Cael looked at the body in Alex’s arms.
"The bearer of Fragnt 4?"
"He’s no longer a bearer."
A second of visible processing in Cael’s expression.
"Good." He said it without particular emphasis.
"That’s one less problem to deal with." A pause.
"Even so, my mission is to capture you and take you to the Temple."
Cael’s hand went up.
The squad tensed — twelve hunters responding to their Inquisitor’s gesture, preparing to move.
Then Seraph appeared.
---
Not from the sides of Carter’s team.
From the space between the two groups — erging from among the fragnted rocks that were part of the north entrance and the squad’s position, Fragnt 2’s spectral scythe floating visibly behind her shoulder, her dark cloak waving slightly.
She stood exactly at the point where any movent from Cael’s squad toward Carter’s team would require passing through her.
She smiled.
"Do you mind if I join in?" She said to Cael directly.
Without hostility in her voice.
With the specific tone of soone who genuinely enjoys what she’s offering.
"After all, it’s been a while since I’ve had a decent fight."
"It’s been a while, hasn’t it?"
Cael looked at her.
One second.
Less than one second.
A microsecond where sothing in the Inquisitor’s posture changed — not fear, nothing that simple.
Recognition.
*Looks like these two have history,*
thought Alex, watching how Cael seed to be having an internal battle with himself.
*Were they an ex-couple? No... I don’t think so, he looks much older than Seraph... wait, who am I to talk about age differences.* His face briefly turned toward Raven, who seed to have had the sa thought as him, and both turned away in embarrassnt.
*Although it’s more likely they have history from her past, after all... Seraph Nox is a forr Paladin, bearer of Fragnt 2, expelled from the Temple if I rember correctly for bearing Fragnt 2.*
Cael turned toward his squad.
Davan was watching him, waiting for the signal.
"Not today." Cael lowered his hand.
"But this doesn’t end here, Carter."
"Nobody said it ends here."
The squad parted — the twelve elite hunters moving to the sides, creating a corridor between them and Carter’s team.
The team passed.
Seraph followed them without saying anything else.
No one spoke until they were a hundred ters from the entrance.
Seraph gave one last look at Cael and, with a mocking wave goodbye, followed the team.
---
Emily was the first to speak.
"Was that real?"
"Apparently," said Raven.
"Why didn’t they attack?" asked Emily. "We were... we weren’t hard to capture in that state."
"Because she protected us, apparently," said Maya.
Looking toward where Seraph walked at a distance behind the group. "Or at least she created enough doubt for Cael to recalculate."
"Seraph protected us? Yeah, right." Raven scoffed at that comnt.
"Seraph only protects her own interests." Raven kept walking.
"This ti they coincided with ours."
---
[POV CAEL — sa mont]
The squad regrouping. Davan to his right.
Cael watching Carter’s group walk away.
*They interrupted the Heralds’ ritual. They evolved the companion — an evolution that no Temple record described correctly because no one who had witnessed it had survived to write it down.* ntal pause.
*They ca out alive from Level Four with Fragnt 4’s bearer alive in Carter’s arms.*
*Is that boy still the bearer of Fragnt 4, or was Carter not lying about him no longer being the bearer?*
The question that the report was going to have to answer, and that Cael didn’t have enough data to answer yet.
Davan: "Why didn’t we arrest them? Even with that girl, we were more than enough in numbers."
Cael looked at him.
"How many tis have you fought against an active Fragnt bearer?"
"None."
"Fourteen." A pause.
"Number isn’t the variable that matters." He looked toward where Carter’s team’s silhouette disappeared among the trees.
"Carter has Fragnt 1 at an integration level that the Temple has no precedent to calculate. His companion just evolved into a form that no record describes."
He hesitated for a second before continuing, as if what he was about to say he didn’t want to say.
"And between them and us there was a forr Paladin with fifteen years of exposure to Fragnt 2 who has survived everything the Temple has sent her way."
Davan processed that.
"And the report to the High Inquisitor?"
Cael took out his device.
He began to write.
*"I recomnd continuous surveillance. Not imdiate capture. Fragnt 1’s bearer may be the only one capable of interrupting the remaining rituals before the seals fail from other causes. Requires monitoring, not elimination."*
He sent it.
"Besides," he said without looking up from the device, "don’t underestimate the bearer of Fragnt 2’s power."
Davan didn’t respond to that.
He had no response for that.
---
[Veltharr — The Broken Rock — Night]
The team arrived as the outer market was closing.
The owner saw them enter, the state they were in, the body that Alex was carrying — and asked no questions.
She gave them the rooms. Hot water. Food without asking for explanations.
---
Later.
The team sleeping.
Kira finally without the seal’s pain in her side — with the ritual fractured, the resonance had diminished until it disappeared during the last hours of the journey.
Emily with her hands finally still, without the active purification, sleeping with the depth of soone who has spent more MP than she should be able to recover in one night.
Raven in the chair by the window — eyes closed, the breathing of soone truly tired, the cut on her arm bandaged with what the Veltharr herbalist had left for them.
Maya with Akari in her lap. The nine tails retracted for the first ti since the Catacombs. The map of the next routes open on the table, but Maya sleeping on top of it.
The young forr bearer of Fragnt 4 sleeping in the bed belonging to Alex... It seed that after years, he was finally resting.
Alex outside the inn.
The Anchor Stone in his hand.
The crimson veins almost extinguished.
Not the pulsing lines from the Ishi hot springs.
Just traces that were more absence than presence.
Two days. Maybe less.
Grim beside him.
Form 2 contracted to eighty centiters for the inn’s space.
His crimson flas still in the Veltharr night.
"And then what," said Grim.
It wasn’t a question.
"And then the corruption returns to 80%." Alex looked at the stone. "More, now. With Fragnt 4, I don’t know what will happen, nor how it works."
**"Are you ready for that?"**
Alex looked through the inn’s window.
Kira sleeping.
Emily with her hands still.
Raven pretending to sleep.
Maya on top of the map.
"No." A pause.
"But they are."
Grim looked at the stone in Alex’s hand.
Then looked inside — at the mories that Fragnt 4 now shared with him just like those of Fragnt 1.
Two sources.
Two perspectives of the sa original being.
**"Maybe there’s a way to control it."**
Alex looked at him.
"Fragnt 4?"
**"The corruption."** His crimson flas looking at the stone as it faded.
**"The Harvester’s mories now include what Fragnt 4 saw. And there’s sothing in that that Fragnt 1 alone didn’t have."**
"What?"
Grim didn’t answer imdiately.
His flas looking at the Veltharr night.
The mountain where the Catacombs were located visible on the dark horizon.
**"I don’t know yet."** A pause.
**"But there is sothing."**
Alex looked at the Anchor Stone.
The last crimson veins flickering.
Two days.
"Will it be enough ti to get where I need to go?"
It had to be.
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