Finally back at the villa, a sense of real, if temporary, normalcy settled over Ethan. The tension that had clung to him since entering Ember City eased just a little, replaced by sothing warr and familiar. For the mont, this felt like ho.
He wasted no ti organizing everyone, assigning rooms and responsibilities with practiced efficiency. He even had Micah reinforce the grounds with several periter Magic Barriers, subtle but layered, more than enough to discourage anything short of a serious threat.
"Ethan..." Lyla approached once things quieted down, her gaze fixed on him as if she were morizing his face. "You’re leaving again, aren’t you?"
He t her eyes and nodded. The team was safest here. "Stay put. I’ll be back before nightfall."
She looked like she wanted to argue, to demand answers or insist on coming along, but in the end she swallowed the words.
He smiled gently, hoping it would ease her worry. "Don’t stress. Ninth Granduncle and the others will co by soon. Just hold down the line for , alright?"
Before she could protest, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead, deliberately and unapologetically, right in front of everyone. Lyla’s face turned scarlet instantly, whatever resolve she had crumbling into flustered silence.
With a final wave to the group, Ethan departed without explaining where he was going.
His Combat ch armor unfolded around him mid-step, plates locking together as optical camouflage engaged. His form blurred, then vanished entirely. A heartbeat later, he shot skyward, veered sharply east, and left the city center behind.
His destination lay on Ember City’s neglected eastern fringe, an undeveloped tract of land caught between decay and resistance. Condemned single-story hos sagged beside squat brick buildings marked for demolition. Chain-link fences and corrugated tal sheets boxed the area in, warning signs slapped onto walls already stripped of doors and windows. Yet life stubbornly lingered. A few residents still refused buyouts. Cheap renters clung to what shelter they had. Squatters patched holes and wired power wherever they could.
Ethan descended onto the roof of a two-story house that stood apart from the rest. Unlike its neighbors, it had been built with care and money, a compact manor from another era. Ti had dulled it, leaving peeling paint and weathered stone, but the structure itself remained solid. A standalone ho with its own yard, sothing almost impossible to find now. Even in the dead of winter, he could see the neat layout of a vegetable garden below, ticulously cleared, with the brittle remains of last season’s root crops jutting from frozen soil.
He muted his Soul Sense to a whisper and listened.
’Three presences inside.’
A man without legs lay inside an open VR Capsule rather than a bed. Nearby, a girl in her late teens moved quietly and efficiently, cooking over a portable gas burner. The utilities had clearly been cut; a brand-new generator humd in the corner, its cables feeding the Capsule and a handful of bare light bulbs strung across the room. There were two VR Capsules in total. One was likely hers.
Between them sat a middle-aged woman dressed in plain gray monastic robes. She knelt cross-legged on a worn ditation cushion, eyes gently closed, hands resting in a calming mudra. Her breathing was slow, steady, and deep. She was fully imrsed in ditation.
Ethan focused on her.
A soft, milky-white aura radiated from her body, tranquil and balanced. It wasn’t predatory or oppressive like the others he had sensed across the city, but it was undeniably powerful. She was one of the strong presences he had detected from Shatterstar. Even so, with his Sense dialed down to nearly nothing, she didn’t notice.
Satisfied, Ethan lifted off again, landed behind a crumbling wall nearby, and dismissed his ch armor. Approaching on foot, he vaulted lightly over the garden wall and stepped into the yard.
The instant his boots touched the frozen soil, the front door burst open.
The monastic woman stood in the doorway, her calm deanor sharpened into focused vigilance.
"Who goes there?" she demanded. "Leave this place at once, or I will be forced to act."
Ethan stopped where he was, hands visible. "I’m a friend of the family," he said carefully.
"A friend?" Her brows knit together, suspicion deepening. "Whose friend?"
"Uh..." Ethan hesitated, realizing his mistake too late.
He didn’t actually know the girl’s na.
He had only known her as the quiet kid who worked part-ti at his old gym, the one who later joined Ethereal and beca a Hidden Class crafter under Celia’s guidance. Celia had told him her na once. He hadn’t bothered to commit it to mory.
He was only here because his city-wide scan had flagged a familiar presence in this isolated pocket. In all of Ember City, aside from this girl, there was only one other non-combatant he felt responsible for: his eccentric engineering lieutenant, NoPaperOnTheBigOne, the notorious Mad Engineer.
Ironically, he had found the engineer first.
Ethan’s scan had revealed the man wasn’t in imdiate danger at all. Following the address the engineer had once drunkenly muttered, Ethan discovered the house empty except for a single VR Capsule mounting bracket.
It felt strange, because the base was there, but the pod was gone. It was obviously not a kidnapping. because who steals just the pod?
Digging deeper, he traced a cleverly spliced electrical line running underground from the house’s main supply. Four ters down, it led to a reinforced root cellar roughly five ters across. Inside, illuminated by battery-powered lamps, sat a VR Capsule. Next to it, crunching loudly on a carrot the size of a club, was the Mad Engineer himself.
The man hadn’t been taken. He had gone to ground. Literally.
Reassured of his safety, Ethan had turned his attention here.
The monastic woman mistook his hesitation for guilt. "You dare lie to ?" she said coldly. "Leave now, or I will not be so courteous."
Ethan resisted the urge to sigh. ’If you truly thought I was a threat, you wouldn’t be warning .’ She was strong, but inexperienced.
"I am a friend," he said quickly. "Ask her yourself. Tell her I’m a friend of Celia’s."
That gave her pause. Before she could decide, a second-floor window creaked open.
The teenage girl leaned out, her eyes widening as recognition set in.
"B— Boss?" she called down, stunned. "Is that really you? What are you doing here?"
Relief washed through Ethan. He looked up and flashed her his most reassuring grin. "Celia sent . I’m here to check on you. To take you sowhere safe."
Her surprise faded into thoughtful hesitation. The monastic woman, seeing the girl’s reaction, relaxed slightly, though she did not step aside.
Ethan expected panic, or at least urgency. A rush to gather belongings.
Instead, the girl slowly shook her head.
"I... I can’t leave," she said softly, her voice steady despite the weight behind it.
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