Vera sat at a small table in a sunlit parlor in Dreadwake Alcove, a serious expression on her face as she leaned forward and pointed.

  “Alright. And how much does this make?”

  Next to her, brows knitted tight in an adorably fierce frown that Vera thought she could’ve watched all day, Serel stared at the stacks of different-sized and colored coins arranged neatly across the table. Her lips moved as she studied the pile Vera had pushed forward.

  “…Seven… eight… nine…”

  Her fingers rose in rhythm with her counting, eyes flicking to one of the stacked towers with gold coins, then to the next filled with dull, ash-colored marks.

  Finally, she looked up at Vera, a hint of question in her eyes. “One hundred seventy-five gold…?”

  Vera raised a single brow, keeping her face blank. “You sure?”

  Serel hesitated, glancing back down. Her mouth opened slightly, then firmed again. She nodded. “Mmm.”

  Vera held her gaze for a second longer before letting the corner of her mouth curve. “Yep. That’s right. Good job.”

  She reached out and ruffled the girl’s hair, earning a small, indignant noise that only made her chuckle. Then she scooped up the coins and sorted them back into their proper stacks.

  “You’re good at this, aren’t you?” she said, already drawing out another handful of coins. “Smart girl.”

  Serel’s pout vanished under a crooked grin, her cheeks tinting red. Vera smirked, then slid another spread of coins across the table. “Alright then. What about this one?”

  The girl’s expression snapped back into fierce concentration. Vera watched as the gears started turning again.

  She was teaching Serel math.

  Her first week in this world as Veralyth Mournvale had been filled with enough chaos, shocks, and new experiences to last a lifetime. Looking back at that first day, she was still a little amazed at how well she’d handled it all—and how much had changed since.

  Now, though, well into her second week, she’d had time to breathe. To think about some of the smaller things that she hadn’t had the bandwidth to even notice in those first frantic days.

  Things like Serel’s education.

  She was the girl’s mother now. She’d chosen to take that role for the long haul, which meant she had to start thinking about her future. This might not be her old world, where most halfway decent paying jobs demanded a degree and five years of ‘entry-level’ experience, but she figured it was still important for a kid to get some kind of basic education.

  So she had started thinking about how to approach that, given that this place didn’t really seem to have elementary schools.

  For now, she was piecing together her own system.

  First, she’d tried to gauge where Serel already stood. The girl could read, write, and do simple arithmetic. Caldrin had apparently been the one to teach her that. It didn’t sound like there’d ever been any formal plan behind it, though, and with Serel having lived most of her remembered life in Sablewatch Hollow, she was still unfamiliar with a lot of things most people here probably took for granted.

  Vera had seen that as an opportunity to start fixing several problems at once.

  In addition to the sessions they already had in the mornings to draw and read together, Vera was now running Serel through lessons she’d made herself in the form of little tests, games, and questions. She’d spent a couple of afternoons digging through the Ashledger Archive for maps, primers, and history texts, which helped both of them: Serel got material to learn from, and Vera got to understand this world beyond what she’d known from the game.

  She tried to keep the lessons light, short, and varied enough that a kid wouldn’t lose focus. That usually involved briefer explanations mixed in with some sketches and the kind of quiz games she remembered from her own childhood. At the same time, she’d used them as a way to subtly test some of the things Serel knew that didn’t really fit with what she should know.

  Like the little anachronisms Vera had noticed now and then.

  For instance, the time Serel made a ‘zip lips’ gesture, which didn’t make much sense in a world that didn’t have zippers.

  And there were others, Vera realized. Small habits and phrases that she might understand, even if they didn’t belong here. Serel would even hum little melodies that Vera recognized. Vera had tested these things on Caldrin, just to confirm that it was limited to Serel. But at the same time, the girl could sometimes be confused about basic things like shaking hands in greeting.

  Vera was trying to figure out why that was.

  One of her first theories had been that Serel picked these up from the original Veralyth—that what she was seeing in Serel’s behavior was just reflected habits of that Veralyth’s idiosyncrasies and personality. Something connecting Vera and Veralyth through the same unclear thread that tied player and avatar.

  But that theory had been hard to test. Every time she asked Serel where she’d learned something, the girl just gave her a puzzled look, said she didn’t remember, and that was that.

  Another theory was that it was somehow related to how Serel had been born, because clearly, there was something more to that. The Graven Daughter had been involved, and the Forgotten Throne had already proven it could pull pieces of Vera’s past into this world. It wasn’t impossible that its influence reached further and might have had a hand in shaping Serel’s personality.

  Vera didn’t like thinking about that possibility, but she had to. She couldn’t ignore it. Not now that she was responsible for the girl.

  “Mommy, Mommy, I’m done!”

  Serel’s voice cut through her thoughts. Vera blinked, turning to find the girl waving a hand in front of her and pointing at the coins on the table.

  “It’s two hundred thirty-six!”

  Vera looked down, double-checking the coins, then let out a quiet snort through her nose. “Nope. That’s wrong. Better luck next time, kid.”

  Serel’s face froze in shock as Vera calmly divided the coins back into their stacks. “It was two hundred forty-seven. You missed one of the crowns. That would’ve bought you three hundred meals.”

  Serel frowned, then stuck her tongue out in exaggerated defiance.

  Vera’s heart skipped.

  Controlling herself, she started counting out another set of coins. There were six coin types in total, covering all the denominations used in Ashen Legacy: coppers, silvers, golds, gilded crowns, ashmarks—not to be confused with the Ashmarks used for sending messages—and godmarks. The value ratio between them was a clean scale of ten, which made conversions simple and made them perfect for teaching both basic math and a bit of practical sense.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Vera mostly stuck to the golds, crowns, and silvers to keep things manageable and not make it too complicated, but she’d thrown in the occasional ashmark and even godmark as a test as well. She’d noticed Serel understood numbers up to a thousand without too much issue, but once you went past that and up to the ten-thousand range, you were squarely in the territory of ‘big numbers,’ where most of her confidence faded away.

  Fractions proved a similar hurdle. Uneven groups of silvers or coppers tended to trip her up fast, so Vera had eased off and stuck to whole sums for now.

  Still, the girl was learning fast. Faster than she’d expected. She figured Serel would probably have it all down soon enough.

  They kept at it a while longer until a set of steps sounded from the doorway and Caldrin appeared.

  “My lady. Young miss.” His tone was as unflappable as always. He focused on Vera. “My lady, you asked me to remind you when it was time.”

  Vera frowned.

  Right.

  There was that.

  A sigh slipped out as she turned back to Serel, who suddenly looked a lot more cheerful. “We’ll call it there. You’re doing well—keep it up.” She gave the girl a light pat on the head, careful this time not to muss her hair and trigger another protest, then gathered the coins into a soft velvet pouch and slipped it into her Vaultring.

  Technically, that was an entire fortune and a half they’d been playing around with.

  As Vera stood, Serel hopped off her chair, practically bouncing with excitement that stood in sharp contrast to the reluctance Vera felt.

  It was cute. Also mildly betraying.

  Were kids always this fickle?

  Caldrin stepped closer as Vera pulled out the Hearthbind Token. In a shimmer of emberlight and soft cinders, the room melted away, and all three of them reappeared inside The Hallowed Shear.

  “Hmm? Oh, lassies! Welcome, welcome!” Korrin looked up from behind his counter, surrounded by scissors, combs, whetstones, and oiled cloths laid out in neat rows. Looked like he was midway through sharpening his tools.

  “Hi, Grandpa Korrin!” Serel called, waving brightly.

  He smiled, mustache twitching. “You look excited, little lass. Something big happening?”

  The girl nodded enthusiastically. “Mmm!”

  “That’s good, that’s good,” the old man said, nodding sagely in turn. “Excitement keeps the blood hot and the heart strong. Nothing more thrilling than the sacred calling of hair, I’ll tell you that—and that’s what’s kept me trimming and kicking all these years!”

  “Perhaps you could exercise some more caution when it comes to teaching the young miss such obviously inaccurate philosophies, Master Korrin,” Caldrin said, giving his hunched appearance a skeptical once-over.

  Korrin waved a hand. “Bah. You’re too young to understand. Come back to me when those fine locks of yours start thinning. Then you’ll know!”

  “That seems unlikely,” Caldrin replied evenly. “But in the event it does happen, and you’re somehow still here to see it, I’ll retract my words.”

  “Hmph!”

  Vera smiled faintly at their exchange, then glanced toward Serel, who’d already taken the initiative and hurried to the door, pulling it open and gesturing urgently. “Mommy, come! Hurry!”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Vera tapped Caldrin’s shoulder as he inclined his head toward her. “Korrin, we’ll swing by in the evening and say hi,” she called back.

  They said their goodbyes, leaving the shop to a chorus of gleeful Serel noises.

  Outside, Vera pulled up her hood and shrugged on a jacket that covered her arms, channeling a small pulse of Resonance to shift her hair from its natural silver-gray to raven-gloss black. Serel kept hers unaltered, and Vera didn’t stop her.

  People already knew Veralyth Mournvale was back. There wasn’t as much reason to cling to full-on secrecy anymore, and she didn’t see the point in forcing Serel to hide if she didn’t feel like it. People were unlikely to recognize her from just hair color anyway, and Vera knew the girl liked to play around with the magical hair dye every now and then depending on mood.

  The streets of Marrowfen now were busier than they’d been the morning after Vera’s battle with Veyrith, though it probably wasn’t at the same level as before that.

  A few days had passed since then, and the city seemed to be going through something like an adjustment period. People were trying to figure out how things would move forward from here. Not only had Marrowfen been close to extinction at the hands of a Silent Lord, they’d essentially lost their entire central leadership along with most of the city guard and a large portion of one of their most influential guilds. From what Vera had heard, crime and unrest weren’t real problems yet, but there was a certain quiet tension over the city. Like everyone was waiting to see if a storm would come next.

  She felt for those who’d lost family or friends in all that, but she didn’t have much interest in getting more involved than she already was. The running, rebuilding, and politics of managing a city were so far removed from anything she considered herself suited for that she had no intention of trying.

  Which was why she regretted agreeing to what she’d have to attend this afternoon.

  They made their way across Marrowfen, and Vera used the walk to steel herself, all the while Serel’s steps grew quicker with each district they passed. The girl was practically vibrating by the time they crossed a bridge and reached a large, three-story building set against the curve of the canal, its walls made of polished bone that caught the light in faint, pearly streaks.

  The Bleeding Chalice.

  Serel didn’t wait. She practically jumped up to the door, landing on both feet and grabbing the handle to push it open with a triumphant little grunt before darting inside.

  Vera and Caldrin exchanged brief looks, then followed.

  Hilde, the one-eyed matron of the establishment, looked up from where she was wiping down one of the tables with a damp cloth. “Welcome, little one. You’re quick as ever today, aren’t ya? Careful, or you’ll tire your poor ma out at this rate.”

  “I won’t!” Serel turned back with a grin. “Mommy’s super strong!”

  The matron smiled. “That she is, I s’pose.” Her eye turned to Vera and Caldrin. “Greetings and welcome to you both as well.”

  “Thank you for accommodating us,” Caldrin said with a small bow.

  Vera raised a hand in greeting. “Appreciate you agreeing to this.”

  The broad-shouldered woman waved a hand. “No need for thanks. Gloria’s been as excited for this as your little one, and we don’t mind an extra mouth to feed for a bit.”

  Vera scanned the common room, noting a few patrons sitting near the hearth at the far end, before moving her gaze to Serel, who’d already crossed most of the space toward the counter.

  Hilde stepped up beside them as they followed, watching as a girl no older than sixteen stepped out of the kitchen in a casual skirt, stray locks of brown hair slipping from the loose braid at her shoulder.

  The girl’s eyes immediately found Serel, and a bright smile crossed her lips. “Hey there. Fancy seeing you here.”

  “Gloria!” Serel squealed, running up and wrapping her arms around the older girl’s waist in a full-bodied hug.

  Vera felt warmth stir in her chest watching them, even if there was also a small, irrational part of her that felt jealous.

  She watched the two greet each other, Serel practically glued to the girl’s side as they began talking.

  Vera had visited this place a couple of times over the last few days—partly because she liked it, partly to make up for the trouble she’d caused before, but mostly because of how thrilled Serel had been to meet Gloria, the matron’s daughter and her first ‘friend.’

  The older girl was good with her. Patient, confident, and completely unbothered by the age gap between them. If anything, she seemed to enjoy it.

  That was why, when Vera realized she and Caldrin would both be occupied this afternoon and she needed somewhere safe for Serel to stay, The Bleeding Chalice had been the first thing to come to mind. From there, arranging this little playdate hadn’t taken much effort. In fact, the hard part had been keeping Serel’s mind off it.

  For all the girl’s attachment to her, she’d been practically delirious at the thought of her first real experience out in the world that didn’t include Vera.

  Gloria noticed her watching as they approached, and the smile on the girl’s face faltered slightly, her eyes widening. “M-Miss Morgans,” she said, a note of startled awe slipping into her tone. “Hi again!”

  “Just Vera’s fine,” she said. She’d asked them to use her ‘alias’ for the time being, just to make things easier, but there wasn’t much she could do about the girl’s reaction. It was a bit awkward, causing that kind of reverence in someone, though at least Gloria was a good kid.

  “You’ll keep Serel out of trouble for me, won’t you?”

  The girl blinked a few times, then nodded quickly. “I’ll try my best—no, I’ll guarantee it!”

  Vera smiled. “Trying your best is enough for now.” She turned to Hilde, leaning closer and lowering her voice as she pulled a small satchel from her Vaultring. “Serel usually doesn’t tire herself out, but if she gets too much, there are a few things she can read and play with in here. There are also several Ashmarks inside if something happens and you need to reach me.”

  Hilde chuckled, expression softening. “My Gloriosa’s not one to tire out either, don’t you worry. We’ll keep her busy. Fair warning that I can’t promise she won’t have added a stone or two. My hubby’s hopeless when it comes to feeding little ones.”

  Vera gave a single nod, then glanced back at her daughter, who had already started whispering something to Gloria. “Serel, the Wick and your things are in the satchel I gave Gloria’s mother. If you need anything, look inside there, okay?”

  The girl glanced back at her. “Mmm, okay. Love you, Mommy!”

  “Love you too,” Vera said quietly, then gave her a last look before following Caldrin toward the door.

  It felt weird, leaving her like this. Really, really weird. She remembered her own parents doing the same when she was young—dropping her off at friends’ homes and telling her to behave—but it had never once registered that someday she’d be the one standing on the other side of that exchange.

  She figured it would take a while to get used to.

  Caldrin cleared his throat once they stepped outside. “My lady, are you ready?”

  Vera studied him for a moment, suppressing the reluctance in her chest. Her gaze lifted to the tall spire of the Marrowvault rising over the city.

  It was time for Veralyth Mournvale to make her first official appearance.