Elizabeth reappeared beside her brother on the rooftop without a sound, as she let out a long breath.
"I wish I were younger."
Michael didn’t look at her. He was still watching the compound below, eyes on Winston, expression doing very little.
"So?" Elizabeth leaned against the railing. "An initiate just went toe-to-toe with a Paragon and used Exalted-level output to end it and that expression is all you have?"
"He’s impressive." Michael’s voice was even. "Key City will gain significant attention after this year’s Crucible because of him. Scouts from outside the city will take notice."
Elizabeth stared at him.
"That’s it? That’s your entire reaction?"
Michael turned and started walking toward the rooftop access door.
"I can spend ti being impressed, or I can spend ti improving. When soone Freya’s age surpasses us effortlessly, I’d rather not have wasted the gap." He paused at the door without turning back. "The Crucible will actually be worth watching this year."
He disappeared in a quiet burst of fla.
Elizabeth stood alone on the roof and looked at the space where he’d been.
’That man is genuinely difficult to impress.’ She turned it over for a mont. ’But that’s the first ti I’ve seen him actually interested in sothing.’
Which, when she thought about it, said more than Michael’s words ever would.
She looked down at the compound. Winston was with Freya and Zelda, the three of them together in the middle of the damage Elizabeth had made of the training grounds. Craters, scorched stone, root fragnts still calcifying at the edges where Gaia’s Grasp had dissolved.
Elizabeth shook her head slowly.
’Guess I’ll head to the Astral Heaven. Could use the training myself.’
She vanished in a spark.
❖❖❖❖
Winston looked at both of them and made the call imdiately.
"We need to get you both to healers."
Freya was still watching him with the focused patience of soone who had been sitting on a question through multiple rounds of lightning strikes and one compound-destroying spar.
"How did you disappear earlier?"
Winston didn’t answer imdiately. He crouched, slid one arm under Freya’s knees and one behind her back, and lifted her into a proper carry without ceremony.
She was in no condition to walk and they both knew it. He looked at Zelda.
"Can you walk or should I carry you too?"
Zelda blinked. "I — no. I’m fine. I can walk."
Winston nodded and started moving. Freya’s question was still in the air, so he answered it while walking.
"Trait Concealnt. It’s a Traitial Art."
Zelda, keeping pace beside him, looked over. "You learned a Traitial Art?"
"It ca from my class. The acquisition process is... Let’s just say it’s risky." He left it at that.
Zelda and Freya both arrived at the sa conclusion at roughly the sa ti. Albeit Freya got there first.
"Back in the guardian’s room."
Winston nodded. When he had absorbed the Blood Emperor’s experiences, the process had killed him temporarily and cost him a Life Tithe charge.
Trait Concealnt had been the thing he was actually after — worth the risk, even if the execution had been harder than expected.
Freya had more questions forming behind her eyes, but Winston spoke first.
"Where are the healers? I can’t believe your sister would push training this far without having recovery staff available."
Freya was successfully redirected. She gave him directions and he followed them, Freya still in his arms and the question she’d been about to ask sliding to the back.
Winston kept his expression neutral and ran the situation through his head.
’That was a close call.’
If Freya pressed further — specifically asking why Elizabeth, a Paragon with a fully developed sensory network, hadn’t been able to detect him even knowing he’d used a Traitial Art — the answer would require explaining that his Trait Concealnt was at Peak mastery.
And Peak mastery in a Traitial Art wasn’t sothing a fresh initiate was supposed to have.
It would raise questions that led directly to things Winston wasn’t ready to explain yet.
The saving grace was Elizabeth’s read on the situation.
She had clocked his output as Exalted-level.
That was the number that was going to dominate the conversation when people talked about what happened today.
An initiate operating at Exalted output was already so far outside normal paraters that the Traitial Art almost beca a footnote — surprising, but not the most shocking thing in the room.
The Valerians were treating him well. Genuinely, from what he could tell. That goodwill was worth protecting through careful managent of what they knew and when.
Winston turned the final corridor from Freya’s direction and reached the healers’ quarters.
❖❖❖❖
The healer worked with her hands glowing a steady red, the energy flowing into Freya in controlled pulses.
Within minutes, the bruising was fading, the swelling around her eye receding. Then Freya’s eyes closed and her breathing evened out completely.
Winston looked at the healer.
"What happened?"
"Healing requires her body to do the work itself. My role is to stimulate the process, not substitute it." The healer kept her focus on her patient. "The energy expenditure puts her under for a few hours while she recovers."
"Why not just use your own energy to speed it up?"
The healer glanced at him.
"Because that would undermine the training entirely. If external energy does the work, the body stops adapting. And it refuses to grow stronger." She paused. "This thod only works for the Valerians specifically, by the way. Their family ability lets them develop outside the normal predetermined limits of mastery-based growth. Simply put — what doesn’t kill them makes them considerably stronger."
Winston looked at Freya’s sleeping face and processed that quietly. Then he looked back at the healer.
"Am I supposed to know the second part?"
She shrugged.
"You’re favored by the patriarch. It’s only appropriate you understand the family you’ll be joining."
Winston didn’t respond to that either.
He left Freya to her recovery and walked to the adjacent room.
Zelda was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands in her lap, the healer had already finished with her.
She had been treated first — which made sense now.
Elizabeth had pulled back on Zelda’s sessions in a way she hadn’t for Freya, because the Valerian healing thod didn’t apply to her.
Zelda was healed. She was also not looking at anything in particular, which was its own kind of signal.
Winston sat down beside her without making a production of it. She leaned into his shoulder almost imdiately and stayed there.
He let her.
"What’s wrong, Zel?"
She didn’t answer for a mont. Then she turned her head and looked at him directly.
"Do you like Freya?"
User Comments
0 comments from readers