I erged from my Nave feeling like soone had fed through a at grinder, reassembled the pieces wrong, and then asked to run a marathon.
Every muscle in my body scread. Not the dull ache of normal exercise — this was a full-bodied symphony of suffering, each fiber playing its own unique note of agony. My legs felt like they’d been replaced with columns of wet sand. My arms hung at my sides like dead weight, fingers tingling with the mory of marble floor dragged across inch by agonizing inch.
’Thirty-five years of training. That’s what she said.’
If every session was like this, I wouldn’t last thirty-five days.
The deck of the ship swam back into focus around . The sa organized chaos as before — workers carrying cargo, Derry shouting orders, the sll of tar and salt and timber. Except now everything seed too bright, too loud, too much. My eyes watered against the afternoon sun like it had personally offended .
Po materialized beside with the kind of sudden appearance that made wonder if feralis could teleport.
"Mr. Cade! You look terrible!"
"Thanks, Po. I appreciate that."
He bead at like I’d paid him a complint. "Mr. Derry says you should sit down before you fall down! He says people who collapse on his deck get thrown overboard!"
’Charming policy.’
I found a barrel that looked sturdy enough to support my weight and lowered myself onto it with all the grace of a dying man. Which, to be fair, wasn’t far from how I felt. The wood creaked beneath , and for one horrible mont I thought it might give way — but it held, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
The sun had shifted position since I’d entered my Nave. It was harder to tell ti in the spirit plane — sotis minutes felt like hours, other tis hours could feel like minutes, not that I’d spent that much ti there anyway — but based on the light, I had to have been there for at least two or three hours.
Two or three hours of dragging myself across marble floor like a particularly ambitious slug.
I’d made it to Kassie eventually. Barely. By the ti I reached her, I’d been shaking so hard I could barely stand, and she’d simply looked at with those pale crimson eyes and said: "Tomorrow, you will do it faster."
Then I dismissed myself from the Nave without a second thought before trying my best to move to the deck to check how the situation was.
Still, beneath the exhaustion and the complaining, sothing else stirred. Sothing that felt almost like... satisfaction?
I’d done it. It had taken everything I had, had pushed past limits I didn’t know existed, but I’d done it. I’d reached her.
’One inch at a ti. That’s how this works.’
One inch at a ti until I could stand beside my spirits instead of behind them. Until I could fight alongside Kassie and the Pyre Saint instead of watching from a distance while they did all the work. Until the next ti soone ca to kill , I’d have sothing more to offer than clever words and desperate luck.
The pain was the price. And right now, sitting on this barrel with my muscles screaming, I was more willing to pay it than I’d ever been.
"Mr. Cade?"
I blinked. Po was still there, watching with those vertical-pupil eyes. His tail swished behind him in what I was beginning to recognize as concern.
"You were staring at nothing for a long ti. Mr. Derry says that’s a sign of brain damage!"
"Tell Mr. Derry I said thanks for the diagnosis."
Po nodded seriously and scampered off, presumably to deliver my ssage verbatim. I watched him go, shaking my head slightly.
’Where does Levi find these people?’
The question had been rattling around my head since I’d arrived on this ship, but it kept getting more relevant. Po. Derry. The entire crew moving with practiced efficiency around like I was just another piece of cargo. The ships themselves — plural, because I’d seen at least three others bearing similar markings when we’d climbed aboard.
This wasn’t so ragtag rescue operation. This was infrastructure. Organization. Money.
The Black Snow Company... a massive organization of the worst people you can think of, according to what Nisha had explained. Criminals, killers, people who’d made themselves unwelco in polite society.
’And sohow, they all dropped everything to extract one F-rank spirit summoner from Aetheris.’
Sothing wasn’t adding up. But I was too tired to solve equations right now. My brain felt like it had been wrung out and hung to dry.
The afternoon wore on. I stayed on my barrel, occasionally accepting water from crew mbers who passed by, trying to convince my legs that they still existed. The harbor sounds washed over — distant shouts, the creak of rigging, the calls of strange seabirds that looked nothing like any bird I’d known on Earth.
The ocean stretched beyond the harbor mouth, vast and gray and endless. Looking at it still made my head swim slightly, that strange vertigo I’d felt since arriving in this world. Sothing about large bodies of water just... didn’t agree with . So leftover instinct from a life I barely rembered anymore.
I was contemplating whether drowning would be preferable to another training session when a commotion near the gangplank caught my attention.
Three figures were climbing aboard. Even from a distance, I recognized them.
Nisha ca first, practically bounding up the ladder with the energy of soone who hadn’t spent the last several hours being physically destroyed. Her brown skin glead with sweat, and there was a new tear in her shirt that definitely hadn’t been there before, but she was grinning like she’d just won a prize.
Tristan followed, more asured in his ascent. His expression was harder to read — there was relief there, but sothing else too. Tension that hadn’t fully released.
And finally, Levi. Those heterochromatic eyes found imdiately, one green and one red, and sothing in them shifted with a small smile of satisfaction.
"Cade!"
Nisha crossed the deck in approximately three seconds and would have tackled if I hadn’t raised my hands in desperate surrender.
"Wait — don’t — I’m injured—"
"You’re always injured! That’s your default state at this point!"
She settled for clapping on the shoulder instead, which still sent a jolt of pain through my already-destroyed muscles. I winced but managed not to crumple entirely.
"Good to see you too, Nisha."
"Good to see ? Good to see ?" She put her hands on her hips, looking genuinely offended. "We’ve been running around this city for hours making sure nobody followed us, and all you can say is ’good to see you’?"
"What would you prefer? A parade? Should I compose a poem?"
"A poem would be nice!"
Tristan arrived, saving from having to actually compose anything. He looked over with that assessing gaze of his, the one that always felt like he was cataloging my injuries and calculating survival odds.
"You look like shit."
"That’s the second ti soone’s told that in the last few hours. I’m starting to think it might be true."
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "I sure would like to hear how you managed to escape that guy."
"I gave him hell. Literally, by the way."
Levi had reached us now, hands in his pockets, that enigmatic half-smile playing at his lips. He looked entirely too composed for soone who’d apparently spent hours evading pursuit.
"Ard with the Blood Conqueror, there’s no way you can really lose," he said. "All you have to do is summon her. You really are a lucky one, you know?"
’Lucky? Okay now.’
Lucky wasn’t the word I would’ve used. But I was too tired to argue semantics with soone who seed to know more about my spirits than I did.
"Are we clear?" Derry’s voice cut through the reunion, the big man striding over with purpose. "Because if we’re clear, I’d like to get this ship moving before the Church decides to do a thorough inspection of every vessel in harbor."
Levi nodded. "We’re clear. No tails. They’ll figure out we left by sea eventually, but by then we’ll be beyond their reach."
Derry grunted, apparently satisfied. He turned and bellowed orders that made no sense to but set the crew into imdiate motion.
"Mr. Derry is very good at yelling!" Po appeared beside again, beaming with what I could only interpret as pride. "He practiced for many years!"
"I can tell."
The ship began to move.
I don’t know what I expected — maybe sothing gradual, a slow drift away from the dock. Instead, there was a deep groan from sowhere beneath the deck, a vibration that ran through the whole vessel and up through my already-aching bones, and then we were pulling away from the harbor with a speed that seed impossible for sothing this size.
I gripped the barrel beneath , suddenly aware of how unstable my perch was.
"Spirit-powered," Tristan said, noticing my expression. "The engine room has bound spirits that generate propulsion. Much faster than sails alone."
’Of course...’
The harbor began to shrink behind us. The massive ships we’d been docked between fell away, then the rows of smaller vessels, then the gargantuan beasts of burden with their patient golden eyes. The cliff face of Faeren Heights rose in the distance, growing smaller by the second.
Aetheris Kingdom. The place where Lira had lived. The place where she’d died.
I watched it recede, and sothing twisted in my chest. Not quite grief — that wound was still too raw to touch directly. Sothing older... colder.
’I’ll be back.’
The thought ca unbidden, hard and certain as stone.
’I’ll be back, and when I am, I won’t be running.’
Nisha settled onto a crate beside , apparently content to watch the kingdom shrink into the distance alongside . Her earlier energy had softened into sothing quieter.
"Strange feeling, isn’t it?" she said. "Leaving a place."
"I’ve left places before."
"Not like this, though." She glanced at sideways. "Not with a hundred thousand silver on your head and an Inquisitor probably already on your trail."
’Thanks for the reminder.’
"Where are we going?"
She grinned, and there was sothing almost predatory in it.
"Ho. Black Snow Company headquarters." She stretched her arms above her head, casual as anything. "Fair warning — it’s not exactly what you’d call civilized. But it’s ours, and nobody there gives a shit about the Church’s bounties."
Ho. The word felt foreign. I hadn’t had a ho since arriving in this world. The rcenary Guild had been close, maybe — close enough that losing it had torn sothing inside .
Now I was sailing toward a criminal organization’s headquarters with two calamity-tier spirits in my soul, a body that barely functioned, and absolutely no idea what ca next.
’One inch at a ti,’ I reminded myself. ’That’s how this works.’
The last sliver of Aetheris disappeared below the horizon.
And despite everything — the pain, the exhaustion, the grief still lodged like glass beneath my ribs — I felt sothing else too. Sothing that might have been anticipation.
The Church wanted dead. They’d burned the Guild. They’d killed Lira. They’d chased across this kingdom like a dog.
But I was still alive. Still moving forward. Still getting stronger, one agonizing inch at a ti.
And soday — not today, not tomorrow, but soday — I was going to make them regret ever learning my na.
The ocean stretched ahead, gray and endless.
I watched it without flinching.
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