Morning light filtered through the narrow window of the temporary guild room, pale and unhurried. Eis sat at the small table, hands wrapped loosely around a cup gone cold. Outside, Lumaire moved on—boots on stone, voices rising and falling, the city breathing as it always did.

  She had decided to stay.

  The certainty of that choice had come quietly, without ceremony. Lumaire was stable. Familiar. A place where paths crossed without always ending in blood. And yet, sitting there now, she felt the weight of something new—not danger, not urgency—but possibility.

  Nearly a year had passed since she had woken in the forest. A year spent learning routes and customs, currencies and laws. How to blend. How to survive.

  What surprised her was the other lesson.

  Survival here did not demand constant fighting.

  Not the way her body remembered. Not the way her instincts still expected.

  There were days now where no blade left its sheath. Nights where sleep came without calculating exits. Meals, filling and eaten without the quiet fear of interruption. She had learned to read books for pleasure. To cook. To sit.

  Freedom, she realized, was not a grand thing. It was a series of small absences.

  She did not yet know what she would do with it.

  That, too, was new.

  There were still questions.

  How she had come here.

  What the power she’d woken with truly was.

  Why the last pulse from the Sun Vault had felt different—not dangerous, not violent, but it lingered in a way she couldn’t name.

  The answers mattered.

  But not tonight.

  Lumaire was peaceful. Stable. Alive with ordinary lives unfolding at their own pace. It showed her a way of living that didn’t revolve around survival alone—one where the future wasn’t decided by the next fight.

  The questions remained but for now, they occupied only a small corner of her thoughts.

  Kael cleaned his bowstring by habit, fingers moving while his thoughts wandered only as far as they needed to.

  Eis revealed she had just woken up in the forest one day.

  He considered that for about as long as it took to tighten a knot.

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  When they’d first met her, he’d been suspicious—of course he had. A lone woman in the forest, stepping out of nowhere after a bandit ambush, moving like she’d trained her whole life. Clothes torn, sure, but the rest of her? Clean. Composed. Too intact for someone who’d supposedly just survived and dismantled an ambush.

  He’d watched her closely then.

  He watched her less now.

  Eis did what she said she would. She covered angles. She made good calls. She didn’t panic, didn’t grandstand, didn’t leave people behind. When things went wrong, she adjusted instead of freezing.

  That was enough.

  Whatever she was—human, not human, something in between—it didn’t change the part that mattered. You could trust her in a fight. You could trust her not to turn on you when things got ugly.

  Kael finished the bowstring and set the weapon aside.

  Mysteries were fine. Answers were overrated.

  Lira lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, thoughts refusing to settle.

  Eis made her feel two opposite things at once.

  The first was simple: care.

  Eis felt younger—not by much, but enough. Quiet in the way someone is when they’ve learned early that noise invites trouble. Lira found herself watching for signs of exhaustion, of hunger, of strain Eis would never voice. It stirred something protective she hadn’t expected to feel so strongly.

  And then there was the other side.

  The questions.

  Eis said her belongings were lost to bandits. Yet she never seemed short of coin. Not flush—just… steady. Always prepared. Too prepared. The spellcards, too. Efficient. Clean. Stronger than it should have been.

  And the North.

  The way mana bent around her.

  Lira trusted Eis. Deeply. With her life, without hesitation.

  But Lira was also a researcher. Curiosity was not a habit—it was a reflex. And the mysteries around Eis pulled at her mind constantly, threads begging to be followed.

  She told herself she could hold both things.

  Care, and curiosity.

  She only hoped the balance would hold.

  The first night came back to Ronan more often than he admitted.

  Forest. Damp ground. A fire burned low. Eis had volunteered for first watch, voice steady, eyes alert.

  Ronan had pretended to sleep.

  Old habit. Old training.

  If Eis had wanted to rob them, she’d had time. If she’d wanted worse, opportunity had been handed to her cleanly. Three sleeping adventurers. No witnesses. No resistance.

  Nothing happened. She woke him when it was his turn for watch.

  By morning, Ronan had made his decision.

  Since then, Eis had proven herself in ways training alone couldn’t teach—judgment under pressure, restraint when it mattered, decisiveness when it didn’t. She fought to end threats, not to glorify herself. She listened. She adapted.

  People like that were rare.

  Trustworthy comrades were rarer still.

  Ronan told himself that was why he worried. Why he kept an eye on her position in fights. Why he noticed when she walked alone at night.

  It was practical. Leadership.

  That’s what he told himself.

  When he learned she’d decided to stay in Lumaire, the relief came faster than he expected. Quiet. Immediate.

  Whatever Eis was—whatever truths waited behind her silences—she had chosen to remain.

  Near Team Argent.

  Near him.

  Ronan let that be enough, and for once, allowed himself to rest with it.