, no one seemed hostile. A few even waved at us.

  The smell of sheep, wet wool, and freshly cut logs blended with the resin of pine smoke from hearth chimneys. Somewhere in the distance, a woman sang while beating dirt from fleece blankets. It was pleasant and practiced, in an industrious way that spoke of a comfortable living rather than a dedication to singing.

  It made me think of something. Before the advent of technology, most of the music people heard was the music they made themselves within their community. It was a charm that was lost with perfectly recorded, expertly made music available at the click of a finger.

  Calr nudged me when we passed a small tavern. “They’ll brew barley-mead here. Damada villages always do.”

  “I’m not much for alcohol, but I’m sampling some later,” I whispered back.

  Anthropological curiosity demanded it.

  “It’s not too strong, so you should be fine,” he nodded.

  That was when we heard the commotion. At the center of the village, near a shrine-like structure, we spotted Vena shouting at two temple guards and an older priest.

  “I am a cleric of the Holy! If someone is dying, let me see to them!” Vena’s voice cracked with actual concern.

  “I am a priest of Damada, you stupid child!” the old man snapped back. “I have healing miracles, too. And I told you nothing could be done for her.”

  Kan was off to the side, comforting a crying child, torn between keeping the child company or backing Vena up in case things escalated into a brawl. Shingo was posturing behind Vena, his intimidating size the only reason things had not come to blows yet.

  “If that’s the case, then let me check for myself!” Vena insisted.

  “You are Holy. I am not letting you desecrate the shrine with your godless magic.”

  “What are you talking about? I saw Paladins healing in Damada’s First Shrine back in the Mythic Realm. And your high priests have always been welcoming to my kind!”

  By now, a crowd was forming around the shrine gate. Even Raik and Katar arrived, drawn in by the volume of the argument. The shrine itself was simple: four walls with no roof, the interior more like a walled garden than a building. Through the large open gate, I could see that at its center stood a medium-sized fruit tree, and at the tree’s base lay a woman on her side, pale and unmoving.

  She was still breathing, barely.

  Something about the scene felt wrong, even if I couldn’t see it at first. Then I noticed the crowd… They were watching and whispering, but no one was stepping in to support the priest. Considering he was supposed to be a pillar of local authority and Vena was a foreign teenager, that silence was… revealing.

  When the village refuses to pick a side, it usually means they already have.

  “What’s happening?” Raik asked Kan, who was still juggling childcare and guard duty.

  “When Vena was doing her healing rounds, this boy told her his mother was dying, but when Vena offered help, the priest got offended,” Kan said. “He yelled at her and then ordered the guards to block the entrance.”

  The priest was still refusing Vena entry, citing blasphemy, tradition, purity, and at least five flavors of xenophobia. Vena countered with historical precedent, cross-religion cooperation, and the fact that the patient was literally dying. The crowd murmured with interest; no one sided with the priest.

  “This feels suspicious,” I muttered.

  Calr crossed his arms. “The way he’s acting, he must be hiding something.”

  “Well, the woman in there is the only person with a stronger soul than him,” Ja’a observed, not bothering to keep her voice down. “Maybe he wants her dead so she can’t take leadership away from him.”

  “Or maybe he wants her dead for the right of return,” Katar suggested casually.

  Calr stiffened as if the idea had never occurred to him. The rest of us had no idea what Katar meant.

  “When a Damada worshipper dies, they’re buried under the shrine Sacred Tree so they become one with the land,” Katar explained. “The stronger the dead person, the better blessing the land gets.”

  “Yes, but that has to be a natural death,” Calr protested. “Damada isn’t the kind of goddess that demands a living sacrifice!”

  Katar shrugged. “Not healing someone isn’t the same as killing them.”

  “Or maybe the asshole thinks the rules don’t apply to him,” Kan added. “I’ve seen the type.”

  “This is bad,” Raik hissed. “And from the look of it, Vena won’t back down.”

  “Should we back her?” Katar’s grin was entirely too enthusiastic. “I’m not opposed to killing a priest of Damada or two.”

  “You’re letting your conflict with your father’s acquaintances cloud your judgment,” Raik said.

  “My judgment is always clouded. That’s why I only follow your orders.” Katar’s deadpan delivery was so sincere it was terrifying. Is he a sociopath? Maybe. Or maybe I was missing context.

  I tried to think it through. If Katar was right, why would the priest want the blessing from her death? There was no visible drought or blight that needed that kind of divine intervention. The village was the primary supplier of fire-root in Hano. Increased production might mean increased profit, but agriculture obeyed basic economics: too much supply would lower the price. But if a spike in demand was incoming…

  I turned and addressed the nearest villager. “Has there been a rise in demand for fire-root in Hano recently?”

  The man frowned, confused. I was asking for market info during the shrine drama. “An agent of some merchant from Hano came and asked for as much fire-root as we could make,” he said. “The merchant he worked for was Tan… eh, Tan something Soulit… Tan Je’e, I think.”

  I blinked. Tan Je’e.

  Seriously, was this entire mess being incentivized by our new pizza business?

  Are we the spike in demand?

  “We need to do something before this escalates,” I said under my breath.

  Raik nodded. “Can we appeal to another priest?”

  Kan grimaced. “The closest Damada priestess who outranks him is probably in Hano. At least a day’s ride from here.”

  “And she works in a brothel,” Calr added. “I doubt this asshole would listen to her.”

  “You could skip the human hierarchy and talk directly to the goddess,” Katar suggested, as casually as if he were suggesting we talk to a manager.

  We all stared at him.

  “What?” Katar shrugged. “Damada has an open-door policy when it comes to prayers. You offer a flower under her tree and pray. Anyone who follows her path can do it. This doesn’t mean she’ll answer, but she’ll definitely hear it.”

  “How would she even answer?” scoffed Ja’a. “It’s not like gods have the habit of showing up outside of the Mythic Realm.”

  “Most likely she would whisper to the temple guards,” shrugged Calr. “Both of them have at least the Acolyte Class.”

  I turned to Katar, remembering that his father was a Damada priest.

  “Can you do it?” I asked. “Communicate with the goddess, I mean…”

  “Not a chance. I am most likely considered a heretic.” Katar didn’t even look apologetic. “I spat on her tree when I was a kid.”

  He said it like that was a normal childhood activity. I needed clarification about Katar’s past if I wanted to avoid getting smote by accident.

  “If not you, then who?” I asked. My eyes landed on the child Kan was comforting.

  I hesitated before just going for it.

  “Hey,” I crouched slightly. “You want to try and save your mother?”

  The boy’s eyes were red from crying, but they turned fierce when I said that. He nodded once.

  While Vena continued to distract the priest, now escalating into a theological shouting match, Shingo guided the child around the shrine and, with practiced gentleness, the giant boy lifted him over the wall and set him down inside the inner garden.

  The guards didn’t notice; all attention was locked on the two shouting rivals.

  Inside the garden, the child sprinted across soft soil, flowers clutched in a fist so tight that petals crumpled between his fingers. He reached the Sacred Tree, dropped the blossoms at its roots, and knelt beside his mother. I couldn’t hear his prayer from where I stood, but children prayed in a way adults rarely could: with the depth of their pure hearts, and without the shackles of pride. Just… begging. Desperately, honestly, and without pretending.

  He pressed his forehead to his mother’s arm and whispered through sobs.

  That’s when the impossible happened.

  The air changed.

  The Sacred Tree’s leaves rustled without wind.

  A soft green luminescence spread through its bark like sap turning to light. It wasn’t too bright, it was consistent and alive. The world seemed to inhale all at once, and an aura pulsed outward in an invisible wave.

  It hit us like humidity, pressure, or maybe weather. It was not oppressive… just vast.

  The feeling defied simple description. It was the smell of soil after rain, the sight of mushrooms reclaiming fallen logs, the tenderness of a doe grooming her fawn… and simultaneously the cold indifference of winter starving a forest, the sharp efficiency of an owl killing a mouse. Life as totality: nurturing and brutal, loving and apathetic, opposition without contradiction.

  The pulse rolled across the village in a single heartbeat, suppressing every active magic in sight. Stormshark’s Whisper flickered and died; my perception spell ended like a candle dunked in water.

  Ja’a collapsed immediately, her eyes wide and pupils dilated, overwhelmed by her Soul-Seer ability trying, foolishly, to interpret divinity with mortal bandwidth. Katar caught her before her head struck the cobblestones.

  No one spoke. No one even dared to breathe loudly. Awe forced silence into us more effectively than fear ever could.

  Inside the garden, the boy remained kneeling beside his comatose mother, small and shaking.

  Then the tree split, just opened, the bark peeled like curtains, and a figure stepped forward as though she had always been inside and the world had simply remembered her.

  She was beautiful, but not in any aesthetic optimized for human eyes. Her hair shimmered like autumn foliage caught in slow wind; reds, golds, and dying greens braided together by unseen seasons. Vines wrapped around her nude body, but unlike other depictions of the plant-lady trope, they were not strategically placed for modesty, because modesty was a human obsession, and she was nature. They looped around her in a dazzling display of the art of how plants claimed space.

  She was naked in the way forests were naked: unconcerned, unprudish, and older than the concept of shame itself.

  Her skin held the warm tannins of fertile earth. Her eyes were deep, like wells, reflecting nothing and everything at once. When she inhaled, the garden responded; flowers opened, petals turned, grass shimmered with morning dew.

  My mind finally caught up with what my body had known a full second earlier:

  I was standing in the presence of a goddess.

  Damada had arrived.