Ryuken announced it casually at breakfast on the first day of week five. He finished his bowl, stood up from the low table, and dropped the news before walking out: "No training today."
The heavy iron doors clicked shut behind him.
The four of them sat in the dimly lit dining hall and stared at the empty doorway.
Kaito calmly refilled his tea. "He does this exactly once every two weeks," he advised the table. "Do not spend the day standing around the outer ring looking lost, or he will imdiately revoke it."
Ashe had already stopped eating. She turned and looked at Vane. Her amber eyes held the specific, calculating gleam of a tactician who has just been handed a massive opportunity and is rapidly deciding how to violently deploy it. "Eastern city," she ordered. "Get your heavy jacket."
"I haven’t even finished my—"
"Bring it with you."
She was already on her feet and moving toward the door.
The sprawling city clustered at the mountain’s base was called Korreth. Ashe had casually explained on the leviathan that the na translated roughly to The Place Below the Seat. She had delivered this translation with the flat, unimpressed tone of soone who had grown up entirely desensitized to her own mythology.
The path down from the towering compound gates consisted of thousands of uneven stone steps cut directly into the sheer mountain face. The descent was steep enough to require genuine, unbroken concentration, but just wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, provided they were entirely comfortable invading each other’s personal space.
Ashe took the treacherous steps the exact sa way she went everywhere else in life: at a bruising pace that simply assud the rest of the world would figure out how to keep up.
Vane kept up.
The ancient city finally erged as they broke through the thick morning cloud line. It was old in the exact sa crushing way the compound above it was old. It was the kind of deep, generational age that did not need to announce itself with grand monunts. It was simply present in the extre density of the blackened stone and the organic, chaotic way the buildings leaned heavily against each other, locked together by the accumulated settling of centuries.
The winding streets were absolutely not straight. They had originally been dirt footpaths, gradually beaten into wide roads by centuries of relentless use rather than any deliberate city planning. The bustling market district sat directly at the base of the mountain steps. It had been sitting there, waiting to serve the Razar monsters above, for as long as people had been surviving on this mountain.
The sll hit Vane first, a chaotic wall of it. Roasted spiced at, sharp mineral water, ozone, and sothing cloyingly sweet that he could not imdiately identify. The sprawling market was already running at a deafening, full capacity in the mid-morning. The specific quality of the noise was vastly different from the polished comrcial districts back at the Academy. There was no polite performance here. It was just raw, desperate work.
Ashe hit the cobblestones and imdiately turned left without a single second of hesitation.
"Fish vendor first," she commanded, slicing through the crowd. "He pulls the mountain trout early, and it is entirely gone by noon."
"We literally just ate breakfast," Vane protested, dodging a cart.
"That was breakfast. This is the fish vendor. Keep up."
The fish vendor was a compact, heavily scarred man in his late sixties. He possessed the deep, leathery tan that only ca from decades of brutal outdoor labor and the sharp, assessing eyes of a man who had been successfully haggling with violent cultivators his entire life. He spotted Ashe from ten ters away.
"Lady Ashe!" His gravelly voice held the rough warmth of genuine, lifelong familiarity, not the oily performance of a rchant recognizing a wealthy aristocrat. "Your miserable brother ca through here last week. He complained bitterly about the size of the trout."
"He complains about literally everything," Ashe shot back smoothly.
"He bought six of them anyway."
"He complains loudly and then buys six. That is the fundantal definition of Kaito." She leaned her elbows on the icy display counter. "What is actually fresh today."
"Mountain trout, as always. But so deepwater carp just ca up from the lower lakes yesterday. First catch of the entire season."
"Carp." She pointed a gloved finger. "Give two of those. And whatever that dark thing is."
"Smoked elk fin. Heavily spiced."
"That."
She paid for the haul with the casual, thoughtless ease of soone who had been executing this exact transaction since childhood. She did not bother to count the heavy coins, simply dropping the correct amount into the vendor’s calloused hand purely from ingrained habit. The old man wrapped the fish tightly in thick, oiled paper and handed the heavy parcel across the ice.
She imdiately shoved it into Vane’s chest.
He grunted, catching the cold package. "I’m carrying the dead fish."
"You are the honored guest." She was already turning away, her eyes scanning the crowd. "It is a massive honor."
The chaotic market parted around them as they moved deeper into the maze. The physical layout possessed a bizarre, organic logic that had absolutely nothing to do with urban planning and everything to do with what tired people needed in sequence. The fish vendor was near the mountain steps because protein was the imdiate priority. The sprawling spice stalls were next, because you obviously bought heavy spices to cook the fish. The massive grain rchants were further in, because fifty pounds of grain was a heavy destination purchase rather than a casual impulse buy.
Ashe navigated the screaming chaos the exact sa way Vane navigated the Academy’s lethal political landscape: by instinctively knowing exactly where the traps were before she arrived, and using that deep knowledge to move flawlessly without ever appearing to think.
The people here knew her.
It was not everyone, and the greetings were not overly effusive or sycophantic. But they were remarkably consistent. It was the specific, grounded recognition of a place where a terrifyingly powerful person has been growing up right in front of them for long enough that she has stopped being a mythological Warlord and simply beco a familiar, irritating local fixture.
The wrinkled spice rchant asked about her father’s aching joints in a casual tone that suggested he had been asking about Ryuken’s health for thirty years and fully expected to ask for thirty more. A woman violently hamring out dents at a tal stall gave her a silent, respectful nod as they passed. A tight group of young, heavily scarred cultivators in eastern training gear paused their argunt to give her the traditional, formal hand greeting. She returned the gesture perfectly without breaking her rapid stride.
"They actually know you," Vane observed, shifting the cold fish to his other arm.
"I grew up in these exact streets."
"They don’t look remotely intimidated by you."
She shot him a sideways glance, genuinely confused. "Why on earth would they be intimidated."
"You are the future Warlord of the East."
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